What we have seen recently happening in Slovakia is something
unprecedented here for dozens and dozens of years. TV news have
been stuffed with images of Roma kids chanting “We want to eat”
in front of a looted shop and angry Roma people throwing bottles
and cobblestones, the police firing teargas and using
water-canons and special units with submachine-guns raiding
homes of looters and rioters. Events we witnessed in Argentina,
Bolivia, Iraq or Haiti have come much closer to the reality of
working class in central Europe than ever before.
If we want to understand the current revolt of Roma (and to a
lesser extent even non-Roma) proletarians in Slovakia, first we
will have to look at their situation.
How to get rid of redundant proletarians?
Slovakia is no exception in worldwide attempts of capital at
dismantling the welfare state as a way how to gain time and
space for surviving its crisis. The latest government reforms of
welfare system in Slovakia included severe cuts in benefits for
households. So if in 2002 a family of five people could get as
much as 17,890 Sk (Slovakian crowns) in welfare benefits, one
year later it was 13,650 Sk and this year it is only 6710 Sk.
While the average wage in Slovakia is 14,000 Sk a month, during
the year 2003 there was a decrease in its real value.
Unemployment is approximately 15.6%, but Roma people mostly live
in regions, which suffer with double or even higher rates of
joblessness and in many of their local communities its rate is
almost 100%.
Romas represent some 400,000 people out of total Slovakian
population of 5.4 millions. However their share is still growing
due to their higher birthrate. Given the previous rates of
welfare benefits it was possible for parents with a lot of
children to avoid wage-slavery. Of course, they would be very
poor, but still it would be possible to survive without starving
especially if you could become involved in black economy,
shoplifting, petty thefts etc. or rely on your own garden and
breeding domestic animals. In fact Romas who have always been
the first to be sacked in any wave of redundancies since 1989
– and thus have been to a great extent excluded from the
labour market for more than a decade – have not had any other
option even if they wanted to work. It is even possible to say
that a large part of their younger generation has never been
integrated into wage labour.
Slovakian government proclaimed that one of goals of its
reform is to prevent working class people from “living on
children”. In this way it wants to make of them a real
“reserve army” of workers, which would be forced to take any
job and thus generally push down the wages which would in turn
make the country more attractive for foreign capital. In case of
Romas this incentive does not work. It is hard to find even a
badly paid job if you live in areas where unemployment does not
go below 30% and you are a victim of racist discrimination even
on the labour market. On top of that the eastern regions (Presov
and Kosice) of Slovakia, where the rebellion broke out, are not
destinations of more than 1.8% of those foreign investments.
Moreover, foreign capital is generally interested not only in
cheap but also in skilled labour force – as suggests structure
of its investments (mostly automotive, electronics and steel
industries) – and Romas are largely unskilled workers.
And besides that paying out of new lower unemployment and
welfare benefits is now conditioned by working in publicly
beneficial work schemes (on the lines of workfare). Even if the
local authorities would have enough money to hire for these
workfare schemes an actually needed number of workers, they
would be still unable to provide such schemes for all the
unemployed.
Consider all these factors and you can easily arrive at a
hypothesis (suggested already by one of our comrades on our
webpage http://alarm.solidarita.org)
that as for the Roma proletarians an unspoken aim of government
reforms is stop the population growth of redundant workers. And
they know or feel all of these facts and seen together they make
a pretty explosive cocktail. At the beginning of February the
Slovakian Intelligence Service warned against a possible class
radicalization of Romas which could merge with a more general
dissatisfaction in the working class…
Movement of collective expropriations
The first signs of growing social unrest in eastern regions
of Slovakia started to appear since the 6th of February. People
from a village of Hran in Trebisov district refused to send
their kids to school to protest against lower welfare benefits.
On the 8th of February there was a rally of several hundreds
Romas in Pavlovce nad Uhom against new welfare laws. Four days
later there was a similar gathering of 300 people in Michalovce.
Romas openly threatened with expropriations.
Since the 11th to 14th of February a Billa supermarket in
Levoca was four times repeatedly attacked by a group of more
than 80 Romas who looted food. Most of them had only a few rolls
in their trolley-baskets, while under their coats they had
sausages, meat and various frozen products. Security guard in
Billa called in the city-police patrol, but looting Romas
threatened them with revenge and explained that they are forced
to loot as they do not have anything to eat.
On February 18 a joint protest of Roma and non-Roma
proletarians took place in Vranov nad Toplou, where people
demanded new jobs. According to official statistics there is
8000 unemployed people in their region and only 50 vacancies.
They also condemned anti-social reforms.
On the 20th of February morning shop assistants who were
coming for a shift found that their shop in Drahnov is looted.
Another expropriations took place in Cierna nad Tisou. From 40
to 50 Romas including children looted food accounting for 40-50
thousand Sk. Thirteen of them were arrested and accused. On the
other day about two hundred Romas unsuccessfully tried to loot a
COOP Jednota shop in Trhoviste (Michalovce district). Manager
locked the shop and called in the police. Looters requested to
be let in the shop in order to take food without paying. Police
orders were ignored so they called in reinforcements including a
special police unit from Kosice. After that Romas dispersed. But
in the evening they were back trying to break into the store.
