Police working to find authors of anti-Roma leaflets

Police working to find authors of anti-Roma leaflets

"The police are intensively working together with the prosecution to discover and identify the persons who created and distributed leaflets of the Srbska Akcija organization, which contain open calls for violence, lynch and hate speech against members of the Roma nationality," said the MUP.

A statement added that the police will protect freedom and safety of all citizens regardless of their ethnicity, and political, religious, or any other orientation.

Leaflets signed by the Srbska Akcija organization were found in mailboxes in Belgrade and other towns over the weekend, calling for violence against the Roma because they are supposedly guilty for all of society's problems.

The Anti-Fascist Action (AFA) NGO from Novi Sad posted the leaflet on its Facebook page. The leaflet calls on citizens to "organize" to protect against "expanding illegal Gypsy settlements" which bring with them "unhygienic conditions, fighting, constant noise, crime."

According to the leaflet, homeowners will eventually want to sell and move out of their neighborhoods, but the value of their property will have dropped because of the proximity of the Roma.

The group therefore urges citizens to, together with their neighbors, "organize before it's too late," and use "public appeals, petitions, and protests to solve this problem now."

AFA warned that the leaflet contains "the most primitive form of fascist propaganda that calls for violence against the Roma which are singled out as the cause of material misery that most citizens of Serbia live in."

"This is about the basic fascist doctrine of diverting the attention from the real reasons of the economic conditions. Just like Hitler in Germany in the 1930s invented that Jews were the cause of the economic crisis, thereby diverting the attention from the real culprits for the state that Germany was in - the big capitalists - so the domestic fascist today point the finger at the Roma, instead of at the political elite and tycoons," said AFA.

This organization added that "fortunately, citizens are not so blind and naive to believe that the most disenfranchised and endangered ethnic group, 99 percent of whose members live in absolutely misery, below the minimum of human dignity, is to blame for the material condition they are in."

"Still, looking for the culprits among those disenfranchised and helpless is often the easier choice, therefore we should take this seriously and confront the bullies, preventing them from doing their dirty propaganda," said AFA.

President of the National Roma Council Prof. Vitomir Mihajlović stressed that distributing such leaflets was disgraceful and a big insult to all Romas.

"I condemn this gesture that contains unrestrained calls to lynch the Roma. These leaflets represent a clear message that somebody is against the Roma and that they are endangered. It is also offensive that, according to the author of this horrific text, all Romas are put into the same basket, both those from unhygienic settlements and those who are professors, doctors... that is, successful and equal members of society. Unfortunately it is the easiest to blame the Roma because they are poor and unprotected, and as such an easy target," Mihajlović stressed.

The National Roma Council asked all relevant state organs to undertake appropriate measures against the perpetrators, and also called on all honest citizens of Serbia to condemn this act of extreme nationalism, nazism, and fascism.

Equality Commissioner Nevena Petrušić said on Monday that she submitted a criminal complaint against the authors of the leaflet, signed by Srbska Akcija, which contains open hate speech toward the Roma.

Parliament Committee on Human and Minority Rights chair Meho Omerović said that the leaflet that calls for the Roma to be exterminated represented extremism and fascism in action, and that the police must urgently find initiators and organizers of that act of evil.