Bulgaria has recently witnessed violence against Roma for the first time. There were violent demonstrations in the capital Sofia and 14 other cities, including Plovdiv, Varna and Pleven, against the Roma minority, estimated at half a million out of a population of 7.5 million. In the forefront of the demonstrations were local Nazi gangs, who exploited the death of two Bulgarian youths for their own purposes.
Using Ethnic Tensions for Political Games (and Gains): Anti-Roma Protests in Bulgaria. Elana Faye Resnick, Truthout: “Anti-Roma sentiment continues to spread throughout Bulgaria, just in time for the presidential elections on October 23…. Yes, protests against Roma are dangerous and must be stopped before violence ensures, but this wave of anti-Gypsy sentiment is an important symptom of larger political and economic issues – of countrywide poverty, high-level government corruption and the misuse of European Union (EU) funds. Right now, most people want a Band-Aid, but what they need most is to look at what created this massive societal wound”: here.
This video from the European Parliament says about itself:
Joe Higgins MEP explains why he voted in favour of the resolution condemning French President Nicolas Sarkozy for his racist policies of scapegoating and deporting people from the Roma minority in France. (09-09-10).
Some 160 French police descended on a campsite in Marseilles at the crack of dawn on Tuesday and rounded up an equal number of Roma people in an operation human rights groups slammed as “aggressive”: here.
French president’s associates charged in “Karachigate” scandal: here.
England: Dale Farm families wrongfooted Basildon council today by applying for the site’s front gates to be placed on the Heritage list: here.
Dale Farm families returned to London’s High Court yet again today – but a presiding judge warned that the travellers could not expect to win every time: here.
Battle for future of Dale Farm nears critical point: here.
‘FULL CLEARANCE OF DALE FARM IS NOT ENFORCEABLE’ – say campaigners following High Court hearing: here.
This video about Hungarian neo-nazi Jobbik party is called The NAZI Jobbik – LET’S STOP THEM TOGETHER!
The Hungarian Red Cross evacuated hundreds of Roma women and children from their homes today because they were frightened of a far-right vigilante group which was setting up a training camp near their village: here.
British mass eviction of Roma and travelers: here.
A German court convicted Ukrainian national John Demjanjuk today of thousands of counts of acting as an accessory to murder at a nazi death camp and jailed him for five years – closing one chapter in a decades-long legal battle: here.
Last week, a court in Munich handed down a relatively mild sentence to Ukrainian-born John Demjanjuk on charges of accessory to murder involving 28,000 Jews at the Sobibor concentration camp in occupied Poland: here.
Reding: No apology for my comparison to World War II
Commissioner Reding has strongly criticized France
Wednesday, September 22, 2010, 18:17
By our correspondent Christopher Ostendorf in Strasbourg
In Strasbourg, Commissioner Reding has emphasized again that she will not tolerate that France flouts European Union rules, while deporting Roma. She also said that she did not regret her comparisons with World War II.
The European Commission suspects France of discrimination against Roma Gypsies, by arresting them en masse and expelling them from the country. Roma, like all other European citizens, have the right to travel freely within the European Union.
The European Commission is currently investigating the French policy and they expect to decide next week whether France should appear before the European court.
Rage
The Luxembourg European Commissioner Reding has become an object of anger of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, by making a comparison with World War II.
In Strasbourg, Reding made it clear once more that she does not regret her words and that she is not apologizing to the French president. She only said that she regretted that her words “have been misunderstood.”
Special responsibility
She is not taking back any of her words. Indeed, the Commissioner explained that she, being a Luxembourger, feels a special responsibility for the treatment of Roma.
During World War II, all Roma Gypsies from Luxembourg were deported by the Third Reich. Especially considering this history, Commissioner Reding does insist that she correctly criticizes Sarkozy for his instruction to arrest and deport primarily Roma.
By now, France has deleted the word Roma from the controversial statement. Next week will tell whether that is sufficient to prevent a lawsuit before the European Court of Justice.
Romanian leader ‘asked Sarkozy to stop deporting Roma’: here.
Anne-Marie Gouvet, an anesthesiologist in Pau in southwestern France, has written to Nicolas Sarkozy to refuse her Legion of Honor medal, which she was to receive next January. She hopes this will “influence public opinion”: here.
Over 100 Romanians have been forced out of their homes because of the vicious racist attacks
More than 100 Romanians who have been driven out of their homes in Belfast have been offered temporary housing by the Northern Ireland Executive.
Social Development Minister Margaret Richie offered them temporary refuge in vacant student accommodation for a week, while the Housing Executive worked on a more permanent solution.
Dozens of parents and children including a five-day-old baby had fled from their homes in the Lisburn Road area in fear for their lives.
