SLOVENIA:Slovenian interior minister Dragutin Mate has refused to resign after a mob forced dozens of Gypsies from their homes and fought with police to stop them returning.
A group of 50 Slovenian academics and intellectuals yesterday urged prime minister Janez Jansa to sack Mr Mate in a letter deploring his handling of the Strojan family, several dozen members of which were driven from their homes in the village of Ambrus last month.
Some 200 people, blaming the family for a spate of crime, descended on their houses and threatened to forcibly evict them before police intervened and escorted them from Ambrus to an abandoned army barracks.
The Strojans tried to return to Ambrus last weekend, but about 1,000 local people blocked the road into the village and clashed with riot police, forcing the Roma to go back to the barracks.
The police chief for the capital, Ljubljana, was sacked over the events, which deeply embarrassed Mr Jansa and Mr Mate, who weathered strong criticism from the Council of Europe human rights watchdog over their failure to resolve the issue.
Mr Jansa, in whose parliamentary constituency Ambrus lies, has angered rights groups by placing partial blame for the conflict on the Strojan family, who have lived for decades in the village without, he says, getting proper permission to build houses there.
Media in Slovenia say the Strojans have accepted that they will not be able to return to Ambrus.
A plan to resettle them in Ljubljana was also scuppered when hundreds of people protested against the move. Slovenia has witnessed few such violent cases of anti-Roma feeling.
