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Sinti and Roma: History repeating

 
 
Reply Tue 16 Sep, 2008 12:13 am
Violent attacks on Gypsies in Italy this summer, along with attempts to remove Travellers' homes across Europe, have struck fear into the heart of the Roma community. Novelist Louise Doughty who has Romany ancestors, reports on the sinister new wave of persecution against Europe's fastest-growing ethnic minority.

Cover story in today's Guardian

http://i33.tinypic.com/2rhy1c9.jpg

Quote:
However often the Romany and Traveller communities of Europe are moved on, from borough to borough or across national boundaries, they will not fade away or melt into thin air. Until there is pan-European political will to address the poverty and exclusion that many face, the situation can only worsen, and the right wing will continue to use this marginalised group as a vote-scoring chip

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Type: Discussion • Score: 5 • Views: 8,477 • Replies: 8
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ossobuco
 
  1  
Reply Tue 16 Sep, 2008 12:40 am
@Walter Hinteler,
I've been semi-following this.. at least re Italy, and a few other places.
Thanks for the article link.
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Tue 16 Sep, 2008 01:55 am
Quote:
The first EU Roma Summit is set to unfold in Brussels this Tuesday. The living conditions of Roma, social integration and representation across Europe will be at the heart of debate.

The summit comes scarcely two weeks after the biggest gypsy encampment in Europe was broken up. Outside Paris, the improvised living quarters and heaps of rubbish were cleared to make way for new flats, and most of the 600 Roma residents were displaced.

Hungarian Roma MEP Livia Jaroka is committed to improving the lives of the more than 10 million Roma in the EU, and fighting discrimination. Jaroka said: “It is such a drastic situation not only mentally and human rights-wise and economically, but also culturally. It is a huge loss for Europe.”

Unemployment rates for the continent’s largest ethnic minority are very high, since Roma encounter the most barriers, said the European Commission. Lack of formal education is part of the problem, discrimination another. Roma children are often excluded from mainstream schools in Europe. Bringing together representatives of EU institutions, governments, parliaments and civil society, the summit is also aimed at tackling exclusion in health and housing.

Source: euronews
Walter Hinteler
 
  2  
Reply Tue 16 Sep, 2008 01:55 am
@Walter Hinteler,


Quote:

The meeting, which will include European Union ministers, national governments and Roma organizations, is the first time the E.U. has organized a senior level summit on the Roma. The conference, which aims to begin forging a new policy based on inclusion, is well timed. Recent episodes, especially in Italy, home to some 150,000 Roma, one of the highest populations in Europe, have reminded Europeans of a problem many would rather forget. Last spring, local residents angry over crimes they blamed on Roma, burned down Roma camps on the outskirts of both Naples and Rome. Then, in July, a newspaper photographer caught Italian sunbathers relaxing on a beach near the corpses of two teen-aged Roma girls who'd drowned.

Plans by Italy's center-right government to fingerprint Roma residents in a mandatory census have also drawn fire, despite the fact that the E.U. ruled earlier this month that the scheme was legal because it was not aimed at tracking people by ethnic background, but rather fingerprinting those who had no other way of being identified.

Confronting the Roma issue in 2008 raises questions about immigration and citizenship, identity and belonging, social policy, individual freedom and collective accountability. With their ancestry tracing back to the Indian subcontinent, the Roma settled, over the centuries, across many parts of the world, but especially in central and eastern Europe. Poor and often living apart from mainstream society, an estimated 1 million Roma went to their deaths in Nazi camps in World War II.

Source: TIME: Preparing for a 'Gypsy Summit'
Steve 41oo
 
  1  
Reply Tue 16 Sep, 2008 12:32 pm
@Walter Hinteler,
I dont think there is any chance roma people will be exterminated.

People would notice.
0 Replies
 
littlek
 
  2  
Reply Tue 16 Sep, 2008 05:45 pm
@Walter Hinteler,
Dasha could add substantially to this thread...... I learned a bit about them through her. I was annoyed that my niece decided to be a gypsy for halloween. I tried to persuade her to be a more generic fortune teller. She declined. I explained a little bit about why I thought it was not a good idea. Think she still is going as a gypsy.
ossobuco
 
  1  
Reply Tue 16 Sep, 2008 05:54 pm
@littlek,
Some portion of the news about the travail for the roma in italy has been recent items out of Naples. But Rome has a history of encampments, and I read that the roma (or whatever term) were doing ok in the Testaccio district, after some long time, re connection to the area and the people. I presume that was problematic but progress afoot. Then, not so long ago, an ouster, and the dismay was not all by the roma. I suppose that was good for real estate.
ossobuco
 
  1  
Reply Tue 16 Sep, 2008 06:08 pm
@ossobuco,
As a visitor to italy - part newborn lamb, part land use history, cultural history person, part seeker, part artist photographer, part food fiend - I have been gypsy beset at least three times. No, I'm not a fan of all that, but I've gotten some clues into it from some reading, and even in my beginning days got to be watching not so much re myself. I have some photos in my mind, if never in my camera.

- the woman in the piazza in front of the Ostiense station, or was it Pyramide, lying in the road with her arm out into traffic and then changing places as traffic changed with time of day..
- the women in filmy veils chasing the men with really good overcoats as the metro doors closed, for quick pocket picking...

anyway, I got over fear and started looking, beginning to understand.
ossobuco
 
  1  
Reply Tue 16 Sep, 2008 06:16 pm
@ossobuco,
Ok, so now I'll read the link.
0 Replies
 
 

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Sinti and Roma In Nazi Germany - Discussion by Walter Hinteler
 
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