For all of you who were "convinced" by your one source of information on
travelers on 20/20, here's a different take on the situation, forwarded
to me by some friends of mine in the UK who are very familiar with the
the travelers cause. The Observer is a mainstream publication in the UK.
It'll be interesting to see your response to this.
                          The Observer
                         Copyright 1996
                    Sunday, December 1, 1996
                     The Observer News Page
   Hold on a minute: Gypsies  have become the Jews of Europe
                           NICK COHEN
   THE CLOSEST academics at London University's School of Slavonic and East 
European Studies have come to being scandalised this year was at what had 
promised to be a dull seminar given by Olga Keltosova, Slovakia's Minister 
of Labour, last Friday.
  For a while the lecture met the low expectations. Mrs Keltosova talked in 
Slovak about her country's new social security system. Her interpreter gave a 
halting translation. But the soporific atmosphere lifted when she was asked 
about Slovakia's half a million gypsies. They 'dislike work', she said, some 
'simply did not want to work'. She implied they were not only shirkers but 
thieves who took benefits meant for their children.
   As, after centuries of persecution, about 400,000 European gypsies died 
in concentration camps because the Nazis decided they were anti-social and 
criminal, talk of the inherent idleness of gypsies is considered to be in 
poor taste in polite circles. The audience pressed her to reconsider.
But she would not withdraw or qualify her remarks.
  By the standards of the rest of central and eastern Europe, Mrs Keltosova 
is a moderate. In 1993 Vladimir Meciar, the Slovak Prime Minister,  demanded 
the cutting of child benefits to gypsies to limit  'the reproduction of 
socially unadaptable and mentally retarded people'. Slovak villages have
imposed curfews on gypsies and there have been numerous attacks culminating 
in the death of a 17-year-old who was burned alive in July last year.
  In Austria six months earlier a mock gravestone was placed near the former 
Lackenbach concentration camp which held gypsies before they were sent to 
Auschwitz. Its inscription told gypsies to go back to India. When four 
gypsies tried to tear it down, a bomb exploded killing them all. Skinheads 
beat up mourners who gathered by the bomb site. The police did not
intervene.
continued ....
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