A record number of Roma mayors won in the municipal elections. In the next election period, there will be 52 of them.
For comparison – in 2010, there were only 12 of them. Despite the growing number, Roma are only slowly getting involved in local government affairs.
The scandalous reluctance of the Ministry of Health to compensate victims of forced sterilizations is reflected in the still deeply rooted racism in Czech society.
The Association of Women Victims of Illegal Sterilization has been fighting for compensation for affected women for several decades. Romnja were sterilized because they are Romani. Compensation for this is hampered by some officials for the same reason.
Marek Tatar (28), a Czech Rom, is currently studying transcultural communication in his third year at the Faculty of Education in Hradec Králové and works as a programmer in IT. Hi path to higher education was not smooth. He faced bullying in elementary school, overheard a conversation between two of his teachers in the school corridor about the fact that they didn’t want a gypsy at school, which prompted him to stop his studies. Fortunately, he was convinced by his family to do at least the minimum, which allowed him later to start studies.
It shows how discrimination and racism early on can disadvantage children from minorities for their entire lives. Fortunately, there are also example like him.
The Church World Service is launching a program aimed at helping Roma refugees from the Ukraine in Moldova.
Some comments to the recent judgement denying a Romni compensation for forced sterilisations even though the medical record indicates that the reason was she was Romani. The Czech Human Right Commissioner reacts.
An interview with dental hygienist Daniela Patkaňová. For years she has been working as a dental hygienist in one of the facilities in Prague. It originally comes from Svidňik, Slovakia. Her journey to the dentist’s office was far from straightforward. She started in the field of sales, went to the Czech Republic for work and later also to Great Britain. It was there that she completed her education and started as a dental nurse. Although she encountered rejection in the areas of housing and employment because of her Roma status, she did not give in. What was decisive for her was the meeting with associate professor Mariá Bartoňová, with whom she still works.
Zoran Janković, the current mayor of Ljubljana, Slovenia, is trying to be re-elected for the fifth time in a row and also to get a majority in the city council to govern. He is however involved in a controversy about the burial of Roma from Ižan, victims of the Nazis and of the Partisans in Ljubljana’s cemetery. He is opposing the burial and has now been officially accused of racism by the Assembly for the Republic who published a harsh statement: By not burying the Roma from Ižan, he showed a level of racism hitherto unknown in Ljubljana, that he despises the sanctity of life by abusing cemeteries, that he incited intolerance and hatred with his political appearances.
An article in the German press on Roma in the Ukraine. As usual, the focus lies on Transcarpathia and, together with Bessarabia, represent an exception regarding to the situation of Roma in the Ukraine. In those two regions, the situation is really bad, with ghettoes and unemployment. But in places where the majority of Roma are Xaladytka and Servi, the situation is very different.
This is almost never presented in the press.
An article in the Polish press about the Lithuanian Roma group “Sare Roma”. The group is led by the Kwik family, Lithuanian Lovara and was founded 70 years ago by the grandfather of Isztwan Kwik.
The story of several Roma from Svalyava, in Transcarpathian Ukraine who volunteered in the Ukrainian Army in the fight against Russia. The oldest among them is Mykhailo Tytychko, alias Baron. He got this nickname for his considerable authority in the Roma community. He is the only one of the volunteers who had military service experience.
Baron shares that at first the other guys in their unit were wary. A certain tension was felt. Later, Mykhailo himself found out in a conversation with his brothers that there were certain fears. They lived in constant tension and fear that something would be stolen from them – they themselves admitted to me a month later. But this mistrust passed very quickly – as soon as the boys took a good look at us, we became so close that we became like a family.
My name is Panchenko Oleksii Mykhailovych. I lived all my life in the Zaporizhia region, in the city of Kamianka-Dniprovska. I have lived in my parents’ house all my life. I am married and have two children: the first daughter Angela, then the boy David and the youngest Tatyanochka. Before the war, I was a truck driver, worked at the wheel for six years, often visited abroad.
