Roma Virtual Network - On-line Bulletin - 4 November 2009
Roma Virtual Network
ROMA VIRTUAL NETWORK
On-Line Bulletin 04/11/2009
Hope for the Roma
Brussels, 02/11/2009 - Hated, alienated, and shunned as thieves and worse, the Roma have for too long been easy and defenseless targets for disgruntled racists in Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and other European countries.
The Roma, as a people, reaped next to nothing from the prosperity that the former East Bloc countries have enjoyed since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Nevertheless, even before the current economic downturn, right-wing political leaders in Eastern Europe resorted to Roma-bashing in order to win support on the cheap. The message of hate continues to appeal to many people, including a few who are ready to resort to violence.
In the past 14 months, nine Roma have been murdered during a killing spree in Hungary. In August, gunmen invaded the home of an impoverished Roma widow, Maria Balogh, shot her to death, and wounded her 13-year-old daughter. In April, killers gunned down a Roma factory worker as he was walking to his job. In February, a Roma father and his five-year-old son were killed in front of their home near Budapest. The house was burned to the ground.
Read more on http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/wolfensohn6
Commissioner Hammarberg visits Bulgaria to discuss the rights of children and minorities
Strasbourg, 30/10/2009 - The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Thomas Hammarberg, will visit Bulgaria from 3 to 5 November for high-level talks on protection of children's rights and on the respect of minority rights, the press office of the Council of Europe announced.
The programme of the visit includes meetings with the Ministers of Interior, Foreign Affairs, Labour and Social Policy, and with the Acting Minister of Education, Youth and Science. The Commissioner will also meet with the Ombudsman, the Chairman of the Commission for Protection against Discrimination, the Head of the State Agency for Child Protection, as well as members of the Bulgarian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
Further meetings are scheduled with non-governmental organisations and experts in the field of children’s and minorities’ rights, as well as representatives of the Roma community. The Commissioner will also visit a children’s institution and a Roma settlement in Sofia.
On Tuesday, Commissioner Hammarberg will take part in the roundtable “Right to education of children with mental disabilities” organised in Sofia by the Mental Disability Advocacy Center and the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee.
Source: FOCUS News Agency
UK: Travellers’ genocide protest upsets Basildon council head
The exhibition is intended to show that painful similarities exist between the treatment of Gypsies in the early Nazi years and their fate in present-day Britain. Long social exclusion through public hostility and prejudice has led to institutionalized racism within local authorities, among them Basildon.
However, the paper says council leader Tony Ball considers comparisons made between the treatment of Gypsies by the Nazi regime in Germany and his current eviction plan are "outrageous". It is to be expected that he will turn down the request, though no official response has yet been made.
Read more on http://www.aworldtowin.net/frontline/TravellersGenocide.html
When the Hungarian Jobbik Party's chairman launched the Alliance of European Nationalist Movements in Budapest last month, he read from a manifesto drafted by BNP leader Nick Griffin. The BNP deputy led an alliance -building mission to Italy in April, where he was welcomed with the fascist solute.
In its reformed guise, the BNP currently gives little away about its anti-Gypsy policies and the blood-letting of its allies. Yet its leaflets in the 2005 UK elections promised the party would get rid of unauthorized Gypsy camps, and so its representatives have helped to do in the London borough of Epping Forest.
Meanwhile, Jobbik's para-military wing the Hungarian Guard is blamed for the murder of seven Roma. In Italy Griffin's friends want to expel 150,000 Roma from the country, and have been using petrol-bombs to achieve this aim.
Read more on http://euyouthspeak.org/roma/?p=11933
Under current legislation, all asylum seekers who have received a negative decision can live in the centres until they are deported. Non-EU citizens who are refused asylum can be deported one week following the decision. However, EU citizens can live in the centres for one month. Asylum seekers receive income support while they live at the centres. Officials say they fear that some people are applying for asylum in Finland simply for the benefits.
“Available space at reception centres is going to people whose applications have no chance of being accepted,” says Sanna Sutter of the Ministry of Interior.
Sutter says that officials have not yet decided what to do about the issue. However, they are under political pressure to resolve the matter. It is not yet sure where those people living at the centres would end up. Overcrowding at refugee reception centres has become a big problem in Finland. Many of the asylum seekers are Roma people from Romania and Bulgaria.
