An allegedly brutal police crackdown at a Roma settlement near Moldava nad Bodvou (Košice region) in June 2013, has led to an open conflict between Slovakia’s Ombudswoman Jana Dubovcová and the Government.
On Wednesday a report on this matter prepared by Dubovcová’s office was on the agenda of the Cabinet meeting but Ministers refused to discuss it with her, arguing that the ombudswoman didn't have the right to appeal to the Government in this way. “Prime Minister Robert Fico stated that I should have appealed to the Interior Ministry who is running the police, rather than to the Government. But I had already done so in fact, and got no reply”, Dubovcová said. A former judge by profession, she explained that based on an investigation into the matter she discovered that the police violated the principal rights and freedoms of a number of people in the settlement. Last August she filed a report on her findings recommending several steps to improve the police’s activity but she received no response from the relevant authorities; thus they failed to meet their legal obligations.
The Interior Ministry said that the police did not act abnormally and on Wednesday the Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák accused the Ombudswoman of breaching the law, lying, and politicising the case. He hinted to the fact that before taking up her current position Dubovcová was an MP of the Slovak Democratic Christian Union, currently in Opposition. “She did not contact the regional police headquarters according to the law. She only sent a couple of employees from her office, who threatened police officers with dismissals. She requested documents that she does not have clearance to see”, said Kaliňák. He agreed, however, with one of Dubovcová’s proposals; namely to have police record every planned future crackdown on video. It will depend, however, on budgetary constraints. Previously, non-governmental organisations dealing with human rights issues have documented cases of police allegedly misbehaving when dealing with Roma ethnics. In 2009 a scandal broke when police officers from Košice asked six Roma children taken into custody for allegedly wanting to steal from an old lady, to get undressed, kiss and slap each other, with one policeman recording these actions on a mobile phone. The parents of the children took the officers in question to court and the trial is still undergoing.
