Minister Overseeing the Office of the Prime Minister János Lázár held his weekly marathon press conference Thursday afternoon under the watchful eye of government international spokesman Zoltán Kovács. Lázár and Kovács mostly addressed the same zeitgeist issues of the past few months: Hungary doesn’t want refugees, the EU is attacking Hungary over the mandatory quota system and the nationalization of the energy sector, immigrants cannot be integrated into Hungary because Hungary cannot even deal with its Roma population, and the dangers posed to Hungary by terrorists in the guise of economic migrants.
Fidesz will thwart quota system by gathering signaturesLázár said that 900,000 Hungarians have signed Fidesz’s petition against the mandatory quota system approved by the majority of European Council members. The minister thinks the government’s lawsuit against the EU and signatures of Fidesz supporters will thwart the EU’s plans for a mandatory quota system.
Like gypsies, immigrants are impossible to integrate
“Illegal immigrants cannot be integrated into EU Member States, not just because of what happened in Finland where several immigrants raped a 14-year-old girl,” Lázár said, but because “for many years Hungary has been struggling to integrate the gypsies that have lived with us for over 600 years”. Continue reading János Lázár says illegal migrants are like gypsies
Category Archives: Posts in English
Xenophobia and antiziganism on the rise in Sweden
Sweden and other Nordic countries have long been viewed as exemplary in terms of the protection of minorities. By the public they are seen as the quintessential tolerant and human rights-based countries. Recently, however, the international press and media have also reported on the rise racism and hate crimes in Sweden.
Although Sweden remains the only European country in which the majority has a positive attitude to non-EU immigration (European Commission, 2015), the growing number of racist attacks in the country have raised alarms recently. Recently, a host of examples for the growing racism in Sweden were highlighted by a UN report, published on August 25, 2015. The text revealed that “the group most vulnerable to racist hate crimes is that of Afro-Swedes”, with 1,075 Afrophobic hate crimes having been reported last year in the Nordic country, which marks a rise from the previous year’s 980. The paper also revealed the structural and institutional racism people of African descent face in Sweden, noting that “a general Swedish self-perception of being a tolerant and humane society” might obstruct the recognition of these barriers to racial equality (United Nations, 2015).
Besides having the highest per capita inflow of asylum seekers among OECD countries (OECD, 2015), Sweden also faces a new wave of immigrants from the newly accessed members of the EU. The latter group, arriving mostly from Southern Europe, has also “tested limits of Swedish tolerance”, as The New York Times has put it recently. It refers to both the rise in the popularity of the right-wing populism and the escalating number of attacks against Roma beggars, who provide a novel sight in the streets of Swedish cities (Castle, 2015). (European migrants without employment are not eligible for social welfare benefits in Sweden, but begging is not illegal in the country. – The ed.) Continue reading Xenophobia and antiziganism on the rise in Sweden
Compensation for victims of forced sterilization raised at OSCE event on Roma
Speaking at the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw on 1 October, two Romani civil society members raised the urgent issue of the Czech Government’s decision not to compensate the victims of forced sterilizations, human rights abuses that have taken place over the course of decades in the former Czechoslovakia and its successor states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, including into the 21st century. Karolina Mirga of the Ternype network raised the issue as well as the continued presence of an industrial pig farm on the site of a former concentration camp for Roma at Lety in the Czech Republic.
Marek Szilvasi of ERRC dedicated his entire remarks to the issue of compensating the victims of forced sterilization, noting that the Czech Government’s rejection of the bill means that „hundreds of Romani women are going to remain without compensation for this human rights violation.“ Szilvasi urged both the Czech and Slovak Governments to immediately begin developing proper compensation schemes and the Czech Government especially to reconsider its decision.
Archived video of the session on 1 October 2016 is available here (remarks at 2:30). Today’s closing session is being broadcast live here.
On 30 September participants raised the issue of police brutality toward Roma and Sinti communities throughout the 57-state OSCE region. Speakers emphasized that negative stereotypes about Roma are widespread among law enforcement and lead to discrimination in policing.