Source: YLE, Turun Sanomat
Slovakia: Study claims Roma children are incorrectly diagnosed as mentally challenged
02/11/2009 - According to a study called “Losses from Exclusion of Roma” carried out by Anton and Ľubica Marcinčin, Roma children are often incorrectly placed in special schools or exclusively-Roma schools and classes near large Roma communities, the TASR newswire wrote.
According to the study, Roma children may thus lose their chance to participate successfully in the labour market when they become adults. Estimates show that the relative proportion of Roma schoolchildren will increase from 12 percent in 2000 to 16 percent in 2030, TASR quoted from the study.
The authors claim that not as many Roma children are mentally challenged as generally believed. The problem lies in the diagnoses. Every eighth schoolchild in Slovakia is currently diagnosed as mentally subnormal. “If Roma children do not speak sufficiently good Slovak when enrolled (in school), they have to have the possibility of being educated in their mother tongue – with continual transfer to the Slovak language,” reads the report.
The Marcinčins claim that special schools should be cancelled and Roma children should be placed at normal primary schools. Such a step may save 0.2 of GDP by 2030, which represents €51 million, working on the assumption that there is no reason for more mentally disadvantaged children to come from among the Roma minority compared to the white majority. Education among Roma is very low compared to white Slovaks, statistics show. The study was initiated by the Open Society Foundation.
Source: http://www.spectator.sk
Survey finds sexism, ageism common on Hungarian job market
29/10/2009 - Middle-aged men have the least chance of finding work in Hungary, and half of the over-45s are rejected for job vacancies, a National Ethnic Minority Rights Protection Office sociological survey found. Young women are most likely to be offered non-skilled posts in retail, sales and property. Roma people were rejected in 24% of cases, and mothers with small children in 17%. The telephone survey was funded by the EU.
Source: Hungary Around the Clock
Video presentation of the case in Sanmartin, Harghita County, Romania, 2009
On May 31, because of the rising tensions between the Hungarian and Roma ethnics from Sanmartin, Harghita County, Romania, an interethnic conflict broke out. The case’ presentation is based on the information gathered by the representatives of Romani CRISS, Association "Sanse Egale", Association "Roma ACCESS" Tomis Constanta and private persons, following the documentation visits which were realized on June 3, 4, 8 and July 14-15, 2009.
Please see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU3QSX6qMT0
Source: Romani CRISS
Strasbourg, 26/10/2009 - The government comments on the 2nd cycle Advisory Committee opinion on Serbia were submitted on 30 September 2009 and made public on 26 October 2009.
"Paragraph 28:
Persons belonging to the Roma minority still face discrimination in a number of fields including employment, health and housing. The lack of personal documents of both local and internally displaced persons has still not been tackled in an adequate manner, which has resulted in obstacles to access a number of social rights. More resolute action is needed in the context of the future National Strategy on Roma to tackle these problems.The authorities of the Republic of Serbia would like to emphasize again the political will and firm determination to ensure complete and effective equality among the members of the Roma national minority by means of adequate measures, which had been identified as one of the most vulnerable social groups in the Republic of Serbia, and of those who belong to the majority, in all areas of economic, social, political and cultural life. Within the last two years, namely in the period after the adoption of the State Report, the state has taken a series of activities and measures contributing to the improvement of the status of the Roma national minority, which shall be addressed in more details in the replies to certain paragraphs mentioned in the second Opinion of the Advisory Committee ..."
Read more on http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/minorities/3_FCNMdocs/PDF_2nd_Com_Serbia_en.pdf
As Kosovo`s Albanians and Serbs move from violent conflict into a poisonous and paralysing stand-off, a third community in this fledgling state is suffering most of all.
Mitrovica, 03/11/2009 - The Roma of Kosovo are demonised by its 90 per cent Albanian majority and at best tolerated, often resented, by the Serbs who stayed here after a 1998-1999 war broke Belgrade’s hold on the region and ultimately led to the independence that they vow never to accept.
All but about 20,000 of the 200,000 Roma who lived in pre-war Kosovo have left, driven out by Albanian gangs who accused them of collaboration with the Serbs. Most that remain live in the Serb stronghold of northern Kosovo but, wherever they reside, the Roma are at the back of the queue for funds and services provided by the cash-strapped Kosovo and Serb governments.
