Slovenian recipe for ethnic minority solutions: Ambros residents' intolerance towards their Roma neighbors, Slovenian government finds "lifesaving solution" in deporting Gypsies to refugee camp
Only a “pretext” was sought for the fragile coexistence between Roma and Slovenes to cross the line of “sporadic xenophobic outbursts”. In the face of the violence and threats of the villagers, the Roma fled from their barracks in Ambrus to the forest and were later placed in a refugee center by the authorities.
This was the reason that Slovenian human rights ombudsman Matjaz Hanzek characterized the move by the authorities as "the end of the rule of law".
The first clashes in Ambrus, halfway between Ljubljana and Novo Mesto, occurred last week, when an Ambrus resident and one Roma clashed. The enraged villagers "could no longer tolerate the terror of the Roma from the nearby Children's Village camp, so they decided to" deal "with the abuser by setting him on fire. In order to make the revenge more compelling, the Ambrus villagers decided to set on fire one barracks in the Roma settlement.
The frightened Roma, who unfortunately no one came to their aid, even local firefighters who did not find it appropriate to quench the "non-Roma ambitions" of Ambrus residents, fled to the forest from where, due to protests by the "ethnically pure" population of the villagers, they were not allowed to return .
35 of them, mostly women and children, tried to return to their homes after five days of wandering in the nearby woods, where, by the way, a brown bear reigns. Their return home was unsuccessful due to the cruelty of the Ambrus residents who openly threatened them with death.
That evening, on the day of the unsuccessful return of the Roma, the broadcast image on national TV provided a sad scene: on the one hand, 500 "enraged" Ambrus residents, and on the other, about 30 Roma. In the middle is a cordon of 200 starters!
Only then did the Slovenian political nomenclature respond, with an "original proposal" which implied that the unfortunate Roma were still dislocated, ie. to find a new shelter for them.
The "solution" presented by the Minister of the Interior Dragutin Mate on behalf of the Government was accepted by both sides: the Ambrus villagers celebrating, and the unfortunate Roma, who had no choice, were silent and broken.
Ambrus Roma are housed today at the Postojna Refugee Center.
