Three steps to progress for Roma

Written by Secretariat | 19 January 2012

Just days into a new year and already it seems there is little prospect of a change to the treatment of Europe’s Roma people.

News reports suggest that tempers are running high in the Czech Republic town of Tanvald after two Roma men were gunned down in the early hours of 1 January.

The shooting came just three weeks after an angry mob carried out an arson attack on a Roma camp in Turin, Italy. This followed a 16-year-old girl’s complaint that she had been “raped by Gypsies.” Although the teenager later confessed that the story was a complete fabrication, it was, by then, much too late for the chastened Roma community.

There were other such ‘incidents,’ in 2011, their occurrence explained away neatly by references to Europe’s escalating financial crisis, the re-emergence of far right extremism or the deepening sense of grievance among many and their isolation from mainstream politics.

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Dear Colleagues, Collaborator and Friends

Our offices will be closed from Friday 23 December 2011 until· Monday 2 January 2012 in observance of Christmas and New Year holidays.

anti-Gypsyism in the CoE Member States

Written by Secretariat | 23 November 2011

ERTF calls on the CM of the CoE to condemn and sanction anti-Gypsyism in its member states

Istanbul, 23 November 2011: The European Roma and Travellers Forum at the second meeting of the Ad hoc Committee of Experts on Roma Issues (CAHROM) in Istanbul delivered a Statement appealing to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to send a clear signal to member states to condemn racism and anti-Gypsyism. Moreover the Committee of Ministers should urge Member States to demonstrate political commitment to prevent collective criminalization, introduce institutional guarantees to combat discrimination and segregation and take steps to significantly improve the social-economic conditions of Roma in Europe.

Anti-Gypsyism has become an usual environment for its manifestation in Europe, an accepted way of thinking and reacting for large numbers of people of all categories in our societies. In times of economic crisis and political turmoil, societies tend to always look for scapegoats. The Roma have been depicted as illiterate and unwilling to integrate, encompassing the perfect image of what is going bad in our societies. Deprived of proper education and excluded from the labour market, they are branded as parasites of the same societies that have marginalised and oppressed them for centuries.

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