[WSMDiscuss] Attacked, Abondoned and Forgotten Roma

[Umakant]

DearFriends

Greetings!Please click on the links given below to read and also watch video about theprecarious condition of Roma people in Europe. 

 

Dopass it on to others in your circle/network. 

 

Moreinformation and news about Roma people could be seen at European Roma RightsCentre’s website: www.errc.org . 

 

Attackedand abandoned: Ukraine's forgotten Roma

by Glenn Ellis& Viktoryia Kolchyna, Al JazeeraEnglish, November 22, 2018 

https://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/europe/2018/11/attacked-abandoned-ukraine-forgotten-roma-181121121230852.html

 

In a country which suffered terribly at the handsof the Nazis during World War II, pogroms against an ethnic minority havesomehow become commonplace.

 

Thewar in eastern Ukraine against Russian-backed separatists has dragged on foralmost five years, taking the lives of more than ten thousand people andresulting in a million internally displaced refugees. It has also led to adeeply nationalistic and polarised country, where now another human tragedy isunfolding; a surge in hate crimes against one of the country's oldest ethnicminorities - the Roma. 

 

EasternEurope's Roma communities have frequently been the victims of discriminationand prejudice and so xenophobic assaults are nothing new. But recent events inUkraine are on a different scale to anything seen for years; stabbings,shootings, communities raided, homes burnt to the ground, even a young Romawoman having her throat cut - all bearing witness to an epidemic of racialassaults that evoke memories of the dark days of World War 2. 

 

Theattacks have been carried out by, or with the enthusiastic encouragement andendorsement of, far-right and neo-Nazi paramilitary groups which haveproliferated in Ukraine since the war, but they also reflect a deeper malaisein a country where negative stereotypical views of the Roma are distressinglywidespread and reinforced by both traditional and social media. 

 

Inthis disturbing film for People & Power, Glenn Ellis and Viktoryia Kolchynahave been to investigate why the Roma, already among some of the poorest andmost marginalised members of Ukrainian society, have become the targets of suchvirulent hatred. 

 

Youcould also watch the video on You Tube 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csBi-gYvdkY

 

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Sweden: Homeless Roma and other EU migrants facewidespread discrimination and dangerous conditions 

AmnestyInternational, 23 November 2018

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/11/homeless-roma-and-other-eu-migrants-face-widespread-discrimination-and-dangerous-conditions-in-sweden/

 

Thousands of homeless and destitute EU migrants, mostly of Romaorigin, are living in desperate and dangerous situations across Sweden whilethe country’s authorities deliberately deny them access to the most basicservices, a new report from Amnesty International has found. 

 

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Ten years after the Roma killingsin Hungary: there’s nothing ‘so-called’ about antigypsyism 

ByBernard Rorke, errc.org, Nov. 16, 2018 

http://www.errc.org/news/ten-years-after-the-roma-killings-in-hungary-theres-nothing-so-called-about-antigypsyism

 

Perhaps it is a measure of theheightened recognition of anti-Roma racism when a judgment in the EuropeanCourt of Human Rights makes a reference to ‘so-called antigypsyism’. In November2018, we remember the Roma victims of neo-Nazi terror in Hungary, murdered andmaimed in a killing spree that spread fear and trauma among communities. Tenyears on, when the Czech President can refer to Roma as work-shy‘inadaptables’; when the Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister is a far-right racistwho previously likened Roma to ‘feral, human-like creatures’; and localauthorities collude with fascist paramilitaries waging anti-Roma pogroms inUkraine, we suggest there is nothing ‘so-called’ about antigypsyism. 

 

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WithRegards and In Solidarity 

Umakant,Ph. D 

NewDelhi 

 












My final words of advice to you are educate, agitate and organize; have faith in yourself. With justice on our side I do not see how we can lose our battle. The battle to me is a matter of joy. The battle is in the fullest sense spiritual. There is nothing material or social in it. For ours is a battle not for wealth or for power. It is battle for freedom. It is the battle of reclamation of human personality. 
B.R.Ambedkar
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