Daily Archives: April 18, 2014

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18.04.2014 Pully – Canton Vaud: racist police control of Rroma

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Favre (2014) reports an unauthorized police control of four Rroma families on a private estate in Pully, in the canton of Vaud. The owner of an apartment building had provided parts of his house to four immigrant Rroma families, upon a request of the organization Opre Rrom. Because neighbours complained about begging, the police conducted identity checks with the families. But since they conducted the control on the private property of Mr. Norbert Guillod, the owner of the house without having a permit for the action, the police made themselves liable to prosecution: “Norbert Guillod had responded to a request of the organization Opre Rrom. “Otherwise, these people would be on the street. That would have been a real shame: the children are enrolled in school and work well”, explains Norbert Guillod, who will host them until the end of the school year. […] “They have intervened because of several complaints of the neighbourhood, who were disturbed by the fact that these Roma were begging. At least it is forbidden to this extent”, replies Dan-Henri Weber, their commander. He also presents a different version of the facts, claiming that the people were controlled on the street, because they corresponded to the descriptions by the angered neighbours. They are said to have subsequently prompted the police themselves to follow them to their apartment, to look for their identity cards. This report is disputed by the parties concerned, which state that the police had knocked on their door.” The Lausanne lawyer, Jean-Michel Dolivo, points out that the police could list any offense following their control. The action was thus clearly discriminatory.

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18.04.2014 “Gypsies On Benefits And Proud” confirmes racist stereotypes

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The English television program Gypsies On Benefits And Proud, which reports on migrant Rroma in England, shamelessly confirms racist stereotypes about workshy, asocial Rroma, by unscrupulously abusing the good faith of the interviewees. The populist program aims to show how easy it allegedly is for Romanian and Bulgarian Rroma migrants to travel to England and to abuse the local welfare system. That these are extreme individual cases is deliberately concealed, as well as the fact that the portrayed Rroma lived in poorest conditions and under discrimination in their home villages: “Gipsies have revealed how they are claiming thousands of pounds every month in benefits after moving to Britain and milking the generous state benefit system. The admissions were made in a damning new Channel 5 documentary, which follows the lives of Roma gipsies in Britain. […] The documentary, which will air April 11, also features Ion Lazar, 36, who came to the Britain with five other immigrants when the work restrictions on Romanians were lifted in January. He admits he is just planning to stash his benefits to take home to his family in Romania. ‘I need maybe forty thousand from benefits…. four zero thousand pounds for my family and I think this money I can make in one years maybe two,’ he said.” The program Gypsies on Benefits And Proud deliberately discredits an entire ethnic group with its undifferentiated reporting by establishing a clear link between ethnicity and social abuse. It thus makes itself indictable for racist defamation. Politically loaded views are presented as if they were scientific facts. By this, they also abuse the good faith of television viewers who expect the media to present truth, and encourage fascist views and opinions, as one can read in the comment section of the articles. These fascist comments should provide ample food for thought for the creators of the TV show and the journalists as they reproduce the viewpoints of the program without thinking. They thereby implicitely advocate what is no less than an intellectual genocide of the Rroma (compare Britton 2014, Channel 5 2014, Dassanayake 2014, Lincolnshire Echo 2014, McGarry 2014).

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18.04.2014 Central Council demands apology because of racist investigations

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The Central Council of German Sinti and Rroma demands an apology from the government of Baden-Württemberg due to racist investigations in connection with the murders of the National Socialist underground (NSU), and the establishment of an investigation committee because of intra-police racism. On the occasion of the trial against Nazi perpetrators who had committed several racist murders, the chairman of the Central Council, Romani Rose, demanded a concession from the government: “Rose said on Wednesday in Munich, that especially in the case of the murdered Heilbronn police officer Michèle Kiesewetter, there has been a “general suspicion” against Sinti and Roma. He expected at least an apology by the state government of Stuttgart and an assurance that such events never happen again. “It is constitutionally inacceptable to put an entire ethnic group under suspicion”, said Rose” (Focus online 2014). “In July 2009, three detectives travelled to Serbia and surveyed a Roma man. […] The psychologists pointed out that man was “a typical representative of his ethnicity.” That means, lying was an essential part of his socialization. The man “obviously grew up in a world of lies and deception since his earliest childhood.” The racist remarks about the witness, and the Roma in general, were adopted by the state police without a distancing statement into the investigation files” (Tagesspiegel 2014). The case against the NSU-murderers is therefore indirectly also a lawsuit against institutional racism in the German police (compare Die Welt 2014, Stuttgarter Zeitung 2014, Südwestpresse 2014).

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