A woman from Sweden claims to have lost her rental property after the contract was already signed and keys had been exchanged, following pressure from the other tenants to not let a member of the Roma people live in the building.
“The other tenants would move out if I moved in,” said Tuija Svart to Sveriges Television (SVT).
Svart and her teenage daughter had returned to Sweden after staying for a year in Finland, and had been looking for a flat near her other daughter.
She went to look at an advertised apartment and decided that she liked the flat.
According to SVT, she then signed a contract, got the keys and changed her address over the internet. But while in the moving van, the landlord rang her and said that she couldn’t move in after all.“He said that I had a different background,” Svart told SVT.
Svart told SVT that it was the first time she felt discriminated against in Sweden for being a member of the Roma people.
Her daughter Samira was also upset about what happened.
“Mainly I felt angry. And sad as well. It felt a bit like if my dreams were crushed,” she told SVT. (mehr…)
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The owner of a Swedish petrol station has been order to compensate a Roma woman after an employee told her to pay for petrol in advance, saying they had had „problems with the Roma in the past“.
”I am very happy over the verdict. Above all I am grateful that someone was on my side for the first time. As far as I am concerned it has never been about getting compensation but getting satisfaction,” the woman said in a statement.
The incident occurred in October 2009 when the woman arrived at the station in Örebro in eastern Sweden to fill up her car.
When she got out of her vehicle an employee of the station came running out telling her that she had to pay in advance as the station had previously ”had problems with the Roma”.
The case was initially brought up in Örebro district court, which ruled in favour of the petrol station.
However, the verdict was overturned by an appeals court, which ruled on Wednesday that by deviating from the normal procedure of payment after filling up the car with petrol, the station was guilty of discriminating the woman.
According to the Örebro Centre for Equal Rights (Örebro Rättighetscenter), discrimination is still widespread in places where goods and services are being traded, and the centre has received several reports of similar discrimination over the past few years.
”Hopefully this verdict might influence how petrol stations across the country are treating their customers. Any businessman who lets their prejudices govern their actions won‘t benefit in the long run. Instead they are risking losing both money and reputation,” said the woman’s lawyer Vida Paridad in a statement.
The court ruled that the petrol station pay the woman damages of 5,000 kronor ($730).
It is estimated that there are between 40,000 and 120,000 members of the Roma minority in Sweden today.
Quelle: The Local
Stand: 06.10.2011