The position of Roma in Serbia has improved thanks to the Decade of Roma Inclusion, it was said at the opening of a three-day congress in Belgrade.
„The position of the Roma people in Serbia has significantly improved during the Decade of Roma Inclusion, but I am confident that many members of the Roma population have reasons to be dissatisfied,“ said Slavica Denić, the state secretary in the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights, Public Administration and Local Self-Government.
The members of the Roma population can be dissatisfied bearing in mind that there are still unhygienic settlements in Serbia, that few children go to kindergartens and that quite few Roma people are employed, Denić stated.
However, Serbia can be proud of the improvement in the field of education. Since 2003 the country got more than 1,000 Roma graduates, she underlined.
Denić qualified the congress as important, since it brought together representatives of 25 countries with the aim to exchange experience and find solutions jointly.
President of the World Roma Organization Jovan Damjanović said that the Decade of Roma Inclusion „has yielded results“ in Serbia.
„We have to get to grips with problems and bring about an intellectual Roma revolution,“ Damjanović said.
He underlined that there are 12 to 15 million Roma people in Europe, but that they do not have any status.
Organizers announced that the congress will be dedicated to the legal status of the organization and the economic empowerment of the Roma people, and added that a declaration of the first congress of the World Roma Organization is expected to be adopted.
Source: B92
Date: 20.04.2012
Another 100 hundred days and the French presidential campaign will come to a head. Never far away from the political disputes among the top contenders is immigration. And the Roma, along with irregular migrants, are once again centre stage.
On Tuesday (10 January), France’s interior minister Claude Gueant boasted to reporters France had surpassed its deportation quota for 2010 by 4,000.
Around 32,000 people were forced to leave last year. Among them were a couple thousand Roma, rounded up and shipped primarily to Romania and Bulgaria.
The Roma round-up drew fire from the United Nations and EU justice and fundamental rights commissioner Viviane Reding – „Discrimination on the basis of ethnic origin or race has no place in Europe,“ she said at the time.
France, however, is quietly continuing its deportation policy of the disenfranchised EU citizens.
President Sarkozy’s hard-line against one of Europe’s most maltreated minorities appeals to the sensibilities of the country’s far right voters.
Socialist contender Francois Hollande’s poll lead in the presidential elections has dropped from around 35 percent in December to 27 percent, just four points ahead of Sarkozy. Always a menace, Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate is at a steady 17 percent.
Along with Gueant, Sarkozy decided last year to ban begging throughout the more affluent Parisian neighbourhoods. The ban was supposed to end this January. It has since been extended to the summer, reports The Guardian newspaper.
Paris‘ socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, called the ban a PR stunt designed to stigmatise a part of the population.
Sarkozy has also promised to stamp out illegal Roma camps and deport them. He also drew a direct correlation between crime and immigration.
Most of France’s 15,000 Roma eek out desperate lives in the Paris and Marseille outskirts. At the Paris North Station, Romanian police officers stroll the tarmacs alongside their French counter-parts. In Marseille, some entire Roma families live on the streets. Elsewhere, Roma camps are being bulldozed with no alternative shelter given.
Many are turned away from homeless shelters and denied access to basic medical attention, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres.
„The situation of the Roma in Marseille is desperate,“ Jean Francois Corty, the director of the NGO’s French mission told this website, adding that the French government is prioritising security over public health.
France, along with all other EU states, has agreed to set up an EU framework designed to facilitate Roma access to education, employment, health care, housing and basic related services.
„There is a real violence against the Roma in France,“ continued Corty.
„The political class do not consider the impact of their actions on the public health. The access to public health care is severely restricted not only to the Roma but also to immigrants without papers. It has made their lives unbearable.“
Quelle: EU Observer
Stand: 13.01.2012
Es gab bereits mehrfach Berichte darüber, dass in Osteuropa zur Abgrenzung von Roma-Vierteln oder –Quartieren von der Mehrheitsbevölkerung Zäune oder Mauern errichtet wurden. Doch auch die deutsche Provinz hat eine solche Manifestation der antiziganistischen Ausgrenzung zu bieten.
Eine Zeitung in Nordbayern berichtete am 8. Dezember 2011 unter der Überschrift „Drahtzaun hält Müllsammler auf Abstand“ über die Errichtung eines Drahtzauns im Wert von 10.000 Euro durch die Lokalpolitik in Neunkirchen am Sand (Nordbayern) an der Zufahrt zu einer Deponie, die Gebrauchtwaren-Händler, die der Roma-Minderheit angehören, abhalten soll.
Immerhin regt sich lokal auch Protest, „Amnesty International“ sprach von einer „inhumanen Vertreibung“ der Altstoff-Sammler.
Derweil jubelt die bayrische Neonazi-Szene über die Maßnahme. Beim neonazistischen „Freien Netz Süd“ kann man in dem Beitrag „10.000 Euro für Zigeunerzaun, 16.12.11 (Nürnberger Land)“ lesen :
Da das fahrende Volk zu den Bettelzügen selbst mit Autos aus Osteuropa anreiste, ist hier von einem florierenden Geschäft auszugehen. Die Neunkirchener Bürger, die ohne Bedrängnis nun weitgehendst wieder in der gewohnten Ruhe ihren Unrat entsorgen können, sind mit der Drahtzaun-Lösung sehr zufrieden. Die Zahl der dort auf der Lauer liegenden Sinti und Romas habe sich seit der Zaunaufstellung deutlich reduziert, vermeldete ein Mitarbeiter des Werkstoffhofes.
