As more than 5% of the Prague population is officially a member of one of the recognised minorities, the city is mandated by law to establish a minority council. Besides Hungarian, Polish, Slovak, Ruthenian, Ukrainian, Russian, German, Jews and Rroma are also represented.
Bloomberg News report on Jobbik’s attempts to shed its racist and radical rhetoric in order to become more mainstream and potentially open the way to Vona, its chairman, to becoming Prime Minister in Hungary.
Let’s hope this is far from us, for these attempts are nothing more than window dressing.
A very nice interview of an iconic photographer, Josef Koudelka. Besides his work on the Prague Spring, which propelled him amongst the best known photographer of his times, he also devoted lots of attention to Rroma. He produced a beautiful album based on his work, dark and sometimes gloomy, but with great sensitivity.
The camping place for travellers in Winterthur is now closed to foreign travellers. Official reason given is that a while back, some travelling Rroma left the place in dire state. Hence the interdiction.
That the behaviour of a few people should not be taken as grounds for a blanket interdictions should have occurred to the city of Winterthur… This is simply not acceptable in the 21st century.
Another documentary on Rroma beggars in Switzerland. It is amazing how a very small number of people seems to fascinate an entire country. In Lausanne, there are no more than 60 beggars at any time, and not all of them are Rroma. In Switzerland, there are at most 1’000 such beggars, thieves, prostitutes, and they are represented as a horde invading this peaceful country… Even theough there are 80 to 100 thousand well integrated Rroma there.
In Brief, another movie, another view on the same old stereotypes.
Resource online did a short article on the photographer Joakim ERskildsen and his book “the Roma Journeys”. This work, already a few years old remains a superb book, made with a lot of love. What we loved most, is that the authors himself acknowledged the fact that yes, he could only capture images of the visible ones.
In Bavaria, the Catholic Church appointed a priest solely for the Sinti. It has to be said that the Catholic Church up till now has done very little for Rroma and was more on the oppressing side. This is one of the reasons why many Rroma in Western Europe have turned to evangelical churches. So, a bit late, in fact a few centuries late, but better than never!
France this week was in the midst of its local (departmental) elections which has seen a surge in support for the Front National of Marine Le Pen. The French press, never adverse at racial profiling, did go quite far this week. They spoke of evictions in Grimaud, close to St. Tropez; of a fire in a camp in Montpellier; of evictions in Bayonne; but even more so on criminality.
A report of organised criminality and begging in the region of Lille in the North of France, whereby a Bulgarian gangster ring would force people to beg in that city. Just across the border, some Rroma were arrested for stealing handbags in a fancy shop in Liège.
In brief, the standard picture of the migrant South Eastern European Rrom, who comes to beg, steal, or simply benefit from the social welfare is reinforced, this ahead of elections where an extreme right party is making huge inroads…
In spite of the picture, and in spite of the beliefs, not all poor people in Hungary are Rroma. Unicef claims 620 thousand children live below the poverty line. This is many more children as the Rroma minority, which all in all numbers ca. 800 thousands.
Note that three million Hungarian are now below the official poverty line.
Serbia wants to extend the so-called “Roma Decade” by another 10 years to continue furthering integration of Rroma in Europe. In a meeting organized by the Roma Education Center, Ivanisevic said that the Roma Decade will change: its seat will be in Sarajevo and the implementation will be placed under the Stability Pact for South East Europe.
In October 2012, a Rromni, Paraskevi Kokkoni was savagely beaten by local men in a context of racism and of attacks by rightist extremists against Rroma in that town. Three men were subsequently condemned to 8 months of jail and to a further suspended sentence of three further years.
A petition signed by 82’000 people was handed over to the Greek minister of the interior on March 6th. This petition urges Greece to act decisively against hate crimes.
Jacques Debot, a French blogger reporting on Rroma Stories, wrote a post on photographs and Rroma. In there, he bemoans the fact that the pictures that are taken all show the same view of Rroma: Poverty, alienation, despair. He wishes that other sides of Rroma could and should be shown, very much in the sense of the Chilean photographer Navarro Vega, who took more differentiated pictures of the poorest under the Pinochet dictature.
While we wholeheartedly support this point of view, we feel one needs to go further: Photographers, and the press in general, have a moral responsibility. They show part of the reality, the visible tip of the iceberg. But they never show the invisible ones, the large majority of Rroma. And thus, they distort the perceptions of this minority.
A controversy in the UK followed a ruling finding a politician guilty of racism and discrimination against Rroma. A British Rrom and a Green candidate to the elections says no politician is different from another in this matter, and that newspapers tend to cover such comments in a way that portrays them defending the order and the community against Rroma.
Travellers and Rroma represent a community that is non-negligible and are voters. But only 10% of them voted in the last elections. This article offers an interesting analysis of the reasons why and the ways in which this is currently changing.
Meanwhile, a small number of Rroma in France continues to grab the headlines. In the north, in Roubaix, Rroma and NGOs are fighting against eviction, while in St. Ouen, near Paris, some Rroma will be relocated in an “insertion village” a project meant to integrate Rroma.
In both cases, the press continues to portray Rroma as poor migrants from South Eastern Europe, travellers (see the pictures), and as difficult to integrate. This generalisation, as we have always said is actually racists. This concerns a small minority of the Rroma population in France.
The city of Duisburg produced a study that clearly shows that extreme rightists parties started using the theme of Rroma and how this is based on daily racism, enabled by the media and politics. The broschure can be downloaded freely.
The red-green coalition from Baden Württemberg will deport asylum seekers from Serbia and Macedonia, many of then Rroma, on the anniversary of the deportation of Rroma in that Region. This anniversary celebrated on the 24th of March commemorates the first train filled with Rroma and Sinti that departed from Offenburg.
What a date to choose …
Hungarian Rroma leaders have started a petition to the EU protesting against the ethnic cleansing that took place in Miskolc. In that eastern Hungarian city, Rroma residents were forcefully expelled from a neighbourhood to make space for the parking lot of a football stadium. This stadium – like many of its siblings being in funded in part by the EU, the Rroma leaders argue that the EU bears a moral responsibility to act.
We cannot but agree there!
Three years ago, a landmark judgement found that Slovakia was discriminating Rroma children with the practice of having segregated schools. A report from Amnesty International reveals now that the situation has far from improved. This is due to the introduction of so-called “container schools” are installed in predominantly Rroma settlement, and are attended exclusively by Rroma children, the non Rroma population preferring to send their children to other schools. This is no longer segregation, this is total isolation …
Černušáková, Barbora. Slovakia’s ‘container schools’ worsen segregation of Roma children from society. In: Amnesty International Blog. 13.03.2015. https://www.amnesty.org/en/articles/blogs/2015/03/slovakia-segretation-of-roma-schoolchildren-worsens/
The Swedish police was caught a while back in 2013 running an illegal registry of Rroma that comprised over 4’700 individuals. Sweden’s Parliamentary Ombudsman (‘Justitieombudsmannen’) issued a sharp criticism of the police on that topic and requested that each of the registered person receive 5’000 Kronor ($ 768).
The newspaper “La Liberté” in a series of recent articles equates Rroma with poor migrants who come to Switzerland to beg. There is no differentiation, and the implicit ethnicisation of a social problem and the projection thereof on all Rroma is simply not acceptable.
They also mention the exhibition from Yves Leresche, a photographer who has captured many shantytowns and who shows the poor face of Rroma. All in all, this re-inforces the negative views that are already prevailing among the general population.
When one thinks that all the beggars, prostitutes and thieves in Switzerland number less than a thousand, which is not even 1.5% of the Rroma population of the country, one sees how far these views are from reality.
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