A public protest against the resettlement of migrants to Slovakia took place in Bratislava on Saturday. A crowd of around two thousand protesters, chanting 'we're home here' and 'treason' set out from the main train station shortly after 3 p.m. towards SNP Square. A critical situation occurred close to the Presidential Palace, when the protesters ran into a group of hundreds of people, who assembled for another demonstration 'Together against hate - Bratislava blockade'. Both crowds came to a distance of some 20 meters from each other and treated each other with profanities and obscene gestures. At SNP Square, a number of speakers addressed the crowd. The protest organizers claimed that the purpose of the event is not to propagate religious and racial hatred. The speakers blamed particularly the United States for the influx of refugees to Europe because of their bombing of Libya and Syria, although criticism was heaped also against Israel, the Government of Robert Fico, capitalism and high unemployment. The situation was monitored by police, which had to intervene against a group of 300 protesters, who interrupted a cycling race at Bratislava Castle and assaulted race spectators. The police detained a total of 140 protesters, 60 were Czechs and the rest Slovak.
MP Lucia Žitňanská (Most-Hid) believes that what occurred in Bratislava on Saturday wasn't primarily a protest against quotas, as she stated in a RTVS political debate on Sunday. "The migrants were only a pretext. I see this as a demonstration of extremism," she said. In this respect, Žitňanská views it as important for the authorities to explain the situation to the public and not resort to half-truths and misinformation regarding the migrant issue.
