Actually, the BBC (bastion of hope and love, we love you BBC) did an extremely good documentary on European treatment of the romani just last year.

Being descended from russian gypsies, at least in part, I sat through it and complained about every minute of the programming. But it was worth watching *grudging*.

I’m not sure that a lack of coverage is present – it’s more a lack of will to do anything about it. Nobody really cares.

Maybe we should gather them all up and move them into northwestern India, forcibly evicting the current residents, then give them lots of weapons for self-defence. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Regarding discrimination against Romanies, how are people identified as such? E.g. if I was a Romani and moved to a different part of the country (or a different country) and possibly changed my name, how would the authorities “know” to discriminate against me.

For example, there are many Poles in Edinburgh, and I doubt if the Edinburgh authorities have any way of telling Romani Poles apart from non-Romani Poles.

This will sound a little uncaring, but I’m not sure that a lot of hand-wrining by British socialists will make a lot of difference to French or Portugeuse policy towards the most impoverished minority in Europe.

It is horrible. But much as the plight of Western Saharans is horrible, we’ve got little commercial or political clout on this one.

2 – it’s mostly just “bloody gypsies”. Like in the UK, there’s no real effort made to distinguish the roma from Irish travellers or wandering beggars. After all, they’re “all the same”, or some such.

Actually, ISTR Romani communities in Europe are more obvious and insular than they are in the UK. so distinguishing between polish gypsies and polish non-gypsies is easy enough – one lot live in the town, the other on a sink estate a mile or so out and travel into the town centre to beg and steal.

3 – while I’m in Morocco in November, I’ll see if I can sort out the Western Sahara problem once and for all. I’ll take a few million ballot papers and issue a surprise!referendum before the authorities can react

OK, maybe not….

@3 margin4eror: I’m not sure that a lot of hand-wrining by British socialists will make a lot of difference to French or Portugeuse policy towards the most impoverished minority in Europe.

I disagree. European countries share a common political culture based on democracy, liberty, equality, and fraternity. In their hearts, they know apartheid-like behaviour such as residential segregation is wrong. And some of these actions are likely to contravene the ECHR or Charter of Fundamental Rights.

But much as the plight of Western Saharans is horrible, we’ve got little commercial or political clout on this one.

The difference is that Western Sahara (or Morocco) isn’t in the EU.

Nick

Maybe an MP will ammend our own referendum on AV to one of political independence for Western Sahara. I’m pretty sure we used to decide on borders and independent statehood around the world once-upon-a-time.

Phil

Moroco is of course the only applicant the EU has ever turned down (on the basis of geography as it happens). However, I’m not sure the extent to your sentiment makes much headway when faced with reactionary fervour of european peoples in other countries.

After all, along with a shared political culture of democracy, liberty, equality, and fraternity, Europe also shares a much longer lasting political culture of persecution of minorities and nation-state-ism.

The EU is a glorious attempt t keep the last of those in check, and the council of europe along with the un are glorious attempts to keep the penultimate of them in check. But that’s a far cry from britain stopping poland expelling romanis.

I couldn’t agree more with this post.

The situation in Copenhgane is even worse than Jon said: the mayor has asked the police for assistance in forcibly deporting 200 to 400 Roma.

In Germany, the government is planning to deport 12,000 Roma over the next few years. They were asylum seekers from Kosovo, which has reluctantly agreed to take them back, even though many are children who have grown up in Germany and speak neither Serb nor Albanian. ( http://euobserver.com/9/30563 )

It is pleasing, at least, that the French Socialists have spoken out clearly against Sarkozy’s plan. In the French case, it should be noted that this is just one strand of an increasingly xenophobic rightwing policy – Sarkozy has also suggested that children born in France to foreign parents should no longer be automatically eligible for French citizenship, and has been accused by the Socialists of aping the far-right leader Le Pen. (The niqab debate should surely be seen in light of this series of policies.) ( http://euobserver.com/9/30570 )

Worryingly, the Dutch have just formed a rightwing coalition government with backing from the far-right Freedom Party.

If there is one glimmer of hope, it perhaps comes from Sweden. Though its record is by no means good (at least 50 Roma have been illegally deported by Swedish police so far this year), a government-appointed panel has just reported on how to improve Roma rights, and has recommended the setting up of a Truth Commission. ( http://www.thelocal.se/28104/20100730/ )

I believe a lot of hostility to the Roma is motivated by a belief that they are more likely to be involved in crime than the “native” populations. Is there any actual hard evidence behind this? If so then it’s not just a case of addressing persecution but of addressing this alleged criminality. Those 23 Romani in Denmark for example – were they actually criminals? If so I can’t say I have much sympathy.

