Rokytovce and Krasny Brod in 1990 they had neither resided in the village nor claimed their permanent residence there. On 16 July 1997 the Municipality of Nagov adopted resolution No. 22 which also forbade Roma citizens to enter the village or to settle in shelters in the village district. The resolution explicitly provided that its effect was of permanent duration. 2.4 On 21 July 1997 the dwellings built and occupied by the Romany families in the municipality of Cabiny were set on fire. To date no perpetrator has been identified and there is no record of what, if any, steps the prosecution authorities have taken to investigate the facts. 2.5 The Kosice Legal Defence Foundation sent a letter to the General Prosecutor's Office in Bratislava requesting an investigation into the legality of Resolution No. 21 of the Municipal Council of Rokytovce and resolution No. 22 of the Municipal Council of Nagov. The letter asserted that the Resolutions were acts of "public discrimination" against Roma which infringed their rights to freedom of movement and residence and to protection against discrimination. On 19 September 1997 the General Prosecutor's Office informed the Foundation that the investigation had been assigned to the County Prosecutor in Humenné. 2.6 On 24 November 1997 the Kosice Legal Defence Foundation submitted an application to the Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic requesting annulment of both resolutions. The submission stated that these resolutions violated the human rights and fundamental freedoms not only of Romany citizens with permanent residence in the respective towns but of all Romany citizens, as well as of the Foundation itself, which could not carry out its work on behalf of Roma in the affected towns. It also stated that nine Romany families with permanent residence in the two villages in question had been forced to leave and that the resolutions constituted a general ban against Romany citizens, pursuant to which no citizen of Romany origin was allowed to enter these villages. It requested the annulment of both resolutions on the grounds that they violated the rights of non-discrimination and freedom of movement and residence, as well as the particular rights of ethnic minorities protected by the Slovak Constitution. 2.7 In its decision of 18 December 1997 the Constitutional Court dismissed the submission on the ground that, as a legal person, the Kosice Legal Defence Foundation could not suffer an infringement of the constitutional rights set forth in its application, since those rights were designed to protect only natural persons. On 29 December 1997 the District Prosecutor's Office in Humenné notified the Foundation that, in view of the Constitutional Court's ruling, it had suspended its investigation concerning the challenged resolutions.

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