„The police play an important role in ensuring the protection and promotion of human rights,“ said Mirjam Karoly, ODIHR Senior Advisor on Roma and Sinti Issues. „Therefore, investment in improving trust and confidence among the police and Roma and Sinti communities is crucial to combating racism and discrimination.“
Repressive police practices and a lack of effective investigation and prosecution of crimes against Roma create deep distrust among Roma and Sinti towards the criminal justice system in general. „Criminal cases against police representatives suspected of violence against Roma remain under investigation for very long periods of time, which blatantly violates the standards set by the European Court of Human Rights, related to the duty of the state authorities to conduct thorough and effective investigation within a reasonable time,“ said Oana Taba of the Romanian NGO Romani Criss.
„Investigations in such cases can be flawed, very often lacking the racial motivation of the perpetrator,“ Taba noted. Participants also discussed recent police operations targeting Roma and Sinti and their communities.
„The inhabitants of the concerned areas, mostly Roma, were intimidated and harassed by the practice of raid-like joint control activities in segregated Roma settlements by local government authorities in co-ordination with local police,“ said Szalayné Sándor, Deputy Commissioner for Fundamental Rights of Hungary. „These practices are incompatible with the principle of the rule of law and the requirement of legal certainty.“
Source: Romea.cz
Date: 02.10.2015
AI protests against discrimination of Roma at Czech schools
The Amnesty International (AI) group handed a petition against alleged discrimination against Romanies at Czech schools, signed by over 38,000 people from 94 countries, to Czech Deputy Education Minister Jaroslav Fidrmuc yesterday. The petition campaign started in April with a report on cases of Romanies who were discriminated against within the Czech education system.
This campaign ended outside the seat of the Education Ministry yesterday. AI placed information panels presenting stories of Czech Romany children in the street. The AI report said a disproportionately high number of Romany students attended practical elementary schools for children with moderate intellectual disabilities. It wrote that segregated Romany schools were created and that bullying of Romanies occurred at quality schools. Former education minister Marcel Chladek sharply criticised the AI report. He said it was not based on correct data.
The European Commission has been calling on the Czech Republic for a long time to place Romany children in practical elementary schools only if it is really needed.
AI yesterday criticised the centre-left government of Bohuslav Sobotka. It said the government failed to protect Romany children against discrimination, admit how widespread the discrimination at school was, and produce a good plan for fighting it. „The government should declare that this discrimination exists and start dealing with it as a priority,“ AI Czech branch head Mark Martin. Fidrmuc assured the participants in the AI protest event that they and the ministry had the same goal. He said great improvement can be seen in work with students who need special assistance, Romany or not, in the last few years. Education Minister Katerina Valachova did not attend the protest event because a cabinet meeting was held yesterday.
Source: Prague Daily Monitor
Date: 01.09.2015
Rome pledges to dismantle Roma ghettos after court ruling
Italian court finds capital guilty of ethnic discrimination amid scandal over corruption in public housing for city’s most vulnerable residents
The city of Rome has pledged to dismantle state-sanctioned ghettos built specifically for Roma people after an Italian court found the capital guilty of ethnic discrimination. The office of the mayor, Ignazio Marino, said the city would not challenge the unprecedented legal decision. “There are meetings going on between the government and city officials to establish the financing for the dismantling of the so-called camps,” a spokesperson for his office said. The legal decision was announced last month, just weeks after it emerged that one of the big “camps” for the Roma, or Gypsy, families on the outskirts of the city was the subject of a land-swap proposal between the alleged criminal Salvatore Buzzi, who was already identified by prosecutors as a key player in a corruption scandal in Rome, and the French DIY company Leroy Merlin.
The story – a relatively small twist in a much larger public corruption investigation that has ensnared dozens of politicians – has exposed the intersection between corruption and public housing for Italy’s most vulnerable residents, with funds that are meant to be directed to the poor allegedly being skimmed off. Until his arrest late last year, Buzzi was the head of a cooperative that managed migrant and Romany facilities. In a telephone exchange recorded by investigators, Buzzi can be heard bragging that he had a turnover of €40m (£28m) thanks to the “Gypsies … and migrants”. “Do you have any idea how much I make on these immigrants?” he said. “Drug trafficking is not as profitable.” Although the “Mafia Capitale” scandal was first exposed last year, the investigation into the corruption of public contracts has continued, with new revelations about the breadth of wrongdoing reported in the press on a weekly basis. Continue reading Rome pledges to dismantle Roma ghettos after court ruling
Czech-language Facebook page of non-existent group falsifies photo of banner carried by Romani people
The fake Czech-language Facebook group „Roma against Islam“ (Romové proti Islámu) has published an altered version of a photo taken of a Romani demonstration in September 2013 in front of the Office of the Czech Government. On one the banners, instead of the Romani flag which was actually being held, the photo has been doctored to show a text that attacks refugees. If the administrators of the page do not remove the photo, representatives of the Romani Democratic Party (RDS) plan to file criminal charges. The altered photo was posted on Sunday, 21 June and immediately became very popular, being shared more than 2 600 times and receiving more than 1 500 „likes“ as of noon yesterday.
