This Week in Slovakia
Prehľad toho najdôležitejšieho, čo sa u nás stalo v uplynulom týždni v anglickom jazyku. Televízne spravodajstvo investigatívneho novinára Toma Nicholsona, Kanaďana žijúceho na Slovensku.
For more news about Slovakia in English please go to spectator.sme.sk
The post of General Prosecutor is a powerful one in Slovakia. The person who holds it can influence any criminal investigation, which means they can decide to press – or to drop – charges in sensitive political cases. So understandably, every seven years when parliament picks a new General Prosecutor, the selection generates intense interest among politicians .
It’ s been hard to keep up these past few months with the blizzard of revelations from the new government about what its predecessors were up to. Allegations of scams and the theft of millions in state money and Eurofunds have produced a stream of press conferences and criminal charges.
Four young men in the Czech Republic have been sentenced to heavy jail terms for firebombing a Roma residence in Vitkova last year. During the attack a two-year-old Roma girl suffered burns to 80 percent of her body, and continues to need operations and physical and psychological therapy.
In neighboring Slovakia tensions also remain high between the Roma and majority Slovaks . While the country has seen no recent attacks as vicious as that on Natalka’ s family, the Roma are frequently blamed for petty crime in white neighborhoods that border Roma shantytowns. Walls have been built to keep the Roma out in several cities, and the western Slovak town of Plavecký Štvrtok has tabled plans to level Roma dwellings that were erected without building permits.
