Category Archives: News Eastern Europe

News Eastern Europe Serbia

Romnja

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Prejudices are created over centuries and are difficult to eradicate. What is it like to be a girl, a girl and an adult woman, faced with numerous prejudices in society, but also with the traditions of your people?

Roma women are marginalized multiple times: in the Roma community itself, which was and remains very patriarchal, and then as members of the minority by the majority society. We asked eight women about how they grew up and what they experienced in the family, school and society. The stories are very different, even when it comes to close relatives, just as the women we talked to are different, of different generations and destinies.

News Eastern Europe Poland

Roma Graves

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The graves of the Roma from Świebodzice in Southwestern Poland stand out in the cemetery. The locals are used to seeing human figures made of marble with golden signet rings on the squares and a cell phone in their hand. Visitors, especially those visiting the cemetery for the first time, cannot pass by indifferently. They take pictures and look at the monuments with interest.

News Eastern Europe North Macedonia

North Macedonia and Roma Education

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The Ministry of Education and Science informed that it hired 40 Roma educational mediators who will provide additional support for students in elementary schools in municipalities with a larger number of students from the Roma ethnic community.

“Their role is to help improve awareness of the possibilities and access to schools, to have regular meetings with the population and employees of the primary school related to the educational specifics and needs of this vulnerable group, to regularly collaborate with professional associates and teachers to improve the achievements of the students, as well as to take actions to reduce the dropout of the educational process”, said the Ministry of Education and Culture.

This is not much when one thinks of how many Roma there are in Macedonia.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Slovakia, Insurances, and Roma

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Tens of thousands of people from the poorest communities change health insurance every year. They are profitable for insurance companies mainly because they use little health care if at all, meaning their fees are very profitable to the companies. Questionable business practices were revealed in this context by the data of the Value for Money Unit (ÚHP), which is explained in the interview by analyst ADAM MAREK from the unit.

Montenegro News Eastern Europe

Montenegro, Parliament, and Roma

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The debate in Montenegro about reserved seats for the Roma minority continues.

According to the debate held, it is necessary to ensure that the Roma community has a representative in the Parliament of Montenegro, because members of that people would explain in the best way what problems they are facing and what they see as a solution. This was assessed at the panel discussion “Reserved mandate for members of the RE population in the Parliament of Montenegro”, organized by the Centre for Monitoring and Research (CeMI) and the MINA agency.

The right question is to ask what a single (or even a few) reserved seats for minorities can do to change things. The anser is easy: NOTHING. This is an alibi exercise.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Slovakia: Roma Mayors

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Another mayor in Slovakia is a Rom. This is a trend, as more and more Roma get involved in politics. In this case, it is in Strány pod Tatra, where the Roma candidate won. The village of roughly 2’300 inhabitants has above 90% of Roma residents.

Kosovo News Eastern Europe

Prizren and Roma

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The municipality of Prizren in Kosovo decided that Romanes would become an official language of the municipality. This is rather surprising, when one think that many of the Roma living there were expelled after the war and that racism against Roma is still very much prevalent in Kosovo.

Montenegro News Eastern Europe

Montenegro and Roma

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The greatest responsibility for the fact that the Roma community still does not have its own representative in the parliament lies with the politicians, because their voting on any socio-political issue depends on their agreements and party interests, according to the Institution of the Protector of Human Rights and freedom of Montenegro.

Back in 2013, the Institution of the Protector expressed the position that the Roma community should be provided with a lower census in order to be adequately represented in the Parliament of Montenegro, but even today, 30 years after the introduction of multi-party system, the Roma are the only national minority that does not have its own representative in the parliament.

Well, one can and should argue that members of parliament should NOT be allocated along ethnic lines but rather that parties should get minorities involved.

Bulgaria News Eastern Europe

Bulgaria: Epidemic

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An epidemic outbreak of hepatitis A was registered in the Roma district of Kosharnik in Montana. The Bulgarian Red Cross (BRC) provided 300 hygiene packages and health and educational materials to its residents, reports the BRC.

Preventive and anti-epidemic measures have already been taken on site to limit the spread of the infection among the vulnerable communities in the Roma neighborhood. Each of the hygiene packages provided is individual and includes hand sanitizer, soap, washing powder, shampoo, wet wipes, reusable face masks, etc.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Health Insurance and Roma

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According to the Slovak ÚHP analyst Marek, Health insurance companies make money from poor Roma. It is immoral. “The facts are quite clear. The health outcomes are terrible, at the level of the third world, and those insured are profitable for health insurance,” says Marek.

Bad.

News Eastern Europe Slovenia

Slovenia: New Initiative

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The mayors of 11 municipalities in South-Eastern Slovenia submitted an initiative to to amend five laws to “resolve” Roma issues. They want “to protect children” who have no future in Roma settlements. Municipalities have exhausted the possibilities for rescue, so a systemic approach by the state as soon as possible is necessary, including changes in legislation. They proposed changes to the laws on parental care and family benefits, on social security benefits, on regulating the labour market, on the protection of public order and peace, and on drivers.

Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob also spoke about the initiative of the mayors of 11 municipalities in southeastern Slovenia to change laws related to Roma issues.

Last time there was such an initiative, the laws were actually repressive, so let’s see.

News Eastern Europe Poland

Auschwitz on Roma

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The International Centre for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust organised a meeting devoted to the extermination of the Roma for the inhabitants of Oświęcim and its vicinity. It will be held on November 4.

The Centre announced that the meeting is part of the “Around the History of Auschwitz” series. Classes have been conducted since May this year.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

EU Report and the Czech Republic

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According to the EU Fundamental Right Agency (FRA) Report on Roma, Roma in the Czech Republic, poverty threatens 77 % of Romani people, a clear deterioration of the situation as compared to 2016, when poverty threatened 58 % of Roma.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Slovakia and Racism

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Slovakia and Racism

The director of the Slovak National Theatre (SND), Matej Drlička had to resign following sarcastic remarks he made about “national artists” who worked in the past or still work in SND ensembles, “that I guess they are the most important people in Slovakia”. He also added comments addressed to politicians who are he said, are fulfilling their constitutional duties, noting “that unfortunately they are still breathing”.

He was referring to Roma.

The Minister of Culture Natália Milanová accepted his resignation and stated that the remarks were beyond the bounds of decent behaviour. The former Culture Minister, Marek Maďarič, on the other hand stated that “Matej Drlička is such a high-quality manager that I would fight for him even against the will of the committee if I were the minister, even more so because he apologized promptly and, in my opinion, sufficiently for his statement.”

No comments.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Slovakia and Roma

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The Slovak summary of the EU studies on Roma. The Slovak Paper also gives a better understanding of how the survey was done.

The report “Roma in 10 European countries”, which also deals with the situation of Roma in Slovakia, points to little progress since the last survey in 2016. Although there has been some improvement, the general finding is that Roma families still live in shocking conditions and their prospects for education and employment are poor. Data for Slovakia showed that 14 percent of Roma experienced harassment motivated by hatred on ethnic grounds, which is a significant – 23 percent decrease – compared to 2016.

The survey was conducted on a sample of 8,500 Roma respondents with information on more than 20,000 household members in the Czech Republic, Greece, Croatia, Hungary, Portugal, Romania, North Macedonia, Serbia, Spain and Italy, while FRA also supported the collection of national data on Roma in Bulgaria and Slovakia.

Albania Europe News Eastern Europe

Roma Tales and Legends

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Combating anti-Gypsyism and discrimination in its various forms and supporting access to quality inclusive education are two of the priority areas of the Council of Europe’s Strategic Action Plan for Roma and Traveller Inclusion (2020-2025).

Knowledge of the history and culture of the Roma and Travelers is still marginal or even non-existent among the general public and this misreading strongly contributes to the discrimination to which these populations are confronted.

There is an urgent need to highlight the contribution of Roma and Travelers to European societies through culture, arts and history. Educational policies on minorities are urgent.

Sead Kazanxhiu’s illustrated book, Roma Tales and Legends (published in trilingual: Albanian, English, Romani and separately in French) is an important contribution to the recognition and understanding of Roma culture, for Roma and non-Roma children and for the general population.

News Eastern Europe Romania

Romania and Racism

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The movie “N.M.R. » : welcome to Transylvania from Romanian director Cristian Mungiu stages a village in the depths of Romania to evoke community tensions and racism. A Romanian returns to his village in Transylvania, with Romanians, Hungarians, and Roma. Hungarians and Romanians are united to to chase Roma from the village. And almost all are determined do the same to three Sri Lankan workers, “low cost” employees who have just been hired in the factory.

To be seen!

Bulgaria News Eastern Europe

Bulgaria: Conference

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For over two hours, the Bulgarian Vide-President Iliana Yotova discussed with Romane girls and women the problems they face and possible solutions. Yotova was a guest at a national meeting of Roma women “Girls with dreams: let’s turn the page”, which was held at the University of Veliko Tarnovo “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”. The seminar, organized by the Amalipe Center for Interethnic Dialogue and Tolerance, brought together participants from all over the country. The management of “Amalipe” thanked the vice president for his constant support over the years.

News Eastern Europe Serbia

Serbia and Roma

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Twenty-five years ago, on October 18, 1997, after fishing, basketball and family gatherings, the Saturday day of a fourteen-year-old elementary school student from Belgrade should have ended peqacefully. Instead, around nine in the evening, Dušan Jovanović was knocked to the ground in front of a store near Belgrade’s Slavija by attackers, where they kicked him in the head with a cobblestone, and then hit him with part of a torn gutter.

He was killed only because he was a Roma. The killers were only three years older than the boy and were sentenced to a decade in juvenile prison in Valjevo. Both were released from prison in April 2004.

“That was the event that drove us to the streets for the first time,” says Osman Balić, director of the Yurom Center from Niš and president of the presidency of the League of Roma – the permanent conference of Roma citizens’ associations, for the BBC in Serbian.

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