Fundación Punjab

7/8/2009

The Sulukule neighbourhood, like Küçükbakkalköy, most of Kağithane and many other Romani neighbourhoods in Turkish cities, has already been demolished. Those few residents who were offered an alternative in Taşoluk, some 45 km from Istanbul have mostly left as the new apartments were well beyond their means and now live in temporary accommodation that is largely unsuitable; cramped and poor housing at best. The majority of the Romanlar, to use the ethnonym that people apply to themselves, who once lived in Sulukule are living in shanties close by in the Karagümrük neighbourhood, with no sanitation, running water or amenities of any kind. The report below is somewhat outdated as Fatih Belediye has already destroyed this once vibrant community and even attempted to eradicate all traces of Romani history by changing the district's name to 'Karagümrük', as I wrote previously.
 

17/08/2009 - HEALTH visits an emergency shelter camp on the outskirts of the French capital where the association “Medecins du Monde” stepped in to offer shelter and medical assistance to a group of Roma who had nowhere to go.

With as many deaths among people living on the streets in summer as there are in winter, HEALTH looks at various sectors of society that are somewhat forgotten during the holiday season: a group of Roma living precariously on the outskirts of Paris and other homeless people finding it hard to get by as charities go on vacation. Finally HEALTH goes to Pakistan where prostitutes are being told the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases for the first time ever.

HEALTH opens its show this week at an emergency shelter camp on the outskirts of Paris. Tents that are home to over 100 people since May when a fire destroyed the warehouse they were taking shelter in. Local officials had asked that they be evicted saying that the occupation of the land was illegal but last month a judge ruled that “Medecins du Monde” were correct in setting this camp up given the medical emergency of the situation.

24/08/2009 - The recent violence toward the Roma in Romania and Hungary generated concern inside the civil societies of the two countries. At the initiative of a group of human rights activists, a workshop on possible intervention solutions and resolutions took place in Tirgu Mures.

The meeting was voluntarily supported by the civic initiative of Divers Association, Liga Pro Europa and the Press Monitoring Agency. Orban Kolompar, president of the National Council of Roma Minority Self Government from Hungary, Florin Cioaba, president of the Roma Christian Center, representatives of the academic field and of civil society organizations from both countries joined the meeting.

During the two days of debates, the participants reached a common point of view regarding: the causes of the violent actions directed toward Roma; Possible intervention solutions and resolutions.

The initiators of the meeting stated that the economical crises, the values’ confusion, the hate and suspicion toward “everything that is different”, the lack of efficiency of the rule of law and justice in Romania and Hungary, have as local manifestation the violence toward Roma.

CTK

24 August 2009

Hodonin u Kunstatu, South Moravia, Aug 23 (CTK) - Some 50 people attended a
meeting and mass in memory of the victims of Romani Holocaust on the site of
former wartime internment camp for Czech Romanies in Hodonin u Kunstatu
Sunday.

Almost 1400 Romanies went through the Hodonin internment camp during World
War Two (in operation from August 1942 to December 1943). Over 200 died
there and more than 800 were sent to the extermination camp in Oswiecim
(Auschwitz) where most of them perished, said historians from the Museum of
Romani Culture that annually organises the commemorative event.

This year it was for the first time held in the complex of the former
internment camp that now serves as a recreational facility.

The Czech state is negotiating with the private owner of the complex about
its purchase.

The Museum of Roma Culture would like to establish the Romany Holocaust
educational centre and a memorial on the premises.

However, museum director Jana Horvathova said the Culture Ministry abandoned
the talks over the lack of finances, so the museum was looking for a new
form of the planned centre's operation.

17/08/2009
http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/articles/2009/08/17/reportage-01

    A young activist is on a mission to debunk stereotypes and end discrimination against one of the most poorly-treated ethnic groups in Europe.

By Brian Salmi for Southeast European Times in Podgorica

17/08/09 - Clean-cut, dressed nattily and well-groomed, Jaha Samir is about as far away from the Gypsy stereotype as he can get. He is educated, articulate and industrious -- a poster child for a new generation of activists who are out to change the way the world thinks of his people. And, no, he does not mind if you call him a Gypsy.