I found out about the beginning of the war right away… because right next to us there were Russian troops, about 6 km from my house. From February 24 to April 8, there was no way I could leave the city to take my family to a safe place. Periodically there was heavy shelling, and sometimes we were not allowed out of the city at all. At one point, my wife and I packed our things and our children and decided to try to leave at our own peril and risk. This time we succeeded. We arrived on the Ukrainian controlled territory.
On the morning of April 15, I came to the Military Commissariat, whose employees were all very shocked “that a Roma is eager to serve.” I passed the medical examination in three days, I haven’t told my wife anything on this topic yet. Only on April 20 did my wife find out that I was already in the military.
The working group for dealing with the Roma issue (which is supported by the mayors of the municipalities of southern Slovenia) held its first meeting yesterday. The group will strive for a comprehensive approach of the state in solving the complex Roma problem, ensuring decent living conditions and active inclusion of Roma in social life, the government announced.
What is so complex in discrimination, racism, and the resulting exclusion? It is not a Roma “Issue” it is a gadže issue.
Sadly, the younger generation often doesn’t speak Romanes, even though, contrary to Hungary, Roma in Slovakia have kept their language.
Bad.
As noted by the member of the committee for the excavation and solemn burial of Roma killed during the war, Dr. Miran Komac from the Institute for Ethnic Issues, the Roma minority in Sloveniantry experienced the murder of around 70% of the entire population during the Second World War – committed both by the occupying side and by partisan units.
Recognising that even partisans killed Roma is an important step. Miran Komac lobbied for the burial of Roma victims in Ljubljana, but Ljubljana’s mayor Zoran Janković persistently rejects this request. It is to be noted that other victims of World War Two got a space in the Ljubljana’s cemetery. So this is definitively racially motivated …
Discrimination of the Roma community is still present in Slovenia according to Jerica Lorenci, the researcher of the Epeka association who presented the report of the project Promoting Roma Equality in Slovenia and Slovakia. She also drew attention to the lack of statistical data related to the Roma community.
Since there are no reports of discrimination, their level is higher than that perceived by the Defender of the Principle of Equality, she stated. Every one of the 50 people who were interviewed as part of the research had experienced discrimination, Lorencijeva told STA on the side-lines of the presentation, which took place in the premises of the Ljubljana Faculty of Social Sciences.
A week ago, the Office of the Plenipotentiary of the Government of the Slovak Republic for Roma communities published the results of the most comprehensive research on the life of Roma in recent years.
According to the study, the direct experience of Roma with discrimination is decreasing. Twenty-one percent of Roma said they had experienced some form of discrimination because of their skin colour or ethnicity in the past year. In a similar survey from 2016, it was 30 percent of Roma.
Reality is somewhat different:
As a Roma, social worker Tomáš Ščuka encountered discrimination all his life, most often in restaurants and bars, but also at the doctor’s office or in offices. “Now that I’m older, it’s less, but you can still see the signs. For example, in a restaurant they make me wait longer, or they serve me later than the person who came after me. That is such latent discrimination,” he says.
Discrimination against Roma is apparently gradually changing its form and becoming more hidden somewhere, but it still hasn’t disappeared. Ščuka compares it to the Kotlebo people in the parliament, who gave up open racism years ago, but still send racist signals to their voters when they talk, for example, about maladaptive fellow citizens.
The most frequent victims of extremist attacks in the physical world in the period of 2020 and 2021 were Roma, while the most frequent targets of extremist attacks in the virtual space were Jews.
This is stated in the Monitoring Report on the State of Extremism in the Slovak Republic for the period of 2020 and 2021 and the update of the tasks of the Concept of Combating Radicalisation and Extremism until 2024, which was approved by the government today.
The current Slovak ombudsman Mária Patakyová’s term of office ended on March 29, due to disagreements within the governing coalition and the non-existent agreement on the name of a successor. This post has been vacant for more than seven months. And it still doesn’t look like the triple coalition is in agreement on one name.
