On Thursday yet another group of Slovakian Roma seeking asylum in Finland arrived at Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport.

   

The group of 43, twenty-five of whom are children, came to Helsinki on a Czech Airlines scheduled flight from Prague. This is the largest contingent to arrive in a single day.

   

All the members of the group come from the same town in Eastern Slovakia, Trebisov, which became famous last month after hundreds of Roma clashed with the police as a result of an unauthorized demonstration to protest cuts in welfare payments to jobless families.

With help from an interpreter,

the group's spokesman, who preferred to remain anonymous, explained that the reasons why they left Slovakia were unemployment, discrimination, and assaults.

   

He also described how the Slovakian police had beaten even children during last month's riots. "We have a videotape of this", he revealed.

   

Amnesty International has also reported on beatings of men, women and children by the police in Trebisov on February 24.

Slovakia's minimal social security benefits

are the sole source of income for most of the country's 400,000 - 500,000 Roma. Eighty percent of the Slovakian Roma are unemployed. The country's unemployment rate as a whole is around 20 percent.

   

All the members of the groups affirm that they are in Finland for the first time. They paid EUR 225 per person for the journey to Finland.

   

The Finnish Frontier Guard processed the group's asylum requests family by family, and held the initial interviews at the airport.

   

Fingerprints for the Eurodac register were taken of all the members over 14 years of age. This will reveal, among other things, if an applicant has been to Finland before.

Inspector Jaakko Heinilä

of the Helsinki Police Department explained that the Slovakian Roma who previously arrived in Finland and were not granted asylum or a residence permit will be returned back to Slovakia on Czech Airlines scheduled flights.

   

This year, about 250 Slovakian asylum seekers have entered Finland already, more than in the entire 12 months of 2003. Most of them have come by air, but in February dozens of asylum-seekers also arrived by land, crossing the border from Sweden into Northern Finland.

   

Slovakia will join the European Union on May 1st.