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Slovakian Roma Forced to Ghettos Defying EU pressure, Slovakia is systematically segregating its Romany minority into ghettos, and barring their entrance into cities. By Arie Farnam | Special to The Christian Science Monitor KOSICE, SLOVAKIA – Teenager Lucie David still has nightmares about the evening two years ago when local police and neo-Nazi skinheads attacked her family's home in the small town of Stos in eastern Slovakia. "Rocks came smashing through the windows, and a crowd was outside chanting that they would rape me and my mother," she recalls in a whisper. After huddling together in the dark for several...

NEW YORK, Nov. 22 (JTA) — A Holocaust exhibit at a prestigious art museum in Zagreb is being hailed as a major step forward in Croatia’s willingness to deal honestly with its World War II history. Croatian President Stepan Mesic recently inaugurated the exhibit, entitled “The Courage to Remember,” at the capital’s Mimara Art Museum. “This is not an exhibition for historians, but one for those who want to revise history,” Mesic said in a speech at the opening. “This is not an exhibition for those who know but for those who do not know, and even more so for...

As Madelyne Toogood returns to court today, Irish Travellers and some experts on their culture are alleging that media coverage of Toogood and Travellers over the past three weeks has been unfair, unresearched and nothing short of racist. Toogood, an Irish Traveller, was videotaped by a security camera Sept. 13 apparently striking her 4-year-old daughter in the back seat of a vehicle parked outside a Mishawaka department store. "The last time I remember reading this type of language was when the Nazis were rounding these people up to throw them into ovens," says Larry Otway, a political scientist who has...

MIDI - DON'T WORRY BABY Well, we know, Terry, that you've stayed awake at night and you've been troubled New Jersey really is a mess that might just burst your Senate bubble We have good news for you…our judges will come through So we say…don't worry, Terry…(don't worry, Terry)…don't worry, Terry Rest assured that the fix is in Don't worry, Terry…(don't worry, Terry) It is no problem that the judges had sent bucks to Torricelli That's just the way we like to do things and so what that it is smelly As you tuck in your kids…know that we...

"Our account of the Spanish peninsula would be incomplete without a notice of that remarkable race, the Gypsies, who have long existed in this country, isolated from the rest of the community. they are also found in several other countries of Europe; but the accounts of those in Spain, where they are said to number some forty or fofty thousand individuals, are the most complete." "For a period of more than four hundred years, this singular group of people have been strolling, with little change, over Europe, like foreigners and strangers. Their "hand against every man, and every man's hand...

DALLAS (AP) _ The tearful testimonial Madelyne Gorman Toogood gave in front of glaring TV cameras after she was videotaped beating her daughter was starkly uncharacteristic of the reclusive, media-shy Irish Travelers culture to which she belongs, experts say. Toogood, who was caught beating her 4-year-old daughter, Martha, in a department store parking lot, said she is a member of the clannish, nomadic culture of Irish descendants, most of whom came to the United States as refugees during the potato famine in the 1840s. ``By nature, they're very reclusive people,'' said Joe Livingston, a South Carolina state investigator who has...

Some local authorities will not refer to Madelyn Gorman/Toogood and Margaret Daley as 'Travelers' but a local expert on Travelers says from the video he's seen, he believes the women are Irish Travelers. There are an estimated 12,000 to 20,000 Irish Travelers in the United States, mostly in South Carolina and Texas. This is where it is believed Gorman and her family is from. Travelers live a nomadic lifestyle, moving from town to town in large groups to do seasonal work but they've also been labeled, by some, as scam artists. Most Irish Travelers in this country are descendents of...

  Witnesses Say Racism at Heart of Romani Human Rights Abuses U.S. Newswire 9 Apr 18:30 Racism at the Heart of Romani Human Rights Abuses, Witnesses TellHelsinki CommissionTo: National and International Desks Contact: Ben Anderson of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, 202-225-1901; Web site: http://www.csce.gov/WASHINGTON, April 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Roma throughout Europe still encounter human rights conditions which lack the basic elements of human dignity, according to testimony delivered today before a hearing of the Untied States Helsinki Commission. The hearing focused on the age-old human rights struggle of Roma, insidious barriers to education opportunities for Romani children, activities of...