BRATISLAVA, August 25, (WEBNOVINY) — The Public Defender of Rights Pavel Kandrac will examine the construction of a concrete wall in Michalovce. „On the basis of information from the media on the construction of a concrete wall in Michalovce, the Office of the Public Defender of Rights asked the mayor of Michalovce for a written statement and photocopies of relevant documentation relating to the construction of a concrete wall in the [Rome] settlement Angy mlyn, specifically, how the obligations ensuing from to building law were observed,“ the head of the Ombudsman’s Office, Henrieta Antalova, told SITA news agency on Wednesday. The Office also requested a statement on the publicized objections of the inhabitants from the Roma settlement who claim that due to the construction of the concrete wall their access to civic amenities has been restricted and they are being discriminated for their ethic origin.
Another concrete wall which prevents the people from the settlement to shorten their way to the city across a lawn between the residential buildings was added in the Vychod neighborhood in Michalovce. In the middle of June, the wall was built by a community of home owners from Leningradska Street. The wall is two meters high and about 25 meters long. The tenants claim they want to avoid the mess in the surrounding of their houses produced by the people from the settlement. This wall follows the walls which were built along the neighborhood by the local government and will create approximately a half kilometer long fence to prevent settlers from getting to the city through the area of the apartment buildings. Roma people criticize the construction of walls, though many of them admit that some of the settlers create the mess around the apartment buildings. Around 1,800 Roma people live in the Angy mlyn settlement on Mlynska Street.
The land, on which the wall was built, was rented to a community of home owners for the purposes of landscape gardening and construction of aesthetic fencing, spokeswoman for the Michalovce Municipal Authority Iveta Paleckova stated. Michalovce city built the controversial walls at the end of last year. The almost three meters high concrete walls stretch from Kyjevska Street to Leningradska Street. The city argued that the walls were built for sport purposes.
SITA