@6 margin4eror: After all, along with a shared political culture of democracy, liberty, equality, and fraternity, Europe also shares a much longer lasting political culture of persecution of minorities and nation-state-ism.

Yes it does. European societies are hypocritical (being human is a necessary and sufficient condition for this). But because they are hypocritical, they won’t want to admit, even to themselves, when they are being bigotted. So that’s some leverage that can be used to embarrass them into mending their ways.

@8 Richard: Those 23 Romani in Denmark for example – were they actually criminals? If so I can’t say I have much sympathy.

Me neither. And Nick’s description (@4): “a sink estate a mile or so out and travel into the town centre to beg and steal” sounds more like a chavvy underclass than an ethnicity.

Across Europe, eight million Romani citizens of the EU are subject to systematic segregation and persecution that is similar to the treatment of Jews in the first months of Nazi rule.

I don’t think this was the best way to start a discussion of a very difficult issue. As to how should Europe as a whole integrate the Roma people into the various countries that the Roma now live.

Each country has different laws on the rights and responsibilities of people living there I think. In many you are required to carry ID cards at all times. In Germany I know, as I did it myself when I lived there, you have to register your address with the police and get your ”Anmeldung” card.
http://www.britishgermanassociation.org/special.php?pageno=181

In the first instance, you must register your residence (“polizeiliche Anmeldung”) in Germany, a procedure which applies to all residents irrespective of nationality. Within a week of finding permanent accommodation, i.e. not a hotel, you will need to register your address at the local Residence Registration Office (“Einwohnermeldeamt”), usually located in the town hall. To register you need to present your valid passport (EU-citizens are allowed to bring their national identity card), a copy of the lease or rental agreement and a completed registration form, which is usually available at the registry office.

I don’t know if France has such requirements, and as for the link given in the OP about forced evictions, they mostly seem to be cases like this:

19 January: Piazza Tirana: 30 Romanian Roma (including 12 children) evicted; eviction carried out by local police under the order of the prefect-commissioner; 6 shacks with the properties were demolished; no written order, no alternative accommodation provided.

These homes are often tents and shacks in the woods. I’m not sure if they are leagally called homes. I’m not saying I support these actions, because I don’t know enough about them, but similar camps in Britain, especially when children were living in them would cause social services great concern. If they were from Romania and Bulgaria and had no rights to benifits and social housing or the right to work, there is obviously a problem.

I know that Britain has – or at least had – a law that could bannish British citizens from different countries within the UK, and it was used several times to forbid terrorist suspects from Northern Ireland from travelling to Britain. I think it is the case that EU citizens can be deported from particular EU countries. They can’t be forced to stay in their home country as they could just move to another EU state, but I think they can be excluded from a particular country.

In Ireland there is an ongoing debate about the Eastern European Roma who have come here and how they live and support themselves while here.

Whilst first welcomed as refugees over ten years ago, the welcome had slowly got less and less as the years went by, and by 2007 this story was making national news.

A group of more than 50 Roma people living on a motorway roundabout near Dublin airport since May are urging the Irish government to grant them housing and allow them to stay in the country.
The group from Romania are not entitled under Irish law to work or stay more than three months, but say their squalid conditions are better than home.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/6909578.stm

Refused asylum, it was a bit of a stand off. Since then, a lot more Roma have come to Ireland.

This should be seen in the broader context of a rightward drift across Europe at the moment. The persecution of Muslims* is obviously part of it, and as this article points out Roma people are still widely discriminated against. I read somewhere that anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise across the continent as well. It is disturbing, to say the least, that the EU appears to be doing not much at all to combat these attitudes and that leading parties (inc our very own Conservatives) are aligning themselves with some disgraceful far-right extremists in the EU parliament.

*Yes folks, banning an item of clothing that only one section of society wears counts as persecution.

As if on cue, Five Chinese Crackers has flagged up this nasty bit of racism by the Express directed at Roma people. “Gypsy children sent to loot UK” – just replace “Gypsy” with “Jewish” and see how that sounds.

I am delighted to see the issue of discrimination against the Roma being given attention here.

The Roma are victims of terrible negative typecasting across Europe. Often being described as thieves and suchlike.

I have been doing some work in Romania and I hear very great discrimination expressed against the Roma there.

The treatment of the Roma by the italian authorities has an additional reinforcing effect on the people of Hungary and Romania against the Roma.

The Roma have a superb and sophisticated culture and they are one of the great treasures of Europe.

Their music is celebrated by great European composers such as Maurice Ravel, Bela Bartok and George Enescu.

The Roma are a part of the European story, they are a crucial component of the mix of cultures that form the continent.

To be anti-Roma is to be anti-european. It is to want to turn europe into something that it is not.