Due to the absence of a new public defender of rights, the office has received more than 500 suggestions on the table that are waiting to be evaluated. The Institute of the Public Defender of Rights is an independent body whose mission is to protect the basic rights and freedoms of citizens from public administration bodies, but above all to draw attention to rights violations and request redress.
The plenum elects the ombudsman for five years from candidates proposed by at least 15 deputies. A majority of those present is sufficient for election, which, in the case of an agreement, could also work for the candidate of the minority coalition.
From tomorrow, Thursday to November 12, the Days of Sinti and Roma Culture will take place in Bucharest. The organisers, namely the Bucharest Goethe Institute and the French Institute in Romania, invited musicians from Germany and France who will perform a musical program of Sinti and Gypsy jazz curated by music producer and journalist Liviu von Braha. The initiative of the two cultural institutes aims to strengthen the representation of Roma in public space and to present Roma culture to the widest possible audience.
Tomorrow, at 7 p.m. at the French Institute, the Sinti and Roma Culture Days will open with a roundtable on “Roma Music and Community Engagement”, which will bring together specialists in Roma culture and cultural managers who run projects on Roma culture or projects that aimed at the Roma minority, discussed socio-economic and cultural aspects of the Roma and Sinti ethnic group from Central Europe and Romania.
Guest speakers will be music producer Liviu von Braha, Simona Constantin, director and founder of the workshops “Raised on Music”, musician Andrei Dinescu, musician and activist Dotschy Reinhardt and Istvan Szakats, program director of Radio Pata, Klausenburg/Cluj Napoca.
Octav Avramescu from the association “Jumătatea Plină” and Joachim Runde, director of the Goethe-Institut Bucharest will share the moderation of the event.
On Saturday morning, November 12, a free intensive workshop for musicians specializing in guitar or violin will be held between 10 a.m. and 2.30 p.m. in the auditorium hall of the National Music University (Str. Știrbei Vodă No. 33) by Florin Niculescu and Christian Escoudé held. The participants will get to know the instrumental style to the unique rhythms of Sinti and Gypsy jazz from Germany and France.
The Culture Days of the Sinti and Roma will be held on Saturday evening from 7 p.m. in the ARCUB – Hanul Gabroveni (Str. Lipscani No. 84-90) with a gypsy and Sinti jazz concert performed by Dotschy Reinhardt, Sinteza, together with the French guitarist Christian Escoudé and the Romanian violinist Florin Niculescu will end.
Sinteza, artist and human rights activist Dotschy Reinhardt is the youngest relative of jazz legend Django Reinhardt, the founder of gypsy jazz. Inspired by Django Reinhardt’s distinctive language and the cultural heritage of the Sinti, their music reflects the origin and history of their people. Also influenced by Django Reinhardt’s swing style, the exceptional French guitarist Christian Escoudé will perform alongside her in Bucharest. The Roma-born jazz artist has played with jazz and rock greats such as John McLaughlin, Stan Getz and Pierre Michelot and is known for his contemporary interpretations of Django Reinhardt’s songs. Together with the two, Florin Niculescu, one of the best gypsy jazz violinists of today, will enter the ARCUB stage. The Roma artist of Romanian origin, a close collaborator of Christian Escoudé, transitioned from a career as a classical violinist to a gypsy jazz musician and performer of traditional Roma music.
The fifth-grade students of “Vuk Stefanović Karadžić” Elementary School used their trip to the Doboj National Library to learn something about the Romani language, which is unknown to many of them.
“It’s the first time I’ve heard of the Romani language, and it seems very difficult to master. I found it very interesting and it reminds me a little of the German language, because some sounds are marked by two letters,” said Stefan Radovanović, while his school friend Nikša Pejičić believes that Roma fairy tales more beautiful than the ones he had the chance to hear and read so far.
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