"A Wall Runs Through It"

The village of Ostrovany, located about 50 km from Kosice, shows the difficulties experienced by the minority and majority population living together in the one community. A wall was erected in 2009 to divide private properties from the neighbouring Roma settlement. The village of Ostrovany received international media attention and several media outlets compared the appearance of Ostrovany’s 150-metre long and 2.10 m high wall with other walls such as the Berlin Wall or Israel’s separation wall.

The municipality has several social workers which try to help Roma residents with different aspects of their lives.

Mayor Cyril Revak who decided, as representative of the town hall, to build the wall - which he calls a fence - explains:

“The villagers had different kinds of fences around their gardens and anyway fruit and vegetables were stolen and the gardens destroyed. I advised the citizens to ask for official permission to build a concrete fence on their own property and when they got the permit, we financed it. It was not a decision made from one day to the next, it took about 5 to 6 years and then we got to a stage where we did not see any other solution. The fence is just there to protect private properties - nothing more and nothing less - and it does not prevent anybody from the settlement from using the pathways (roads) to the village as they did before. I am asking those who talk of separation or segregation – in what way did we separate or segregate the Roma?”

Mrs. V. - owner of one of the gardens (does not wish to be named) explains:

“Since the fence was built we have not had any Roma in our garden. We are harvesting again for ourselves, finally have our privacy back and the fence has 100% fulfilled what it was built for.” In reaction to the huge and negative international media response to the issue she says: “That is a matter of opinion, everybody has a different point of view. We are living with them (the Roma) here and we know best how to solve that problem. About discrimination - “We were discriminated against by not being able to use our gardens on our own property anymore. I would suggest to everybody who has a “heavy heart” - because we built the fence - to come here for at least a week and find out about how they live and how life is here together.”