The reason the left isn’t talking about the Roma is because it is getting its knickers in a twist trying to convince Ed Miliband, Saviour Of The Left (TM), to not be such a wet blanket in his half-assed support of gay marriage.

Oh, I’m totally not anti-Roma; as you’ll know if you’ve spent any time out there at all, there is a lot that goes on in romani culture that doesn’t sit too well with their hosts. Aforementioned BBC documentary (which spent a lot of time looking at the activities of a romani sink estate (well, camp) in italy) highlighted child marriages, begging and theft (sometimes combining the last two – mugging-with-tears people at ATMs). Hunting down the documentary, it’s called “This World – Gypsy Child Thieves”. Seems like it came under a lot of flack from various groups. Not particularly surprising, given the content ( http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/last-nights-television-this-world-ndash-gypsy-child-thieves-bbc2-1780881.html )

It’d be a mistake to say that all (or even most) romani engage in such practices; but it’s certainly a lot more common than among their hosts. That’s no excuse to treat them as subhuman or pretend human rights don’t apply to them, but it is something that needs to be taken into account. Playing the race card against against a cultural issue gets us nowhere; if I trotted off to live in a roma community, my children & grandchildren would be behaving in exactly the same way as their peers.

So what should europe be doing, rather than lots of forcible deportation? Massive social support schemes, I’d go for, personally. My local travellers camp (not sure if they’re actually romani or not – like I said, lines in the UK get blurred so easily), while completely disenfranchised from the surrounding community, don’t cause any problems and are living in reasonably acceptable accommodation. Many of them work, some of them run their own businesses.

Because gypsies are an outgroup.

Bamber gascoigne, you most certainly are not.

The problem here is the same as that in Darfur, albeit somewhat less drastic. Bluntly, a sedantary people with developed social systems and claims to use of resources come into conflict with a migratory people, with a different set of social norms but also seeking to use the same resources.

Not quite sure how anyone solves this, mind.

If the Roma are successfully expelled – fat chance of THAT! – will they be able to take other people’s property with them when they go?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-456530/Exodus-Delving-mindset-Romanias-migrants-seek-new-life-Britain.html

The opening scenes of ‘Borat’ were filmed in Glod, Romania, and – if you watch carefully – you can see the posh houses of the gypsy kings, the crime clan barons, standing out from the wretched shacks.

The Littlejohn word is Romaphobia but the Hun word is anti-Ziganism.

People who wax lyrical about the Roma have obviously never fought of a mass coordinated Romakids’ pickpocketing attack.

I recommend the experience.

Why aren’t we talking about Europe’s Roma shame?

Why aren’t we talking about how the Roma can be integrated into European society?
It’s going to be very difficult if they continue to be nomadic and move around the continent.

For example, when a large family group arrive on a bus in Rome from Romania and just set up camp along the river …. what are the obligations of the state and local authorities towards them? Any? It’s all very well focusing on the prejudice they face, but are they to be assimilated. Or by doing that is someone going to suggest that we would be denying them their culture or something?

If they are to maintain their culture of being nomadic and (in Ireland anyway) making a living from begging and selling the Big Issue and not taking their children’s schooling seriously, then the social services have really got a difficult job.

In Belfast, the only improvement I have seen is that a number of Roma men are now selling the evening newspaper, both at stands in the city center, and at traffic lights to passing motorists.

If anyone knows of other cases of Roma people in western Europe having legitimate jobs, this might at least be something positive to pick up on, and show up the possibilities for other Roma. Working in agriculture is not going to be a good example if the work is seasonal and the families move around, because their children won’t be getting a proper school education.

Don’t know who the “we” is that doesn’t talk about “Europe’s Roma shame” but at least one public service I know, which has to deal with Roma, traveller and gypsy communities on a daily basis, is trying its best to combat tabloid bullshit. Could more be done? Sure. But the subject is not ignored.

In my view, unless you are discussing the Nazis directly, mentioning the Nazis to support any argument should result in immediate termination of the argument, and the mentioner should automatically lose that argument.

So, way to go with that opening statement that 8m Roma are experiencing Nazi-style treatment. NOT the kind of coverage I think is helpful in any way.

We are talking about this issue today, yay. But sadly I think by tomorrow we will all have forgotten and moved to some other topic. That’s how it goes with complex problems that none of us here are experts on.

Ironically most of the grievances against Roma used to justify discrimination in Eastern Europe are themselves caused by the endemic discrimination.

I studied the Eastern European Roma at university (looking specifically at housing issues) – and saw evidence with my own eyes that in Eastern Europe Roma are restricted from doing a huge variety of things by racism:
- getting all but the most menial jobs in non-Roma businesses (only morons employ thieves)
- claiming benefits (benefits offices don’t deal kindly with liars)
- report crimes (police lock up lying thieves, not deal with their false accusations)
- access to medical care (dirty beggars might give other patients diseases)
- get decent education (parents enforce segregation, and voters don’t like paying for schools which only educate malevolent idiots)
- buying/renting legal housing (who would saddle their former neighbours with such awful neighbours?)

