A permanent Roma settlement in Rudne, near Lviv, was burned down on May 9, leaving a number of families homeless. It was the second attack on a Ukrainian Roma camp in less than a month, although this time nobody has publicly admitted to carrying it out… While Ukraine’s Human Rights Ombudsperson clearly views this as a hate crime, and witnesses speak of a crowd of around 30 young masked thugs, the police have thus far only initiated an investigation into suspected ‘hooliganism’.
Hromadske Radio spoke with Mykhailo Kenyo from the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, who explained that the Roma at Rudne lived at the camp throughout the year. There had been a previous attack last autumn when members of the camp were beaten up and the camp itself set alight. Nobody was arrested for the violence.
