Czech Republic: Romani family, threatened with murder in Rumburk, flees

Yesterday a Romani family was forced to flee Rumburk after their neighbors threatened to kill them. Neither the police nor the Rumburk town hall was able to help them. Temporary asylum was provided to them by Robert Ferenc of the Romani association Čačipen in Krásná Lípa.

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Romani residents protest in Rumburk against yesterday’s pogrom

“On Friday evening a nine-member Romani family contacted me asking for help. They said their neighbors in Rumburk were threatening them and they were afraid,” Robert Ferenc of the Čačipen civic association told news server Romea.cz. “They had already fled their house before noon. They walked through the forest and made it here to Krásná Lípa, where I asked other Romani people to take care of them.”

The Romani family, which is not connected to any of the recent incidents of violence recently committed in Šluknov forest, is terrified by the current situation. “Our neighbor threatened to kill us. He said we would all be dead by nightfall, including the children,” the mother of the family told internet television channel ROMEA TV. She is an ethnic Czech and her husband is Romani.

The family did their best to contact the police and the Rumburk town hall, but no one would help them. “They told us we should leave and hide, that it didn’t matter where we went,” the woman described the scandalous advice given by the town hall. “The police told us to shut ourselves in our home and to call them if someone happened to bang on the door,” she said, adding that their next advice was the same as that from the town hall: “Leave and hide somewhere else.”

The family says other Romani people have been forced to flee Rumburk as well.