Unfortunately 33 of them got arrested.
The 23rd of February saw a gathering of several hundred Romas
in the centre of Trebisov. The police declared their rally
un-permitted and pushed them out of the town centre. While on
retreat they managed to loot a store. Police units drove Romas
into their neighborhood and besieged it. In the evening 248
police officers tried to break the furious crowd using water
canon, teargas, stun-grenades and even warning shots. Romas
responded with throwing stones and bottles injuring two
policemen and damaging two police cars and chanting slogans “Fascists!”
and “We want to eat!”. After one hour the riot was over, but
the area stayed sealed from the rest of the world. On the other
day about 30 Romas – including kids – attacked a police bus
with stones. Several hundreds policemen again raided the village
and Romas dispersed in surrounding fields. 69 of them have been
accused of theft, rioting and attacking police officers. One of
Roma proletarians commented these events as follows: “We just
wanted to point out, that our children are hungry. The
government does not give us either money or food and on the top
of that they send the police against us.” Shortly after that a
government decision to send more than 600 soldiers to the
troubled area was publicly announced. “There will be a war, we
have got guns!” responded an angry Roma in Trebisov.
On the 25th of February several Roma women, children and one
man looted a shop in Caklov. The police arrested them using
violence and injuring a small kid. During these last days there
was a visible move of lootings from the East of Slovakia to the
central and southern parts. Nevertheless, these were only
isolated cases. What was important about them, was that in
Zemplin (on February 24) also some non-Roma working class people
joined the collective expropriations. The fact that news in
bourgeois media helped to spark the unrest on several places is
also very significant. The protest, looting and riot in Trebisov
actually aroused from this source. Romas living there learned
what is happening in other places and spontaneously joined the
movement. In several other cases Romas came to the supermarkets
and declared that they would take food without paying as they
saw it on TV.
Repression and recuperation
Besides the direct deployment of the police and army the
Slovakian government also tries to play with a racist card to
prevent a possible generalization of this class struggle
movement. Slovakian president Rudolf Schuster openly warned
against this possibility. So they do their best to persuade
major population that these are not social riots but “Roma
riots” (Minister of Interior Vladimir Palko). They also claim
that what is going on is not a real looting, i.e. collectively
organized and carried out expropriations, but “ordinary crime,
which is being committed every day” (the same person). On the
other hand the government line says that it is a looting, but
organized by usurers. It is however hard to determine what
benefit would those usurers have from attacks on the circulation
of exchange value.
But there is also other side of this coin and it is
recuperation of Roma proletarians’ struggle. The Minister of
Social Affairs, Mr. Kanik, declared that as for the Romas, the
government is ready to make some concessions in the reform of
social benefits. Meanwhile social workers are being sent to the
troubled regions to explain Romas that looting is a bad solution
with disastrous consequences. Roma people from Novacany nearby
Kosice had been homeless since January 22, when their wooden
shacks burnt down. Suddenly on February 24 they got new
provisional housing from the government. On February 25 a mayor
of Trhoviste village signed a deal with the Labour Office in
Michalovce providing workfare jobs for a local unemployed Roma
community, which has been involved in lootings. Definitely, this
list of examples of attempts at recuperation could be much
longer.
Critical role in repression and recuperation have also played
Roma middle classes and their political representation. First
the Roma Parliament of the Slovakian Republic called for a
national day of protests on February 25. It even planed
blockades of railways and border check-points. But as the class
struggle became more intense and uncontrollable, they backed
down and declared that their idea of protests was “misused”.
And thus they started to call for a canceling of the day of
protests. Nevertheless, unsuccessfully. On many places there
were demonstrations, but they remained largely peaceful, without
looting and riots. The Roma Council of Slovakia also proclaimed
that it is time to finish the protests, because “this is not
the right way”. Moreover they offered their help to the police
suppressing revolts in the East and proposed them joint patrols:
Romas + policemen.
What next?
Just now it seems that the situation has been calming down.
So far the heavy repression has intimidated revolting Romas from
further mass direct actions. This together with the fact that on
a conscious level the movement was very defensive might make its
recuperation easier. In this respect it is also necessary to
point out that the movement failed to spread into major cities.
For example Kosice, center of the eastern region, has got a
strong Roma community which remained largely passive for past
days.
On the other hand it is needed to stress that the movement
was in some cases able to overcome deeply rooted racism against
Romas. We have already mentioned two examples, but there were
more of them. Especially during the peaceful protests on
February 25 Roma proletarians demonstrated together with some
“white” workers, who declared their support to the
collective expropriations (eg. in Humenne): “they should have
done this long time ago” or “we are not surprised by their
actions, because it is really impossible to live like this”.
One thing seems to be obvious – capital and its government
are not able to solve this problem in the same way as they are
not able to solve their crisis. If they will succeed in
suppressing the movement this time it will be more like
postponement of a day of reckoning.
*This article is going to be published in magazin Wildcat (Germany)
*some photos you can find here: http://alarm.solidarita.org/index.php?id=374