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Monday, February 11, 2013

The Roma's Flight

Persecution of Roma is well documented. They were targeted by the Nazis for extermination. Up to 500,000 Roma are believed to have been murdered during the Holocaust. All across Central and Eastern Europe today, discrimination against Gypsy communities is virulent and rising. The global economic crash hit the region hard and the Roma are an easy target. Far-right groups are resurgent in Hungary, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, with attacks on Roma villagers now commonplace. Last summer an off-duty policeman in Slovakia went on the rampage, killing three people from a Gypsy community. A small far-right group in Romania proposed paying €300 (£254) to any Roma woman who came forward to be sterilised and the idea of forced sterilisations was lent a veneer of mainstream acceptability when the head of the National Liberal Party's youth wing, Rares Buglea, voiced his support for the idea.  From the 1970s until 1990 there was a programme of enforced sterilisation of Roma women by doctors in Czechoslovakia. In Baia Mare, a mining town in Romania's impoverished north, the mayor has been building walls around Roma areas reminescent of the Jewish ghettos. In 2009 in Ostrovany, Slovakia, a two-metre wall was erected with public money to cordon off the Roma from the rest of the town. Similar measures were adopted in Michalovce, Lomnika, Trebišov and Prešov.

 "Roma face hardship, exclusion and discrimination in almost all fields of public life."
explains Marian Mandache, head of Romani Criss, a Bucharest-based group that campaigns for Roma rights. "There isn't really much need for extreme-right groups because you find racism and stereotyping in all the mainstream parties," Over the past 10 years, Romani Criss has documented 50 instances in which Roma people have been killed or attacked in police-related incidents. But despite the filing of multiple criminal complaints, no police officer has yet been convicted of killing a Roma. In the past eight months alone, there have been three instances where Roma have been shot and killed by police.

In Romania's sprawling capital, Bucharest, Roma tend to be concentrated in the worst suburbs, such as Ferentari and Plumbuita, where sewerage and electricity are virtually non-existent. Most families tap illegally into the local energy supply, while in Plumbuita, two miles from Bucharest's commercial centre, asphalt highways give way to muddy tracks fringed by shacks with corrugated-iron roofs. Local police accuse Roma groups of being behind much of the crime in Bucharest, a city that still has a significantly lower criminality rate than most Western European capitals. Activists say that while some Roma are pushed towards opportunistic crimes because of the poverty they live in, the majority try to get on with their lives.

An estimated 7 million to 8.5 million Roma live in Europe, with 90,000 to 120,000 estimated to be in the UK, a fraction of the one million Gypsies who live in France and Germany. Next year, the quotas which let EU countries limit the number of Bulgarian and Romanian migrants crossing their borders will be lifted.  Britain wants to deter them from crossing the Channel and are financing an anti-migrant ad campaign in those countries. Suspicions have been raised what the UK Government really fears – but dares not say publicly – is the mass migration of Roma. Those who fight for Roma rights make the argument that those who head to the West are as much political refugees as they are economic ones.


Adapted from here

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