Browsing all posts by Claude Cahn
An Ordinary Pogrom
by Claude Cahn · 11/01/06
Roma are often subjected to a special kind of justice-the justice of the mob. On an early autumn night in 1995, one such mob descended on the Romani quarter in the remote village of Velyka Dobron in Transcarpathian Ukraine.
On the night of 10 September 1995, fires destroyed three houses in the Romani settlement in Velyka Dobron, a Hungarian village in the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine. As the houses were set ablaze, the 400 to 500 Romani men, women, and children who live in the settlement ran to the surrounding woods. The next evening, the crowds returned and destroyed another nine houses, looting and plundering as they went. According to eyewitnesses, local police as well as police from the regional capital were present on both nights, but they failed to stop the mayhem.
The Roma of Velyka Dobron stayed in the woods for two or three months, afraid to come out, living off berries and roots and the occasional meal brought to them by sympathetic villagers, who themselves risked ostracism for their charity. During that time, three young Romani men turned themselves in for the crime that had set the Hungarian villagers against their community: the killing of a Hungarian man, Alexander Dokus, in a brawl. From the news of his death to the news of the perpetrators’ conviction, the local papers reported the event as another Gypsy crime story. The retribution against the Romani community that occurred in between, if mentioned at all, was muted and downplayed. Our organization, the European Roma Rights Center, heard the story the following May from Aladar Adam, chairman of the organization Romani Yag in Uzhorod, the Transcarpathian regional capital. We decided to make a visit to Velyka Dobron and piece the story together.
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