Czech Government Human Rights Commissioner Monika Šimůnková is asking that a reader for second-graders as well as other teaching aids be withdrawn from an ongoing „Rainbow School“ project because they include anti-Romani texts. Šimůnková has called on the Czech Education Ministry to take action on the issue.
The Czech Government Inter-ministerial Commission for Romani Community Affairs met today to discuss the materials. Šimůnková informed the Czech Press Agency of her decision when the meeting was over.
The second-grade reader includes a story called „Mýdlová Madla“ („The Soapy Rail“) by Ivona Březinová. „Mama told me I shouldn‘t talk to those Demeterovic boys at all … she said they‘re Gypsies. Gypsies are dirty and steal,“ second-graders read in the textbook, which was published in 2005.
„Seven-year-olds have been reading this for the last six years. That is truly alarming,“ Šimůnková said. In her view, other teaching aids in the Rainbow School project for multicultural education also include „anti-Romani texts that rise to the level of racism“. The project is running in elementary schools in the Moravian-Silesian Region.
The Museum of Roma Culture drew attention to the content of the project. According to museum experts, the material depicts Romani people almost parodically, simplifies the view of Romanipen, promotes stereotypes, and is an insult to members of the minority. The material attributes behavior such as fraud, prostitution and theft to Romani people, the Human Rights Commissioner said. In her view, the teaching aids are instead supposed to serve the purpose of educating people to live in an open society.
The Czech Government Inter-ministerial Commission on Romani Community Affairs is disturbed by the instruction materials and is demanding an explanation, calling on the Czech Education Ministry to follow the content of such teaching aids and devote attention to the issue. Šimůnková believes Czech Education Minister Josef Dobeš (Public Affairs – VV) will have the ministry review the reader and the results of the project and will remove it from instruction. She said representatives of the ministry promised her to do their utmost to address the issue.
Several activists and Romani parents drew attention to the reader three years ago. In their view, it incites racism and supports prejudice. Representatives of the ministry said at the time that the stereotypes were in the text so children could learn to overcome them.
On the other hand, one year ago Romani organizations distanced themselves from a complaint filed by the Roma Realia association over the use of a story about Mikeš the Tomcat in schools. A passage in which the cat is attacked ends with the sentence: „Dear children, those people were Gypsies.“
The Czech Government Inter-ministerial Commission for Romani Community Affairs also discussed the situation in Šluknov district today and called on the cabinet to proceed systematically and to consider creating a coordinating commission on events in the region including members of the legislature, ministries, municipalities, police and regional authorities. The team would harmonize various measures in order to improve the status quo in the area. The Inter-ministerial Commission also asked the Czech Labor Ministry to submit data on the impacts of cuts to welfare on ghetto residents. The Czech Education Ministry was also asked to inform the Inter-ministerial Commission as to how many children with light, medium and severe mental disability are attending „special“ schools in the country.
Quelle: Romea.cz
Stand: 07.2011
Als „eindeutig diskriminierend“ hat der integrationspolitische Sprecher der SPD-Landtagsfraktion Gerhard Merz die Berichterstattung des Wetzlar Kuriers über in Berlin lebende Roma bezeichnet. „Nicht genug damit, dass das Anzeigenblatt, deren Chefredakteur ja der hessische CDU-Abgeordnete Hans Jürgen Irmer ist, ein sehr einseitiges und negatives Bild der in Berlin lebenden Roma zeichnet. Die Wortwahl des Artikels ist darüber hinaus auch unerträglich“, sagte Merz am Mittwoch in Wiesbaden. Der sich nicht zu erkennen gebende Verfasser spricht darin etwa davon, dass dem Berliner Senat der Wille dazu fehle, das „Zigeunerproblem“ zu lösen.
„Verantwortlich im Sinne des Pressegesetzes ist für diesen Artikel ist der Chefredakteur des Blattes, Hans Jürgen Irmer. Er verlässt mit dieser Formulierung eindeutig den Pfad des demokratisch Legitimen und lehnt sich an einen Sprachstil an, der an die braune Geschichte Deutschlands erinnert“, so Merz. „Irmer macht damit einmal mehr keinen Hehl daraus, wes Geistes Kind er ist“, sagte der Gießener SPD-Abgeordnete. Er forderte die CDU-Fraktion auf, sich umgehend von derlei Hetzgeschmiere zu distanzieren. „So etwas darf eine sich der demokratischen Grundordnung verschriebene Partei nicht akzeptieren.“
Hans Jürgen Irmer war bereits in der Vergangenheit mehrfach durch anti-islamische und fremdenfeindliche Ausfälle aufgefallen.
Quelle: SPD Landtagsfraktion Hessen
Stand: 10.08.2011