Samir acknowledges that his people use the term, and that they do not object strenuously to others doing so as long as the intent is not to disparage. “Gypsy", Samir explains, "originally meant 'dirty - do not touch'". The dirty label has stuck to his people ever since it was first applied to them centuries ago. In 1973, a concerted effort began to replace the term Gypsy with Roma, a term he is more comfortable with.

By Paul LeGendre
Director
Human Rights First's Fighting Discrimination Program
 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/human-rights-first/the-hungarian-government_b_255713.html

A few days ago, on August 2, 2009, a Roma woman, 45, was shot dead, and her
daughter, 13, seriously injured in an overnight attack of their home in
Kisleta, Hungary. The woman's daughter is suffering life-threatening
injuries. This tragedy does not appear to be an isolated incident, but
rather one more in a long string of violent attacks against the Roma
community in Hungary.

Human Rights First has called on the Hungarian authorities to undertake a
thorough investigation into this latest murder and to consider the
possibility that it may have been a hate crime. We deplore that in Hungary
over the last two years, there has been an apparent rise in the incidence of
violent acts against Roma - including murders, shootings, arson attacks, and
other forms of violence - that in many cases appear to be motivated by bias
against the victim's ethnicity.

 
13 August 2009 - MRG partner organisation in Macedonia, Roma Democratic Development Association, ‘Sonce’, is seriously concerned for the fate of 20 Roma families who are under pressure from the Swedish government to ‘voluntarily’ return to Kosovo.

Reports highlight that Roma returned to Kosovo face continuous discrimination and violation of their human rights. In a number of cases, discrimination is so pervasive that they are unable to identify as Roma, instead forced to identify as Ashkalia or Egyptian.

Minority Rights Group International's (MRG) Director of Programmes, Snježana Bokulić, says, 'Sweden should ensure that before it returns Kosovo Roma, circumstances are created which allow them to live in dignity and without discrimination, and no-one should ever be returned to a situation where they face persecution.'

Although Roma under special protection may be offered some return assistance if they 'agree' to return, most are placed on planes without any aid and dropped at the airport in Kosovo without any support in terms of housing, employment or healthcare.

Policy Center for Roma and Minorities

http://www.policycenter.eu/articles.htm

    On the night of 2 August, 1944, as Soviet troops closed in, 2898 Romani men, women and children were brutally murdered inside gas chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camps. Although accurate statistics are not available, in total the Roma victims of the Holocaust likely number in the hundreds of thousands. This figure includes 200 Romani children murdered in Buchenwald, Germany, in 1940 as part of a research experiment on the efficiency of the Crystal B gas later employed in the gas chambers.

    On 2 August, 2009 (65 years later – in a day and age when the events of the Holocaust are widely regarded as a dark shadow on the history of humanity), Ms Maria Balog, a Romani woman from the Hungarian town of Kisléta, became the latest victim in a relentless killing spree targeting Roma in Hungary. The killing in Hungary started in 2008 and Ms Balog was the sixth victim.

Wed Aug 12, 2009
 
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/idUSTRE57C04G20090813

(Reuters) - Eastern Europe has a significant and growing Roma or Gypsy population. Long-standing tensions between Roma and others have intensified as economic crisis bites.
Many Roma do not show up in censuses as they try to hide their ethnicity, and in some countries it is illegal to identify the Roma in legal documents.
The lack of hard data is a problem, making it difficult to tackle problems from employment to education and social services as well as policing, local experts have said.

BULGARIA

* Roma form 4.7 percent of the population, or about 370,000 people, according to the 2001 census.
* The proportion is expected to swell to 6.5-7.0 percent, or 520,000-550,000 people, by 2020, said Alexey Pamporov, a sociologist at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
* 2004 unemployment rate among the Roma was 56.2 percent, dropping to 48.3 percent in 2007 (reflecting those who quit seeking work as well as those who
found employment).