Mława riot
The Mława riot, or Mława incident,[1] also described by Western commentators as the Mława pogrom,[2] was a series of violent devastations and looting incidents on 26–27 June 1991 when a group of youth estimated at 200 individuals including young females invaded the homes of Roma residents of the Polish town of Mława causing them to flee.[1] Not a single Roma person was injured in the riot,[1] but the material losses were substantial affecting up to 40% of residences.[1] Many perpetrators were arrested on-site; a number of them sentenced to jail after a trial.[1] The violence, described by foreign media as motivated by racism and jealousy, received editorial condemnation.[3][4] The real cause, however, was the killing of a Polish pedestrian struck along with his companion in a hit-and-run by a Romani male driver.[1]
Contents
Background
The immediate cause of the riot was a hit-and-run accident just before midnight on 23 June 1991 on the pedestrian crossing at Piłsudskiego and Zuzanny Morawskiej streets.[1] A speeding luxury car driven by seventeen-year-old Roman Packowski of Romani ethnicity hit and seriously injured two young pedestrians, killing one of them.[1] The driver fled the scene and hid from the police.[1] He was later convinced by the Roma elders to turn himself in.[1] Soon after the accident the local radio station informed that the driver had fled the scene. This claim was in fact true;[5] however, the driver fled after people who witnessed the accident already identified his vehicle.[6] For the next two days the driver and his car were hidden among the local Roma community.[1][5]
The accident victim who died from his injuries was the 21-year-old Jaroslaw Pinczewski. The mayor of Mława, Adam Chmielinski informed that he died at the scene.[1] Other victim, seventeen-year old Katarzyna Zakrzewska, suffered permanent physical incapacitation.[7]
Events
Two days later some sixty Mława youths targeted and destroyed the house of a local Roma leader. The assailants quickly grew in number and began burning other Roma homes. Estimates put the number of participants in the violence from one hundred to two hundred.[8] Some Roma found protection at the local police station. Others hid at the homes of their Polish friends.[1] A total of 17 Roma houses were seriously damaged and further 4 houses and 9 apartments were vandalized, but no members of the Roma community were hurt. The crowd apparently targeted wealthier Roma and their estates. The police brought in additional forces and imposed a curfew.[9]
A former political dissident Adam Michnik writing in Gazeta Wyborcza castigated the police and political authorities for their alleged inaction. The paper also demanded 'official action against ethnic hatred'. As a result, a number of political parties and academic institutions belatedly condemned the pogrom.[10]
The eruption of ethnic violence at Mława in 1991 has been described as 'the renewal of anti-Gypsy racism in Poland' by hostile foreign critics; presumably linked to a significant rise in Polish Roma asylum applications in the United Kingdom[11] and Sweden.[12]
Afterwards, 21 persons were brought to court, and 17 were sentenced for up to 30 months in prison. The President of the Roma Society of Poland, Roman Kwiatkowski informed that the relations between the local Roma and their Polish neighbours twenty years after the fact are good.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Anna Giza-Poleszczuk i Jan Poleszczuk, "Cyganie i Polacy w Mławie konflikt etniczny czy społeczny?" prepared for CBOS, Warszawa, December 1992, pages 24 to 29
- ↑ Beata Klimkiewicz (7 December 1999), The pogrom in Mława, Poland: no media influence on justice. ERRC.org
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Cahn (2002) p.120
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
