Slovak court decides racially motivated crime by Slovaks against Roma impossible
15 July 1999
The Slovak daily Sme reported on May 12, 1999, that a court in the central Slovak town of Banská Bystrica had ruled that a skinhead who had assaulted a Romani man was not guilty of committing a racially motivated crime since Roma and the ethnically Slovak skinhead were from the same race. According to Sme, three persons, Mr Jan P., now 21 years old, and two unknown male perpetrators, accosted a Romani university student named Ivan Mako at a bus station near the centre of Banská Bystrica on June 11, 1996. They spat on him, called him a „dirty Gypsy", punched him in the face and threw cobblestones at him. Mr Mako reportedly began to defend himself at that point and slashed Jan P.'s shoulder with a knife he was carrying. Jan P. and the other two men then beat Mr Mako so badly that he had to be hospitalised the same day, and treated for a broken nose. In the hospital Mr Mako met Jan P., ascertained the name of the offender and was able to positively identify him. In connection with the case, Jan P. was sentenced on October 29, 1998, for the crime of damage to health under Article 221(1) of the Slovak Criminal Code by a district court in Banská Bystrica. Mr Mako's legal representative argued before the court that Jan P. be sentenced under Article 221(2) which qualifies a crime as racially motivated, but the court did not rule that the attack had been racially motivated. The court did accept the factual testimony of Mr Mako and his girlfriend - an eyewitness to the attack - and ruled that the only reason for the attack was the hatred felt by Jan P. and the other two men for Roma. However, the court ruled that such hatred was not „because of race", since - in the argument of the court - Roma belong to the same race as Slovaks. The court evidently applied a narrow biological definition of race. Between the date of the first crime and the day of the trial, Jan P. reportedly committed another criminal act - he allegedly beat a non-Romani person with a baseball bat, apparently because he had been paid to do so by a third party. Under Slovak law, in cases where the accused commits a second crime while awaiting trial, the court may punish the accused with a so-called summary punishment for both crimes together, or the judge can refrain from punishment in the second case if he considers the first punishment sufficient. In this case, the presiding judge decided to rule according to the second possibility. The prosecutor subsequently appealed the decision. However, he did not request that the court find Jan P. guilty of crimes under a different paragraph than those for which he was sentenced in the first instance. During appeal at the regional court, the legal representative of Mr Mako presented further materials challenging the ruling that Jan P. had not committed a racially motivated crime. The case was subsequently returned to the district court on January 27, 1999. During the new trial at the first instance court, Jan P. told the court that he did not know what the term „skinhead" meant. The legal representative of Mr Mako presented evidence to the contrary, including a Belgian neo-nazi magazine with Jan P.'s photograph and Slovak skinhead magazines with his contact address. On July 1, the district court of Banská Bystrica upheld the decision that the attack could not have been racially motivated. The court sentenced Jan P. to two years imprisonment suspended for three years for the crime of damage to health.
(ERRC, Sme)