Instead of the Romani flag and the inscription „Romani Democratic Party of the Czech Republic“ (Romská demokratická strana ČR), those who doctored the photo inserted the following text between the hands of the two Romani people in the photograph: „STOP REFUGEE RECEPTION. Bohemia belongs to us and our white brothers. Smokes back to Africa! Your educated Roma.“ Representatives of the RDS have already objected to the falsified collage. „If the administrators do not remove those photographs, we will file criminal charges. This discredits the RDS and is an abuse of our political party,“ Miroslav Rusenko, political secretary of the RDS Central Committee, told news server Romea.cz.
In January, Romea.cz was the first to report on the existence of this false Facebook group. The authors of its material demagogically attack Islam per se and have falsely claimed to be supported by the Dživipen association and the Terne čhave music group. Both Romani initiatives have distanced themselves from the page. In February 2015, photographs were posted to the page of the non-existent group’s alleged administrator and secretary, a certain „Ján Balko“. It took just a couple of minutes for news server Romea.cz to search online and determine that the photograph was actually of a Nobel Prize winner for chemistry, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan. Many photos of him exist online.
The fraudsters did their best to make it as difficult as possible to identify the man in the photograph, for example, by reproducing it as a mirror image so it could not be found using Google’s instruments for photo searches, but Romea.cz discovered its origins nonetheless. It is evident from the materials posted to the Facebook page of this non-existent group that its purpose has been to attract Romani people to demonstrations by the anti-Islamic group „We Don’t Want Islam in the Czech Republic“ (Islám v ČR nechceme) that were held at the beginning of the year. Those same people are behind another false Facebook page called Educated Roma (Vzdělaní Romové), which insults Romani people with would-be jokes. Facebook has so far ignored requests that these false groups be removed.
Source: Romea.cz
Date: 23.06.2015
Czech town’s chamber of commerce wants to deploy the Army against Roma
The District Chamber of Commerce (Okresní hospodářská komora – OHK) in the Czech town of Ústí nad Labem has published an „Open Call to Local Politicians and Citizens“ that reads as follows: „In Ústí nad Labem and other towns we are threatened by a demographic catastrophe that may already be unavoidable. We must have the courage to describe this problem and propose solutions.“ The basis of the „problem“ is then described by the OHK as the „negative immigration [sic] of inadaptable inhabitants or just the socially vulnerable.“ This primarily means Romani people. The OHK refers to analyses that they say „describe the problem well“: An article from news server KrajskéListy.cz and a statement by Slovak Interior Minister Kaliňák alleging that frequent incest in the Romani community is the reason so many Romani children attended „special schools“ in Slovakia. „How can we best help ourselves in this situation?“ the OHK then asks. „Certainly not as we currently are doing, when almost nothing is going on and the problem is being tiptoed around. Political representatives from the ground-level up should establish an association of towns experiencing similar problems and develop pressure on their national representatives to solve them,“ the „Open Call“ says. The OHK believes the options for solving this problem are: Counting the number of Romani people, putting a cap on welfare benefits, and calling up the Army for help. „The Army is able to begin doing this without delay and it would save the towns a lot of money. Guard duty in excluded localities would be the ideal practice exercises for them… It is important that we finally begin to do something. Otherwise the last of us will go extinct in another 15 years and it is all the same whether we are living in the center of town, in Brno, or Skorotice or in South Bohemia,“ their statement concludes. Continue reading Czech town’s chamber of commerce wants to deploy the Army against Roma
Jakob’s Colours by Lindsay Hawdon review – the untold story of the Romany Holocaust
A Romany family overcomes incarceration and prejudice only to encounter the Nazis in a deeply involving debut novel
Over the last 70 years, the Holocaust has been established in the western world’s collective conscious as the ultimate expression of human evil. Its victims are remembered with horror and pity; no fate, we’re agreed, could be worse than to be among their number. Except, perhaps – as Lindsay Hawdon obliquely suggests in her debut novel – to be among the Holocaust’s forgotten victims; those such as the Romany people who, when they’re mentioned at all, are tacked on at the end of the roll call, restricted to a dependent clause.
