The Romano actor Zdeněk Godla, starring in the recent movie “Invalid” spoke about working in a Slovak Roma settlement for the movie. He said he cannot understand how politicians can sinply do nothing about this.
Karel Holomek, an important Roma activist, publicist and politician, celebrateds his 86th birthday on March 6. He was born into a family of original Moravian Roma. Like his father, Tomáš Holomek, the first university-educated Roma in Czechoslovakia, he graduated from university – majoring in mechanical engineering at the Military Academy in Brno and worked there as an assistant for several years. Due to his rejection of the occupation of Czechoslovakia, he was expelled from the faculty.
Karel Holomek worked in the first Czech Roma organization, the Gypsy-Roma Union. Between 1982 and 1989 he worked for the Samizdat publishing house, in the post-Soviet period he was a member of the Czech National Council for the Civic Forum.
A forum will be held “Suffering of Roma and Sinti in the Second World War” will be held on March 7th in the Synagogue of Niš. Osman Balić, president of the Presidency of the Standing Conference of Roma Citizens’ Associations in Serbia – League of Roma, Đokica Jovanović, retired sociologist and university professor, and Nebojša Ozmić, senior curator of the National Museum in Niš, will speak at the forum.
Discriminations of Roma and Domari (the Roma Middle Eastern cousins) is prevalent in the help of the victim of the recent earthquake in Turkey.
The Christian Roma Vocational Colleges Network and the Roma Vocational Colleges Association will participate in a professional trip at the beginning of March to present themselves at an international conference in Brussels.
In Hungary, eleven Roma vocational colleges have been working for more than ten years on the higher education career path and institutional and social integration of young people of Roma origin and/or underprivileged.
The issue with this is the fact that education is segregated. That seems not to be obvious to the promoters of such colleges…
A scandal broke out at a festival in Miskolc, Hungary. Gyula Horváth, the president of a Roma organisation had all the permission to collect donations and distribute balloons at the festival. The city police, however, harassed him and told him to leave.
“They have been harassing me since the morning, since the Festival started. First they wanted to disturb me, then they threatened me, then they wanted to ring out the stand with a cordon. There were about ten people here, they checked my papers, but I have all the official permits,” Horváth told.
The president negotiated with the police for two hours. In the meantime, they took photos of him, and then the police sent the photos to the mayor.
Marsell Bendig won the award of best actor in a supporting role of the Czech Film and Television Academy on Saturday. He gave an exclusive interview to ROMEA TV right after the ceremony.
The movie for which he received this award is called “Banger” and was directed by Adam Sedlák. The movie was shot on an iPhone and was shown in July 2022 at the International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary. It tells the story of Alex, a young drug-addicted dealer who wants to change his life and become famous as a rapper, played by actor Adam Mišík. Marcel Bendig played the role of Alex’s friend Ládi in the film.
With a special exhibition, the police headquarters and the Hanover region commemorate the deportation of Sinti and Roma by the National Socialists to the Auschwitz concentration camp. In the first weeks of March 1943, more than 700 Sinti and Roma, including many children, were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau from what is now Lower Saxony alone.
For the last three years, Filip Kaleja (38) has been helping budding musicians who don’t have enough funds to make their own recordings to make their dreams come true. He co-founded the label RMF Evolution Records, which publishes Roma musicians, including those from the poorest backgrounds. In addition, he heads the organization Ostravaská Nota, which co-organizes cultural events in Ostrava, but also supports the use of Romany among the youngest generation of Roma.
More news this week about Roma in the French press. A movie on the Roma Genocide during the Holocaust, which will be released this year; a book by Philippe Lafitte,, where one of the protagonist is a Rom, but which unfortunately uses quite a few stereotypes; a lenghty article in the Le Monde on racism and on the measures the government is taking to fight it; and then the usual. A fire in a camp, a new squat, and travellers “bothering” a town.
An interview with Magdalena Karvayova, co-founder of the Awen Amenca association which focuses on equal access to quality education for Roma children.
There is a long way to go still
The Romanian Orthodox Church should apologize for centuries of Roma slavery. It would be a long overdue symbolic gesture, historians, sociologists and representatives of the Roma community believe.
On March 3rd, 1943, 80 years ago, German police arrested Sinti and Roma and deported them to concentration camps.
Several articles in the German press commemorated this day.
Being threatened with a lawsuit by Roma for their involvement in Slavery, the Orthodox Church of Romania denies exclusive responsibility in the enslavement of Roma in Romania.
A long article about the Romani artist Małgorzata Mirga-Tas and her plans for the future. She recently received a scholarship in Berlin, visits friends in London, opens an exhibition in Sweden, brings new ideas to her studio in Szaflary in Podhale, and comes to her hometown of Czarna Góra in Spiš. Her work is raising a lot of interest. Recently, the New York Times proposed to prepare a large reportage about her.
After the supreme court judgement on school segregation, condemning the state and town of Stará Ľubovňa-Podsadek, another case of segregation was judged by the regional court in Prešov. This one concerned three Roma students in the Elementary School with Kindergarten in Hermanovce in the Prešov district. The court judged they were discriminated against. The parents of the three children will receive each 5’000 EUR.
Sinti and Roma organisations as well as other victims associations are asking the members of the Hamburg Parliament to include not only the fight against anti-Semitism but also anti-Gypsyism as a state goal in the state constitution. “With the change in the preamble to the Hamburg Constitution, you will soon have the rare opportunity to take responsibility for the memory of National Socialist terror,” says a letter published on Monday by the Auschwitz Committee, National Association of Sinti in Hamburg, Rome and Cinti Union and the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime – Association of Anti-Fascists to the MPs.
A leader of the Romanian Roma community, Dorin Cioaba, is planning to sue the Romanian church for its role in Roma slavery in Romania. This would be a good thing for the church to have to admit their involvement and guilt in the Romanian Roma Slavery.
The case of two Roma who were assaulted by the police has been reopened in Romania. This is a first in Romania where the court contradicted the prosecution who wanted the case dismissed.
At the end of a five day visit to the Czech Republic, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic did not mince her words and stated that the country needed to do more to stop discrimination against Roma. She also added that schooling is all too often still segregated and that the prejudices of the teachers and staff against Roma need to be addressed.
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