Read more on http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/1103/1224257963551.html
03/11/2009 - Bosnia and Herzegovina is situated in south-eastern Europe, on the western Balkan Peninsula, and has a population of approximately 4 million. The Balkan wars caused extensive destruction and created sharp divisions between the country's populations. The real gross domestic product plummeted by 80 per cent and more than two million people - nearly half the prewar population - became refugees, either abroad or internally. Since the end of war in 1995 and the Dayton Peace Agreement, the country has moved towards peace and reconciliation. Endeavours to increase cohesiveness and countrywide cooperation are, however, progressing slowly as deep divisions and mistrust still persist.
... Among the most vulnerable are poor families with children, pensioners and elderly people, disabled people, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and minorities. A substantial number of IDPs have returned, but face legal, social, economic or political obstacles to reintegration.
... The promotion of the fundamental principles and humanitarian values are integrated elements in all programme activities as well as the profiling of the National Society. The component under the programme forges information networks and vocational training for asylum seekers from Bosnia and Herzegovina to increase their ability to become self-sustainable. The society is currently exploring the need for targeting new vulnerable groups such as victims of human trafficking and intends to continue its work with Roma people.
Read more on http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/VVOS-7XFS7Z?OpenDocument
New publication: Minority Integration in Central Eastern Europe. Between Ethnic Diversity and Equality.
The book presents a timely examination on a range
of issues present in the discussions on the integration of ethnic minorities in
Central Eastern Europe: norm setting, equality promotion, multiculturalism,
nation-building, social cohesion, and ethnic diversity. It insightfully
illustrates these debates by assessing them diachronically rather than
cross-nationally from the legal, political and anthropological perspective. The
contributors unpack concepts related to minority
integration, discuss
progress in policy-implementation and scrutinize the outcomes of minority
integration in seven countries from the region.
The volume is divided into three sections taking a
multi-variant perspective on minority integration and equality. The volume
starts with an analysis of international organizations setting standards and
promoting minority rights norms on ethnic diversity and equal treatment. The
second and third sections address state policies that provide fora for minority
groups to participate in policy-making as well as the role of society and its
various actors their development and enactment of
integration concepts. The
volume aims to assess the future of ethnic diversity and equality in societies
across Central Eastern European states.
Edited by Timofey Agarin and Malte Brosig Amsterdam/New York, NY, 2009.
Link: http://www.rodopi.nl/functions/search.asp?BookId=BALTIC+18
New book: Nomadic Romani Girl (memoirs with ethnographic comments), by Nikolaj Bessonov and Anna Orlovskaja
Romani/Russian, (Moscow 2008), supported by the Grants Program of VORBA project
This text is based on stories about the young years of Anna Orlovskaja, a nomadic Romani girl living and travelling with her family in Belarus in the mid 20th century. The old Orlovskaja, with whom Nikolaj Bessonov met in 2004, appeared to be a refine storyteller, who remembers details that have not been recorded by now. In her memoirs there are stories about the relations of Roma with the police and state administration, children’s games in a nomadic camps, forced settling of the nomadic groups in former USSR. A whole chapter is devoted to the Nazi genocide in Belarus during the World War II.
Bessonov interprets and comments on the memoirs of Anna Orlovskaja, adding stories by other old Roma and giving insight into the life of all Roma groups in former USSR. Thus, the memoirs of Anna Orlovskaja are put in a wider historical and cultural context. Publications on the life and culture of nomadic Roma are exceptions in the field of Romani Studies so the book is an event to note.
Source: PAGE BACK - Issue 61 - October 2009
Call for Applications: European Commission Internship for Young Roma Graduates
Following an agreement with the European Commission, OSI Roma Initiatives is pleased to offer 5 five-month internships for young Roma university graduates from all new EU member states (excluding Cyprus and Malta), Croatia, F.Y.R.O.M, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The training period involves work experience in one of the Commission’s departments. The internship will start on March 1, 2010 and end on July 31, 2010.
Deadline for submission: December 5, 2009.
Please find the call for applications, application form and CV template on http://www.romadecade.org/news_EC_internship_2010
The Justice Initiative Fellows Program is a two-year program of study and practical work experience. Up to ten applicants will be selected in 2010 to participate in the program. Applicants from the following regions and countries are eligible: Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Central/South America.
The deadline for receiving applications at CEU is January 25,
2010.
Read more on http://www.romadecade.org/7219
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