The migrants, who are of Roma origin, took refuge in a nearby church hall on Tuesday night, too terrified to return to their homes.
Sections of a mob of youths had chanted “Combat 18“.
Combat 18 is an international, but primarily England-based, nazi terrorist organization, a tendency within the so called “Blood and Honour” movement. The “18″ is an acronym for AH, Adolf Hitler, their “hero”. Combat 18 has links to sectarian “loyalist” gangs in Northern Ireland.
and given nazi salutes while they threw bricks through windows, while masked men directly threatened the refugees, telling them to get out or they would be shot.
The attack followed an anti-racist demonstration in support of the families by their neighbours on Monday evening, which had also been subjected to abuse and missile-throwing.
Belfast City Church pastor’s wife Trish Morgan said: “We had 113 people here overnight, including small babies and toddlers. The families were bewildered, frightened and just not sure how the situation had reached that stage.”
Politicians of all stripes have roundly condemned the horrific attacks.
Deputy First Minister and Sinn Fein MP Martin McGuinness, who visited the area today along with DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson, said: “I met with numerous families who are genuinely fearful for their lives and those of their families. I held a five-day-old baby girl in my arms today. She was born in Belfast and is now forced to leave her home as a result of attacks by racist, criminal thugs.”
Mr Donaldson said: “The actions of a tiny number of racist thugs in South Belfast is serving only to tarnish the image of Northern Ireland right across the globe.”
However, trade union representatives and equality workers argue that the attacks are indicative of a deepening malaise in Northern Ireland, at least partly fuelled by the main parties’ inaction.
Kevin Doherty of the Irish Committee of Trade Unions told the Star: “we totally condemn what has happened. We are still trying to get to the bottom of these attacks.
“We know the BNP have been trying to get a foothold in Northern Ireland and that they have a call centre in Belfast.
“We are not sure whether the BNP and Combat 18 are behind this attack or whether it is disaffected youths from the area.
“There were a spate of attacks on Polish workers in that area a while ago, but that wasn’t really reported. Around 60 families had to move out as a result.
“There are huge numbers of alienated youth in areas like this which have massive social deprivation and the peace process has passed these people by.
“Stormont has done nothing for these people and groups such as the BNP seek to exploit this.”
Equality Commission chief executive Evelyn Collins said: “The attacks over the past few days which have forced a number of Romanian families to leave their homes are a grim reflection of the persistence of racial prejudice within our society.”
Urgent meetings of community activists were in progress today in an attempt to resolve the issue.
At the heart of Europe, police have begun fingerprinting children on the basis of their race – with barely a murmur of protest from European governments. Last week, Silvio Berlusconi‘s new rightwing Italian administration announced plans to carry out a national registration of all the country’s estimated 150,000 Gypsies – Roma and Sinti people – whether Italian-born or migrants. Interior minister and leading light of the xenophobic Northern League, Roberto Maroni, insisted that taking fingerprints of all Roma, including children, was needed to “prevent begging” and, if necessary, remove the children from their parents.
The ethnic fingerprinting drive is part of a broader crackdown on Italy’s three-and-a-half million migrants, most of them legal, carried out in an atmosphere of increasingly hysterical rhetoric about crime and security. But the reviled Roma, some of whose families have been in Italy since the middle ages, are taking the brunt of it.
Rome is abuzz with rumours after a string of controversies involving Silvio Berlusconi and ambitious TV starlets. It’s not the first time the Italian premier’s playboy lifestyle has brought him attention. But this time the accusations could land him in court, reports John Hooper.
THOUSANDS of mourners flocked to the funeral on Wednesday of Jeno Koka, the seventh Hungarian Gypsy to be murdered in similar attacks since July 2008: here.
Violence and persecution follow the Roma across Europe
Ian Traynor in Ambrus, Slovenia
Monday November 27, 2006
Miha Strojan was tending to his sick mother when the mob arrived.
Wielding clubs, guns and chainsaws, several hundred villagers converged on the cottage in a clearing in the beech forest with a simple demand.
“Zig raus [Gyppos out],” they called in German, deliberately echoing Nazi racist chants. “Bomb the Gypsies.”
It was the last Saturday of last month, when the mob terrorised the extended family of more than 30 Roma, half of them children, into fleeing their clearing a mile over the hill from the farming village of Ambrus in eastern Slovenia.
“They were building bonfires on our land and shouting that if we don’t move out, they will bomb us and crucify our children,” recalls Mr Strojan, 30.
A Slovene filmmaker, Fillip Robar Dorin, present at the scene, said it reminded him of the Kristallnacht pogroms of 1938 when the Nazis rampaged against the Jews of Germany and Austria.
