Daily Archives: April 12, 2013

Germany News Eastern Europe News Western Europe Serbia

12.04.2013 Travel Ban for Serbian Rroma

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The TAZ reported on Rroma families in Belgrade who want to try their luck in Germany or have already done it and were expelled back. Jacob (2013) visited the families in the slums around Belgrade. He represents the common image of misery: Lots of waste, high unemployment, misery, little or no prospects for the future. Ajrija Demir already tried twice her luck in Germany. A total of seven years she lived there and had to leave again twice. Since the EU threatened Serbia to reintroduce a visa requirement, controls at the borders against potential asylum abuser were enforced by Serbia. The border guards are to identify “false asylum seekers” – on what criteria this is done, Jacob does not discuss – and send them back on arbitrary grounds. In December 2012, the Serbian judiciary introduced Article 350a into the penal code criminalising “help for wrongful asylum claim abroad or for wrongfully obtaining welfare”. Dadruch Rroma are able to consciously leave them held Serbia. This practice is contrary to the UN Convention on Human Rights where the right to emigrate from one country – one’s own or another – is postulated. Jacob laconically states that:

The civil rights activist Vukovic would be happy to challenge the exit restrictions in court, but can not find any plaintiff. “Rroma do not dare to go against the state,” she says. The visa waiver is the most important government’s asset, and it wants to retain it. “For this they sacrifice the basic rights of the Roma.”

Source:

  • Jakob, Christian (2013) An der Grenze zurückgeschickt. In: TAZ vom 9.4.2013. 
News Switzerland

12.04.2013 Switzerland is not an Island

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The exhibition and event series of the Association Sedhalle “Switzerland is not an island,” focuses on the exclusion of Rroma in Switzerland and Europe. Through various forms of artistic expression themes such as the relationship of norm and variance, majority and minority, internal and external representation, adaptation and self-decisions are treated. Overviews of the life of various Rroma provide an insight into the question of what it means, at the beginning of the 21st Century to be Rrom in Europe. Current political debates such as the begging ban in western Switzerland, or interdictions to be in certain places are discussed, but also the questions on counter-strategies against exclusion and discrimination will be treated.

Source:

  • Verein Sedhalle (2013) Die Schweiz ist keine Insel. In: www.sedhalle.ch [12.4.2013]
News Eastern Europe News Western Europe Ukraine

12.04.2013 New Rroma Office in Freiburg

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The Rroma office in Freiburg inaugurated its new office in conjunction with the International Rroma day. Its aim is to better integrate local Rroma through language training and to sensitize mainstream society on minority issues and prejudices. Paradoxically, the Rroma office itself used some stereotypes, as traditional Rroma music was played, and visitors were able to ask a fortune-teller to predict their future. An exhibition about Rroma in the Ukraine during World War II allowed a historical reflection. Posters talked about the suffering and persecution of Rroma under the Nazi terror.

URL: http://www.roma-buero-freiburg.eu

Source:

  • Gesell, Sina (2013) Roma-Büro Freiburg weiht seine neuen Geschäftsräume ein. In: Badische Zeitung vom 10.4.2013.   
France Germany Hungary Kosovo News Eastern Europe News Western Europe

12.04.2013 International Day of Rroma: Call to End Discrimination

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On the occasion of the International Day of the Rroma on April 8th, the Green Party decidedly demands an end to discrimination of Rroma in Europe. Too many Rroma are still excluded either by informal or explicit policies of social advancement and recognition. Since its inauguration in 1971 in London, the International Day of Rroma was celebrated 42 times, and the Green party criticized in particular the political exploitation of Rroma for purposes of election campaigns. This turns them into poverty refugees and makes them the targets of an emotionalised socio-political conflict. The Green Party calls for effective implementation of the EU initiated Rroma strategy, which up to now only had very modest successes.

The chairman of the Austrian Association of Rroma, Rudolf Sarközy stressed during the day, the constructive support of the Catholic Churchto bring the Rroma from the edge of society to get into its mainstream. Former Chancellor Franz Vranitzky openly criticized the anti-Roma policies in France, Hungary and other EU countries that are not really different from questionable practices usually found in emerging countries (Katholische Presseagentur Österreich 2013).

Stille (2013), on the occasion of the 42nd anniversary of the Rroma day, draws sober conclusions: Although with some 15 million members, Rroma are the largest minority in Europe, they are shockingly underrepresented in politics. Exclusion, discrimination and physical threats are still the norm. One builds walls, to isolate them from other settlements, extreme right-wing citizen militias patrol Rroma neighbourhoods and provoke and abuse Rroma and Rromnja. Nearly 60 years after the genocide of Rroma under the Nazis, this fact, in contrast to the Jewish Holocaust is barely recognised. The negative stereotypes that are attributed to Rroma continue unabated. War refugees from Kosovo are afraid of deportation to a country that they no longer know and where they are discriminated against. Romani Rose, of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma warns against blanket criminalization of people who are not looking to become delinquent, but are looking for a future. Finally, Stille states accurately:

Today, on World Roma Day, it is time for us to think about why German Roma for decades – many of them well-educated, well-integrated people – hide their belonging to this ethnic minority.

Sources:

  • Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (2013) Internationaler Roma-Tag: Diskriminierungen endlich beenden. In: Düsseldorfer Abendblatt vom 9.4.2013.
  • Katholische Presseagentur Österreich (2013) Roma-Tag: “Viele wissen nicht, wie gläubig wir sind”. In: Katholische Presseagentur Österreich vom 9.4.2013.
  • Stille, Klaus-Dieter (2013) „Roma“ heisst Mensch. In: Readers Edition vom 8.4.2013. 
News Eastern Europe News Western Europe

12.04.2013 Bremen SPD Excludes Martin Korol from the Party

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Wolschner (2013) reports on the exclusion of the politician Martin Korol from the SPD. The local politician had created a stir arranged with racist abuse towards Rroma that he had published as a position paper on its website. Last Monday Korol was officially excluded from the SPD. Group Executive Martin Tschöpe presented serious pejorative remarks against Rroma, migrants and women as a reason for exclusion. Included in the questionable statements were the following views:

The Roma and Sinti “still live socially and intellectually in the Middle Ages,” it said. In another text, it was stated that a representative could only be, “who has a German education”. On the subject of gender equality Korol said that the patriarchate “that society lost the balance”, but that the rule of women is no better, which shows the “madness of the so-called self-realization of women”, in “the pleasure of alienation of the particular job in a company and in the mass murder of abortions.“

Korol denied the allegations. They were hasty, kneejerk manifestations of an older man who culturally critical and who should rather have thought first and then written. This insight is unfortunately a bit late.

Source:

  • Wolschner, Klaus (2013) Martin Korol ganz privat. In: TAZ vom 8.4.2013.
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