The result is that have to beg and steal in order to eat, which means people’s prejudices are confirmed. There’s a downward spiral going on here, and the Roma can’t break it on their own.

Phil Hunt: “Me neither. And Nick’s description (@4): “a sink estate a mile or so out and travel into the town centre to beg and steal” sounds more like a chavvy underclass than an ethnicity.”

The word “chavvy” is a word in Romany meaning “child”. It was adopted first as a regional term of abuse against gypsies, and then broadened out to include other “undesirables”… so when you call someone a “chav” you’re saying they act like a gypsy. So much for all the hostility to gypsies being because they act like chavs…

In the last post I should have said ‘parts of Eastern Europe’ – my experience was from Bulgaria. I hear it’s better in some places, and actually worse in others.

I should also state I’m not anti-Bulgarian: in fact I think if the Roma issue existed on the same scale in the UK, with the same economic problems, we’d probably treat them very similarly.

@24 Jungle: The word “chavvy” is a word in Romany meaning “child”.

Indeed.

so when you call someone a “chav” you’re saying they act like a gypsy

Except that etymology != meaning.

@24 jungle: and saw evidence with my own eyes that in Eastern Europe Roma are restricted from doing a huge variety of things by racism

To discriminate against someone as part of a group, you have to identify them as a member of that group. But gypsies don’t look reliably different from any other Europeans. Possibly one could also identify group membership by one’s name or clothes. But clothes are changed regularly (one hopes) and people can presumably change their names too. So if gypsies took more effort to fit in with the rest of society, would they face so much discrimination?

The EU is going to have to get serious about the travelling Roma population in a similar way that Ireland has had to do so about it’s own Traveller community.
As accomodation seems to be such a problem when Roma people first arrive in a new place. perhaps there need to be dedicated places where they can go and set up camp.
Like the ‘halting sites’ both tempory and permenant that counties and councils are obliged to make available for Travellers in Ireland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_site

I read this in the paper yesterday about a migrant advice center opening in Belfast – and maybe every city in the EU needs such offices and resources directed at things like this.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-10856787

Although as a first port of call type ”one stop shop” I could see a small office being quickly overwhelmed in some cities. Dublin for example. When I was there earlier in the year I saw family groups of Roma in the social security offices, in the waiting areas, and then being called for interview, and it must be very difficult trying to explain to people that they don’t qualify for housing or social security payments when they are explaining that they have nothing and are sleeping on the streets with their children.
Or are in some temporary hostel accomodation, but are asking for housing.

In Belfast, I’m pretty sure that a lot of the people are from Romania, and don’t know how they got housed down in the university area where there are about four houses in a row where Roma people live. You get to recognise them after a while as many of them are the musician buskers in the city centre and the Big Issue sellers and beggars who sit outside the shops everywhere you go.

And only a rightwinger would say this you might think, but the better conditions and living get for migrating Roma in one country (say Ireland for example) then the more that would head to that place specifically because of that.

So if Ireland is said to be far better than Greece as a destination to head for, Ireland gets more Roma people arriving there.

It’s a tricky one. Can anyone give an opinion on what Rome should have done with its shacks and shantytowns that sprang up along the river Tiber?

This (below) was ten years ago, so plans to resettle Roma people in ”settlements vaguely reminiscent of American Indian reservations” didn’t go so well in the end it seems.
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20001029&slug=TTC823PUF

“To discriminate against someone as part of a group, you have to identify them as a member of that group. But gypsies don’t look reliably different from any other Europeans.”

Well, in Eastern Europe they have dramatically darker skin than the majority population, plus typically different facial features, and are instantly identifiable for that reason. Admittedly the differences are more subtle elsewhere, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Damon: “As accomodation seems to be such a problem when Roma people first arrive in a new place. perhaps there need to be dedicated places where they can go and set up camp.”

Certainly if the Roma in question are coming from Romania or Bulgaria they were all forcibly settled and many of their other cultural practices were effectively banned in the communist period or even earlier. Most grew up living in houses, and travelling is something their grandparents might remember, and not something they seem to aspire towards particularly (any more than I aspire to be a farmer because my grandparents remember growing up on farms).

Britain cannot afford to pay for thse Roma – perhaps it would be better sending them back from whence they came but providing aid so that the could be educated. It is not without reason that they are associated with crime, begging and the like and that not just in big cities.

We British have no rights whatsoever – any tom, Dick or Harry can come here and once they are here, we cannot get rid of them. Never though I’d see the day when I’d agree with anything Sarkozy did!