The Plight of the Roma People in Europe
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6 سال پیش
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NEWS DESK | The Roma
NEWS DESK | The Roma people migrated to Europe nearly 700 years ago, but even this many centuries later, they still struggle to be accepted into their societies and are treated as outcasts. It remains another scar on Europe's dark history with minorities. Our Owen Alterman has the story.
Story:
For many Roma people in Eastern Europe, drudging in a slum is the daily reality.
‘The situation that Romani people find themselves in, of extreme poverty in many cases, is down to a very long history of exclusion and rights violations that go on to this day,’ Adam Weiss, the Managing Director of the European Roma Rights Center, says.
The Roma — still better-known under the older name, ‘gypsies’ —are a population estimated at 10-12 million scattered around Europe and are the continent’s largest ethnic minority.
The Roma migrated from India, centuries ago. But even today, a strong cultural gap remains and activists say the Roma face discrimination.
‘Roma are denied all kinds of equal treatment and all are convinced that Roma are guilty for their lower position in the society,’ Integro Association Executive Director Lilia Makaveeva claims.
The European Roma Rights Centre has sued a Serbian power company for turning off electricity in a Roma neighborhood; sued an Albanian town for not providing clean water to Roma; and taken on Slovakia’s highest court for not labeling an anti-Roma murder a hate crime.
‘We are working on cases involving school segregation, police brutality, reproductive rights violations. Romani families being targeted to have their children taken into care. Really awful thing,’ Weiss says.
Even with stepped-up campaigns, activists say the situation for Roma in Europe has not substantially improved.
‘Some of the Roma — I mean at the grassroots level — they became passive and internalized that racism. And a majority of young Roma, for instance, in all rural communities in northeast Bulgaria, they started changing their identity,’ Makaveeva explains. ‘They don’t call themselves Roma anymore. They say they are Turkish.’
Discrimination against Roma has deep roots, including during WWII, when many were murdered at the Auschwitz death camp.
‘I grew up with a very, very deep sense of what happened to Jewish people in Europe, what happened to us in Europe,’ says Weiss in comparing it to the plight of the Roma. ‘You see forms of treatment that are very similar to the kinds of things that were happening before the Holocaust, particularly the hate speech, the demonizing of people.’
Many European countries take pride in their human rights virtues, seeing human rights as core to Europe’s own identity.
Europe’s overall human rights record may well be strong, but the situation of the Roma shows it’s far from perfect.
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Story:
For many Roma people in Eastern Europe, drudging in a slum is the daily reality.
‘The situation that Romani people find themselves in, of extreme poverty in many cases, is down to a very long history of exclusion and rights violations that go on to this day,’ Adam Weiss, the Managing Director of the European Roma Rights Center, says.
The Roma — still better-known under the older name, ‘gypsies’ —are a population estimated at 10-12 million scattered around Europe and are the continent’s largest ethnic minority.
The Roma migrated from India, centuries ago. But even today, a strong cultural gap remains and activists say the Roma face discrimination.
‘Roma are denied all kinds of equal treatment and all are convinced that Roma are guilty for their lower position in the society,’ Integro Association Executive Director Lilia Makaveeva claims.
The European Roma Rights Centre has sued a Serbian power company for turning off electricity in a Roma neighborhood; sued an Albanian town for not providing clean water to Roma; and taken on Slovakia’s highest court for not labeling an anti-Roma murder a hate crime.
‘We are working on cases involving school segregation, police brutality, reproductive rights violations. Romani families being targeted to have their children taken into care. Really awful thing,’ Weiss says.
Even with stepped-up campaigns, activists say the situation for Roma in Europe has not substantially improved.
‘Some of the Roma — I mean at the grassroots level — they became passive and internalized that racism. And a majority of young Roma, for instance, in all rural communities in northeast Bulgaria, they started changing their identity,’ Makaveeva explains. ‘They don’t call themselves Roma anymore. They say they are Turkish.’
Discrimination against Roma has deep roots, including during WWII, when many were murdered at the Auschwitz death camp.
‘I grew up with a very, very deep sense of what happened to Jewish people in Europe, what happened to us in Europe,’ says Weiss in comparing it to the plight of the Roma. ‘You see forms of treatment that are very similar to the kinds of things that were happening before the Holocaust, particularly the hate speech, the demonizing of people.’
Many European countries take pride in their human rights virtues, seeing human rights as core to Europe’s own identity.
Europe’s overall human rights record may well be strong, but the situation of the Roma shows it’s far from perfect.
For more, see our ⬇
Website
Articles: https://www.i24news.tv/en
Live: https://video.i24news.tv/page/live?cl... (Subscription)
Replay: https://video.i24news.tv/page/5a97b81... (Subscription)
Social Media
Facebook: Facebook: i24newsEN
Twitter: Twitter: i24NEWS_EN
Instagram: Instagram: i24news
6 سال پیش
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