The Roma refer to the act of genocide perpetrated against them by the Nazi regime as the Porajmos – the Devouring. The Nazis themselves certainly didn’t see it as an afterthought: as Hawdon explains in a brief, bleak coda, the regime viewed gypsies as “hereditarily sick” and called for their “elimination without hesitation”; by 1945 it had claimed more than 1.5 million Romany lives. Nevertheless, in a shabby and dishonourable second act of silencing, their murders were not prosecuted at Nuremberg, and it wasn’t until 1994 that the US Holocaust Memorial Museum held a commemoration for them. Even today, their stories remain largely untold. Continue reading Jakob’s Colours by Lindsay Hawdon review – the untold story of the Romany Holocaust
One Year on From Roma Deaths, ERRC Highlights Low Sentence for Mass Murderer in Slovakia
One year ago yesterday, an off-duty municipal police officer shot three Romani individuals dead, and seriously injured two others in a killing spree in the town of Hurbanovo, Slovakia. He was sentenced to just nine years in prison, an exceptionally low sentence. The minimal penalty under the Slovak Penal Code for this crime is 25 years. During his examination for the purpose of expert opinion, he frequently stated his calling to ‘solve the Roma problem’ and to ‘finally deal with the Roma in Hurbanovo’. Despite this, no racial motivation was considered during the case.
The European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) and the lawyers representing the victims believe that this judgment does not establish justice. The law firm of Dr Stanislav Jakubčík, together with the ERRC, submitted a Constitutional complaint on 24 May 2013 to the Slovak Constitutional Court, challenging the judgment and claiming that proceedings before the Special Criminal Court and its ruling were not in line with the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Slovak Constitution and the European Convention of Human Rights.
To mark the first anniversary of the massacre, the ERRC, lawyers of the victims and the Roma Parliament in Slovakia held an event at the site of the town of Hurbanovo yesterday, paying respect to the victims of the massacre and holding a media briefing on the constitutional complaint. The ERRC and the Roma Parliament in Slovakia also sent open letters (English and Slovak) to Slovak and international authorities, pointing out the shortcomings of the Special Court’s proceedings and judgment, and asking for their advocacy to establish justice for the victims.
The Roma Parliament in Slovakia have launched a petition calling on the Ministry of Justice to re-open the case. The surviving family members have limited standing at the penal court proceedings and their perspective and interests were not adequately considered by the court during the Juhasz case.
“State authorities have a duty to investigate racial motivation in any crime, and to sentence appropriately,“ said Dezideriu Gergely, Executive Director of the ERRC. “This sentence undermines the confidence of minorities, in particular that of Roma, in the ability of state authorities to protect them from the threat of racist violence.
For further information:
Marianne Powell
Communications Officer
marianne.powell@errc.org
+36.30.500.2109
Source: ERRC
Date: 17.06.2015
Green leader ’sorry‘ for Auschwitz analogy
Green party co-spokesperson Åsa Romson has apologized after calling Roma people “zigenare” (gypsies) as well as comparing the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean to the Holocaust.
Åsa Romson used the term “zigenare” following a debate between the leaders of Sweden’s major political parties, broadcast on SVT. The word, which means “gypsy” in English is deeply offensive. In April it became one of a selection of words followed by the phrase „använd istället“ (use instead) in the latest edition of Sweden’s official dictionary produced by Svenska Akademien (The Swedish Academy). The book advises all Swedes to use “Roma” instead. But Romson used word term “zigenare” instead of “Roma” as she defended describing the migrant crisis in Europe as “the new Auschwitz” in the broadcast on Sunday night. After her comparisons with the mass killings proved controversial, she told SVT she wanted to apologize to “any of the groups” affected by Adolf Hitler’s crimes during the second word war including “zigenare” (gypsies), Jews and gay people. She also said the word “zigenare” during an interview with Sweden’s Expressen newspaper on Sunday. Continue reading Green leader ’sorry‘ for Auschwitz analogy