13.08.2014 British elections campaign: Rroma as carriers of disease

Boffey (2014) reports on the candidacy of the politician Jane Collins for a parliamentary seat in Rotherham. In the spring of 2014, Collins was elected as a representative of the right-wing nationalist UKIP party as a deputy to the European Parliament. Besides to the refusal of an alignment to the EU and the free movement of persons, her policy is based on a critical up to a openly racist attitude towards the Rroma. She repeatedly demanded a comprehensive vaccination of all local children who are in contact with the community of Slovak Rroma in Rotherham. These, she argues, possess a significantly higher hepatitis-B rate than the rest of the population. The Rroma children themselves need to be dealt with within a comprehensive vaccination campaign, she states. On what kind of information does Collins build her claim of an increased hepatitis-B rate among Slovak Rroma? Are these truly objective data or are they rather deliberately politically constructed assessments? It is very doubtful that there are statistics that capture health information based on ethnicity. With the portrayal of Rroma as carriers of disease, who pose a risk to public health, they are additionally discriminated against and marginalised. Already now, a variety of prejudices about Rroma circulate in the British media and in politics, defaming them as social parasites, as unwilling to integrate, and as uneducated and criminal. These statements are not based on facts but on numerous prejudices and on the expressions of suspicion that many people simply accept uncritically. Collins fuels this thinking by making a racist differentiation between healthy British children and virus-loaded Rroma children, in which the Rroma pose a threat to public health. Such statements should not be tolerated under the paragraph of the freedom of expression but rather be prosecuted and punished under the paragraph of defamation.