The story of a Roma family from the Ukraine, who, in spite of facing discrimination in the Czech Republic managed to get jobs and are now trying to find a more permanent place to stay.
The Murska Sobota Development Center has organized a first “international” Roma conference at the RIS Dvorec Rakičan, aimed at exchanging views on education and political and social inclusion of the Roma community. The director of the Office for Nationalities, Stane Baluh, estimated that in Slovenia the legal and formal issues regarding participation are well regulated, but they are lame in practice.
Effectively, Roma are segregated…
Poland is represented this year by the exhibition “Charming the world” by Małgorzata Mirga-Tas. How was it created? And will it be possible to see it in Poland?
Roma culture is strongly associated with dance and music, but seldom with visual arts. This changes slowly, among others thanks to Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, who now represents Poland at the Venice Biennale – the most important event of this type in the world.
The artist is a Romni and has devoted all her work to date to the fight to change the historical narrative of the Roma community. Both the romantic one, showing the Roma people as free, dealing mainly with music and wandering around the world, and the ominous one – ascribing to them a tendency to cheat and trick others. She does it in an artistically original, intriguing and, above all, convincing way. – I don’t want to fight the whole world, naively thinking that it will suddenly change everything.
The European Commission (EC) on Friday announced the first winners of the “European Capitals of Inclusion and Diversity” award. Cologne (Germany) became the absolute winner in the category of cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants. The city of Gothenburg (Sweden) came in second and Barcelona (Spain) came in third.
The region of Andalusia (Spain) has won with a comprehensive plan to include the Roma community in the third category, focused exclusively on Roma inclusion. The city of Gothenburg (Sweden) took second place in this category and the city of Gradinari (Romania) took third place.
In Pleven, Bulgaria, Roma children will be included in sports clubs in football, tennis and basketball. The idea is to “socialise” children and students from ethnic minorities through sports, explained Ivaylo Lazarov, director of the Student Sports School (USS) in Pleven, which won funding for its project “To play sports together, albeit different”.
What this also implicitly says: Up till now, Roma children were not included … That says a lot.
A year ago, at the cemetery in Imbramowice, near Wrocław, the construction of a monument financed by the Institute of National Remembrance was completed on a collective grave of 50 Polish citizens of Roma nationality, murdered by the Germans on February 2 and 3, 1943 in Imbramowice and Wolbrom. At that time, due to the limitations related to the pandemic, it was not possible to consecrate the tombstone. It was successfully consecrated last Sunday.
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Many Roma are fighting in the ranks of the Ukrainian army. They, however, fear that once the war is over, discriminations will return.
Roma refugees in Prague were housed in 4 large tents. Two of them have now been dismantled.
Dozens of Roma civic activists from Gemer, Novohrad and Malohont in Slovakia have been participating in activities aimed at furthering their involvement in cultural, social and communal events in the region since the autumn of 2019. The project, implemented by the Láčho drom cultural and educational association from Kokava nad Rimavicou in the Poltár district, was supported by the European Social Fund through the Operational Program Effective Public Administration in the amount of EUR 338,625, of which five percent was co-financing.
They say it: Putin is killing us.
The Czech interior minister agreed with Roma NGOs on how to better help Roma refugees from the Ukraine.
Good!
A former Czech MP has been sentenced to six months’ probation for denying the genocide of the Roma. In 2017, Miloslav Rozner of the right-wing party Freedom and Direct Democracy described the Roma concentration camp in Lety as a “non-existent pseudo-concentration camp”. A district court in Prague assessed this as a denial of the genocide of the Sinti and Roma. However, the judgment is not yet final.
Application to the Central European University Roma Graduate Preparation Program 2022/23 are open and due by April 8th.
Croatia for the first tie commemorated Roma victims of the Ustasha who literally killed the entire Roma population of Croatia. Meanwhile, the Jewish community declined to participate in the commemoration in Jasenovac, the infamous concentration camp. They are right, and Roma should do the same.
Ukrainian Roma activists are criticising the ongoing discrimination against Roma in the Ukraine and highlight that this is being used by Russian propaganda to brand Ukrainians as “Nazis”.
In spite of the elections, there was space in the French press for some news on Roma…
A festival, from the 29th of April to May 1st, in Seissan will see some well-known and lesser known artists, and will feature an Egyptian singer, thus contributing to the enduring Egyptian connection of Roma. Other news are more of the usual: In Paris, residents complaining of armed Roma bands near the Camp de Mars; a fire in a camp near Paris; in Annecy, an owner tried to expulse Roma squatters; and finally in Montpellier, the new “transition camp” will soon open and a camp is being closed;
The picture of Roma bound to posts made it through social media, amplified by Russia, alleging this was outright discrimination. As usual, reality is more circumstantiated, as these Roma were caught stealing (see also below the article in Romea). Nevertheless, self-justice, and especially of this kind is not acceptable.
This Ukrainian article strongly condemn this act, and effectively says this plays in the hand of the Russians in their attempt to portray all Ukrainians as Nazis.
European Parliament representatives, the European Commission and the Council of Europe Development Bank, together with local authorities, Roma communities and private sector organizations, will launch a pilot project to promote affordable housing solutions for Roma.
The initiative, known as the HERO pilot project – Housing and Empowerment for Roma – is funded by the European Parliament (EP), managed by the European Commission (EC) and implemented by the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB) together with local partners in the Slovak Republic, Bulgaria and Romania. The aim of the project is to test an innovative model of social investment that addresses the socio-economic exclusion of disadvantaged people, such as marginalized Roma.
A 93 years old German woman was sentenced to a year of jail for Holocaust denial.
How can she deny it? This is crazy.
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