30.07.2014 Andrychow: pogroms against Rroma

Zurawski (2014) reports on anti-Rroma pogroms in Andrychow, Poland. According to the journalists, last month, right-wing groups have begun with demonstrations propagandising “Cyganies out” (Gypsies out). Andrychow is just a few kilometres from Auschwitz, where thousands of Rroma were systematically murdered during the Second World War. Roman Kwiatkowski, president of the Polish Rroma Association, called the latest incidents very disturbing. Many Rroma are worried and afraid: “In Andrychow last month, a pregnant Roma woman was attacked as she walked in the street. Soon after, two young ethnic Poles were beaten up in what many residents assumed was a Roma revenge attack. Anger erupted. Supporters of the local football club, Beskid Andrychow, set up a page on Facebook. It published accounts of what it said were violent attacks by Roma, and photographs of ethnic Poles it said had been beaten up. The page has now been “liked” by 14,182 people. One post read: “We’re not going to sit quietly and pretend that everything is OK. We are shouting long and loud: enough of Gypsy impunity!”” Critics see the new right-wing movement in Poland as influenced by the Hungarian Jobbik party. This has made racist comments against Rroma socially acceptable among more and more people. It is very alarming that racist slogans against the minority still find such strong echo. The defamation of a minority does not start when it is physically excluded and ostracized, but already when it is agitated against by demagoguery. This intellectual arson must be stopped. Policy makers from Poland are called upon to stop the spread of anti-Semitic thought (compare Zurawski/Lowe/Goettig 2014).