An article on the instrumentalization of the attacks by Ukrainian refugees against Roma in the Czech Republic.
The Czech government passed a law stating that from July 1st, Ukrainian refugees who have been in the country for more than 150 days will no longer receive allowances for housing and will have to find their own accommodation. Exempt are a few categories (single women with small children etc.).
Jan Husák from from the association Romodromo stated that this so-called Lex Ukraine will have the hardest impact, among others, on Roma refugees and will increase homelessness.
An article highlighting the fact that Roma refugees are being excluded by Ukrainian refugees.
The Berlin police wanted to deport a Roma family from Moldova early in the morning. The parents weren’t there, just two children. The officers took the 18-year-old daughter away and “handed over” the 11-year-old son to the neighbours. The boy then disappeared the management of the refugee home called the police and the youth welfare office, but even after the entire home was searched, he remained missing.
His siter was deported.
Many Roma in the Ukraine do not have any official documents. This prevents them from receiving social help, complicates their situation as IDPs, and often prevents them from finding official work. An action was started in Lviv, to help Roma obtain their papers.
Better late than never …
Out of the many refugees out of the Ukraine, ca. 100’000 are Roma. One of the issues they face is that many of them are stateless, they have no official papers, often lacking even a birth certificate that would prove their citizenship.
The fate of refugees in Western Europe is much better than in Eastern European countries bordering the Ukraine. There, they are definitively discriminated against.
An estimated 400,000 lived in Ukraine before the Russian invasion. A quarter fled the war-torn country. Many went to Poland. Władysław Kwiatkowski, president of the Roma Association in Poland, stated in an interview that “Not everyone in Poland realizes that many Roma fight in the ranks of the Ukrainian army. They defend their country. They are citizens of Ukraine, just like the rest”.
Dr. Małgorzata Kołaczek from the Foundation for Dialogue – one of the authors of the report “Human rights, and discrimination – the situation of Roma refugees from Ukraine in Poland. Report on research and intervention activities” Said:
“The Roma, like other Ukrainians, lose their life possessions, husbands and fathers at the front, and yet they are treated differently – as if their pain and suffering were less. As it happens in a situation of uncertainty and danger, the lowest human instincts are activated, which are directed towards those whom one “always” dislikes “.
A small child died in a fire in an asylum seeker centre in the Thuringian town of Apolda. The child is from a Roma family from the Ukraine.
It is not yet known whether this was arson or an accidental fire. Romani Rose, the chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma is asking for a prompt investigation.
Roma from Ukraine fled to Hungary because of the war, but not because of poverty. Rozina is 38 years old Romni and is one of several thousand refugees from Ukraine who fled to Hungary after the Russian invasion in February 2022.
She sits at a table and practices writing her name at a school in the eighth district of the Hungarian capital. She has freckles on her face, a bright smile, and struggles with the letter “k” when writing the surname Farkaš. The classes are run by Taleta, a non-governmental organization founded by two Hungarian women, Silvija Moldovan (Szilvia) and Agnes Pletser, immediately after the war began, with the aim of helping to educate young Roma refugees from the western Ukrainian Transcarpathian region.
Residents of the small city of Krasnystaw, Southeast of Lublin and close to the Ukrainian border, are complaining about Roma refugees who, according to them, are making the city unsafe. Upon closer reading, this boils down to petty theft of food, and small incidents.
The thefts indicate that they probably do not have enough money to survive otherwise, as Poland does not really provide much help to refugees.
An article and video on Roma refugees from the Ukraine. According to the article, there could be as many as 100’000 of them. This number is probably too high an estimate. The article focuses on Roma from Transcarpathian Ukraine in the Czech Republic, a problematic issue.
The German Greens are against the proposal to qualify Moldova and Georgia as “secure states”, a measure that would allow Germany a speedy dispatching of refugees from those countries back in their homeland.
An editorial on the discrimination faced by Roma refugees form the Ukraine in Western Europe.
While some of the statements on the Roma situation in Ukraine are not fully correct, the fact is that many Roma faced discrimination while fleeing.
According to this article in the Bulgarian press, about half of the Roma in the Ukraine are currently refugees and about a quarter of them have a relative fighting on the front. This statement was made by Ned’s Korunovska, of the European Institute for Art and Culture.
These numbers seem somewhat stretched. We doubt that many of the Roma from Transcarpathian Ukraine and Bessarabia fled. Some did, we can testify to this. This will need to be followed up.
Germany has resumed the deportation of rejected refugees. This is particularly controversial in the case of Moldova. Most of the people from Moldova requesting asylum in Germany are Roma, and there, they are discriminated against.
Bishop of Kielce Jan Piotrowski in the company of the Latin Metropolitan of Lviv, Archbishop Mieczysław Mokrzycki visited the parish of St. John Paul II in Lviv and the nearly hundred refugees who live there.
Despite the language barrier, Bishop Piotrowski also talked with Roma children studying in the parish school “Alav” (meaning “word”) organized for them, which, together with the parish priest, Fr. Grzegorz Draus, they sang their own original parish anthem and in Polish “Zielony Mosteczek”. It was a testimony to the success of students who speak Russian and Ukrainian, as well as Hungarian or Romani, on a daily basis.
3’200 people from Moldova will be expelled from Germany back into their home country at the end of the month. Most of them are Roma. These Roma protested over the weekend.
“We want to stay here. We don’t want to be deported and come back every three months,” said a young mother. Like most of those who gathered on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Mitte on Saturday afternoon, the Romni comes from the Republic of Moldova. The woman with the microphone looked desperate: “They treat us like dogs.”
The umbrella organization RomanoNet protested against the statement of the government commissioner for human rights, Klára Šimáčková Laurenčíková, who stated that the Czech Republic managed the influx of refugees from Ukraine last year. According to 15 Roma and pro-Roma organizations that RomanoNet brings together, the Czech Republic has failed to help Roma refugees from Ukraine.
“From the point of view of Roma civil society, the state as a whole has failed in providing assistance to people with a different skin colour. Many of them have been forced to return to a country where the war conflict is still ongoing, or to go to the West, where the colour of the skin is not a decisive factor in the provision of aid. In view of the above, it cannot be claimed that the situation has been managed or solved,” says the statement of the RomanoNet organization, which was provided to the news server Romea.cz by its director Michal Miko.
A reportage of Roma from the Donetsk region who were displaced by the war and who settled in Vinnytsia region (Central Ukraine). They bought houses and were allowed to use some others in the village of Potoky. All in all 68 Roma moved there.
An article about all the others (i.e. non-Serbian) minorities in Kosovo, and mostly on Roma. The situation is still not good, with unemployment, discrimination, and emigration.
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