An article on what happens when you try to set up a place where travellers can stay. This is Ireland, but could be anywhere, unfortunately.
A Rroma family form Ireland whose kid was taken away by the police on suspicions of having been abducted for being blond has been awarded 60k Euro damages. The mina point is not the damages award, the main point is that the police acted illegally based on racial profiling. This needs to be said.
The City of Biel / Bienne in the Swiss Jura is trying to prevent “foreign” Travellers, i.e. Rroma from neighbouring countries to stop there on so-called transit camps. This is the result of political activism from the Swiss Jenische (Travellers), and this, is spite of the fact that these foreign Rroma have been coming regularly every year for decades.
SHAME!
The French Press is getting confused … They tend to indiscriminately name Rroma, Manouches, Gitans, as well as autochthonous travellers “Gens du Voyage” which is some cases leads to totally absurd descriptions of “sedentary travellers” etc. All this instead of naming things as they are: Rroma – composed of 40 or so different groups among which the Sinti, but also Lovara, Kalderasha, Manouches (French Sinti), Kale (called Gitans in France), and local travellers which have nothing culturally to do with Rroma. What is so difficult here????
We reported about a planned wall in Wattrelos a while back. This wall that will separate the Belgian houses and garden from the French side where a transit camp for travellers is located. The Wall is going to be built in spite of several hefty protests.
SHAME.
Xavier Bertrand, deputy mayor of Saint-Quentin in the North of France affirmed that travellers had military weapons. The former ministers wants to disarm them to prevent violence like the recent murder in a camp in the north of France.
This is definitively DAFT! But the Figaro went a step further…
While saying that no, travellers have no military weapons, it manages to say that all Rroma are stealing and dealing with stolen goods. Nice generalisation.
UNACCEPTABLE!
An article in the Figaro is attempting to clarify the distinction between Travellers (Gens du Voyage in French), Rroma, and other “Tsiganes”…
While the Figaro is right to say that Traveller is a legal statute, at least in France, for the rest, the Figaro is utterly confused …
Let’s put it straight: Not all Travellers are Rroma, only a small portion of Rroma are travelling, and Rroma encompasses many different groups who often, like the Sinti prefer to use their group’s name instead of the generic Rroma one.
More background to the girl whose IQ beats that of Einstein and Hawkins. Chilling to read that discrimination is ripe in England against Rroma and Travellers.
In Nice, an exhibition on Rroma and travellers was stolen from the church it was in. The was certainly not for the value of stolen artefacts …
At least a journalist who went inside the camp! A view on the Rroma who have been filling Swiss Newspapers with the wedding near Zurich. Some facts on life, work, and on religion, as these are evangelical, and on the fact that Rroma are not welcome on places for travellers in Switzerland.
Another article that shows that the fears of the population and the populism of some politicians and newspapers bears no relation to reality.
Closure of the Wedding story. After all it was positive, Rroma paid, didn’t leave a mess, etc. Much ado about nothing (showing the Swiss fascination with toilets).
At least some reactions to the fact that the Rroma were there legally. Dani Huber on the topic and generally on the press. But the article is pretty bad.
20 minutes, as usual. No content, crap news, and just sensation.
Still more on the wedding near Zurich. Too much, to say the least for the lack of news at all. This time, the reaction of the Rroma Foundation on the topic.
The Rroma wedding in Zurich filled the Swis German papers yesterday and probably will continue to do so for a while. 600 Rroma, nearly a 100 caravans, all for a wedding. A farmer rented them the field.
An article about the cohabitation of “gens du voyage” – the French version of Travellers, and Rroma. Travellers is used in France to denote both non-Rroma as well as Manouches and other local travelling Rroma, while Rroma (Roms in France) is a term that is only used to denote the “foreigners”. This is a remake of the Sinti and Rroma that we know from Germany, although all are Rroma.
Again a case of a Rroma wedding near Zurich were roughly 70 caravans gathered to celebrate a wedding. These travelling Rroma are from France and Germany (with a corresponding passport) and are members of a pentacostal church. A farmer rented them his land for 5’000 Swiss Francs. People in the village are annoyed and are asking why nothing is being done by the police.
A typical controversy, including the fact that people defecate in the open, and thus befoul the region and adjacent wood.
But the WORST are the commentaries: Bigots and racists seem to love these news.
An article about a few Rroma who stopped in a field near Payerne and had to leave as the field’s owner did not want them to stay highlights the misinformation and confusion among journalists:
The title uses “Gitans” – who are not travellers, by the way, and are found only in the South of France and Spain (also called Cale); the text uses “Gens du Voyage, i.e. Travellers, which can be Rroma but could also mean Jenische (Swiss travellers) or French Travellers; and finally the police states that these are most probably “Roma” from neighbouring France. We are just missing Sinti in this article to complete the confusion!
The metropolitan police has been engulfed in a controversy surrounding a “secret” Facebook page that officers used to air racist comments about minorities, including Rroma. In several comments, the comments accused the GT (Gypsy and Travellers) to live exclusively on crime.
This cannot be tolerated from the police!
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