Roma minority member of parliament Veljko Kajtazi said on Friday that the Roma community was unpleasantly surprised by a protest to be staged in the northern town of Cakovec on Saturday under the slogan "I want a normal life" and the invitation to the event, which reads that "there are honest people even among the Roma."

Kajtazi said that he was surprised by the fact that the organisers of the protest had singled out the Roma that way, noting that this had disturbed the Roma community.

The Roma community in Cakovec is angered by the fact that the town authorities had refused their request to stage a peaceful rally on the following day to respond to generalisation, criticism and discrimination.

“With the counter-protest which we were not allowed to hold, we wanted to warn about the disastrous living conditions in some 60 segregated Roma settlements across the country and point to the responsibility of representatives of local government units who are not doing enough to ensure positive changes but are instead supporting the announced political rally for their own political ends,” Kajtazi warned, adding that “two persons who represent the main organisers of the protest promote far-right political views, primarily on social networks, and discriminate against and alarm the Roma community.”

Kajtazi called on residents of the region of Medjimurje and Cakovec not to attend the Saturday protest, but to convey their concerns to representatives of local government units who, he said, had not been doing enough to help members of the Roma community get education and employment.

Kajtazi said that he was not saying that some members of the Roma community were not problematic but warned that the local community was not doing enough to solve the problem and that there was no adequate cooperation with the Roma community.

“Every time the Roma were discussed without the presence of Roma representatives and were singled out, it did not end well. We do not want to become a newspaper example of attacks on minorities that we have been witnessing across Europe or attract such negative publicity for our country, we will definitely not allow that,” Kajtazi said, adding that as of today, the Roma community would use more often and more loudly its right to public assembly and organise rallies in all bigger towns.

“Far-right extremists and people who spread hate and do not understand the complexity of the problem are not the ones to solve the problem, they will only cause additional divisions in Medjimurje,” Kajtazi said, stressing that Roma were also Croats.

He called on the ministries of the interior and justice to start dealing more seriously with problematic individuals who discriminate both against the Roma and the majority ethnic group.

HRAST party leader Ladislav Ilcic earlier in the day called on citizens to attend the rally “I want a normal life”, to be held in Cakovec on Saturday, dismissing claims that the event is “a call for the lynching of the Roma community.”

“This is not about Croats and Roma, this is about honest and dishonest people, those who abide by the law and those who don’t,” Ilcic said, adding that all people were equal before the law and that not prosecuting criminals, including Roma, could not be tolerated.