For once an informative article about Roma in French Media. This is rare and a good thing, even if there are still a few mistakes.
A reportage on Arte on Ceija Stoika and her paintings.
The usual in French news … A camp near Nantes in Western France will be closed as it is in an area slated for renaturalization. Neddless to say, nothing is planned to relocate these people. In Angers, Roma refuse to leave their camp in spite of a court order. In Toulouse in the South, the site of a former camp is being cleaned out. What will happen there is open.
On the occasion of the International Day of Remembrance of Roma Victims of Genocide in World War II – Samudaripen, at the Roma Memorial A commemoration was held at the Uštica centre, where the representative of the Roma national minority, Veljko Kajtazi, condemned every attempt at historical revisionism.
“When we increasingly see attempts at historical revisionism and hiding the truth, we are obliged to send a strong message from this place – a message that the victory over fascism was not in vain,” Kajtazi emphasized, adding that silence in the face of revisionism becomes complicity.
The story of a Czech Romni married to a non-Roma man. She starts by saying that a strange woman shouted at me not to speak Romani to my son in a shop!
She says:
I am a Romani woman. For some, it is just a word, for me it is my identity, my history and my pride. My husband Petr is Czech, a “gadžo”, and together we are raising our two-year-old son Davídek. Our home is a place where two worlds, two cultures meet. We speak Czech together, but I have also spoken Romani to Davídek since birth. I want him to know the language of his grandparents, to understand the songs and stories that shaped our family. I want him to be proud of both halves of his body.
The sixth annual cultural event Roma Bašavel will take place on Thursday, August 14, 2025, from 5 p.m. at the Novodvorská Cultural Centre in Prague 4. The festival will present both traditional and modern Roma music and dance, and visitors can also look forward to a rich accompanying program and specialties of Roma cuisine. The Romea.cz news server was informed about this by Anna Chválová, the officer for national minorities and integration of foreigners of the Prague 4 Municipal District.
The 14th Roma Music Festival “Zauvek Šaban Bajramović”, dedicated to the Roma musician and composer Šaban Bajramović started on August 6th in the amphitheatre on the Niš quay in Serbia.
The bridge near the Health Center in Bujanovac, towards Novo Naselje, has received a new, refreshed look thanks to the joint action of the “You are Rom” Association, the Municipality of Bujanovac and the Mayor of the Municipality, Arber Pajaziti. “This bridge has a special symbolism – citizens of different nationalities pass through it every day: Albanians, Serbs and Roma. As a common space, the bridge symbolizes the connection and coexistence of all peoples who share the same city,” say the Roma Association.
The world’s largest trumpet festival is dominated by Roma musicians from the Serbian south. This is their style, and most of the bad are professional, and an common sight in weddings, feasts, and burials.
The rest of the article is bad. “Irregular rhythms” refers to non ½ simple bats that are common in the Balkans, and the origins of Serbian Roma displayed there show the lack of knowledge of the journalist…
The Czech politician Tomio Okamura and his SPD party are facing charges of inciting hatred. The case is related to last year’s election posters in which the party attacked migrants and Roma.
Would be good if this goes to court before the upcoming elections…
The Slovene government is opening 9 new multi-purpose centres for Roma in August. In addition to the 20 million, an additional 5.5 million euros will be allocated for this. This article is a violent diatribe against these projects, saying that they do nothing to prevent “Roma criminality” and are a waste of money.
In early July, three Roma brutally beat-up a 72-year-old farmer Anton Čemažar in a field on the outskirts of Ljubljana. This caused a great deal of controversy. Now, the farmer and his family have suffered their first disappointment: the Ljubljana District Court has rejected a request to investigate a fourth person involved, who led the attackers to Čemažar’s field and drove them away after the violent act, in a vehicle without license plates. The investigating judge and the pre-trial panel believe that the driver did not know what was really happening, but was merely taking the perpetrators fishing, so there is no reasonable suspicion of his complicity.
This is the law, but here the result is that in Slovenia, they say that Roma are not subject to it. Bad.
The Košice Self-governing Region commemorated the Roma Holocaust Remembrance Day on August 6 with the event Ma bisteren – Let’s Remember. The event will take place at the Romathan Regional Theatre, in Košice, Slovakia.
Bad on both sides… the story of a self-declared king Róbert I. Botoš, who took his symbolic throne in the spring of 2014. There is no such thing among Roma. No hierarchy whatsoever. But this perdures due to stereotypes on both sides.
In the Vosges Mountains, Travelers have set up camp with around 400 caravans on agricultural meadows. After years without major problems, the situation escalated this time as both sides sought an agreement – apparently failing due to a lack of consent from the farmers. The farmers took drastic measures to evict the unwelcome guests: they sprayed manure.
Bad.
The labour market situation in the countries of the Western Balkans is bad – the population of Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina is aging.
The other big problem for these countries is migration – many young people of working age emigrate and prefer to build a career in EU countries – for example, in Germany, Austria or Italy. This creates a serious shortage of qualified labour in the Western Balkans.
By 2050, Serbia is expected to lose over 40 percent of its citizens of working age. The situation is similar in neighbouring Bulgaria, where according to UN data, the country will shrink by 23% by 2050. Similar forecasts are made for other countries in the region.
Roma can solve part of these issues in the labour market.
An evening celebration of a wedding in Sereď, Slovakia, turned into a mass fight, which required police intervention. The incident was preceded by a verbal conflict during the wedding in one of the family homes. According to initial information, a group of Roma participated in the fight, who were supposed to disrupt public order. The seriousness of the situation is also confirmed by the fact that several injured people were treated in the hospital in Galanta.
Bad.
An article about Edward Dȩbicki, a 90 year old Polska Roma who spoke at this year’s commemoration on August 2nd in Auschwitz. Dębicki, is not only a musician and composer but also a writer. He wrote the book “Birds of the Dead” about that time over two decades ago, which recounts the tragedy of Roma families during the war.
“When the Roma camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau was being liquidated in 1944, I was nine years old. We hid in the forests, lived in dugouts in constant fear, and saw death at every turn. I survived because fate had it so. But I carry within me the memory of all those who were not so fortunate,” says Edward Dębicki.
Several articles in Slovenia about the August 2nd commemoration of the genocide of the Roma during the Holocaust. With an interesting one as to whether use “porajmos” (don’t) or “Samudaripen” (better) top denote it.
Several articles in the Czech press on the August 2nd commemoration of the genocide of the Roma during the Holocaust.
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