Desegregation, Civil Rights, Self-Determination Issues. Roma Leaders, News. Updating Coming.

Conferences, Refugee Camp Issues, Schools Desegregation Progress;
issues pending; or otherwise to be discussed. *

Alarms.  Hopes.  Despairs. Cheers.  Steps ahead and back. Ongoing research for progress.

1.  Conferences.  From 2002. Lodz, Poland. Romany National Congress.  Site of largest ghetto for Jews and Gypsies in WWII, at the Marysin district.

• Populations compressed, deprived. Racial bias. Chairman Rudko Kawczynski.  Issue:  He warned that the Roma face a "demographic time bomb" -- that the populations are growing so rapidly that a Palestinian problem, of others keeping Romany people in the equivalent of camps, may result. The young people will not be quiescent during that process, and the numbers of Roma may approach 20 million in Europe and Eastern Europe.  He sees parallels between anti-Gypsy sentiment and anti-Semitic sentiments, both primarily a European phenomenon.  "We will face a Palestinian problem in Europe." See NYT 5/10/2002.  How many are there?  Western Europe 7-15 million -- nobody knows, see Pohl NYT article below. Add 5-10% more for Eastern Europe.

• Disparate groups. Romany Civil Rights Foundation, Hungary. Agnes Daroczi, a leader. Issue:   Need for unity.  Without unified voice, she suggests, how to pressure nations to improve Romany life. See Lodz conference, NYT 5/10/2002. Example of the diversity:  a memorial service was held at Lodz for victims of the Holocause, officiating:  "a Romany mullah from Macedonia, an evangelical Romany pastor from Sweden, and the rabbi of Lodz." Needed, says Pohl NYT article #3 below, is a unifying figure: so far the Roma have no equivalent of a Martin Luther King or Malcolm X or Rosa Parks (who sat on the bus, as a black, in the forbidden white area, sparking a decade of protests) to carry on the Roma cause.

• Holocaust compensation. Further from Agnes Daroczi:  This has been uneven.  Romany prisoners in Austrian camps received both reparations and pensions.  Those imprisoned in Hungary have received nothing even though the funds have been set aside (is this too broad? examples were given).

• Rom exclusion from post-communist era prosperity in western Europe, shunted aside into refugee camps, discriminated against, attacked.

•  Children segregated, sent out of mainstream to schools for the "learning disabled", perpetuating underclass.  School desegregation lawsuits were planned in other news accounts, see Lawsuits, at #2.
  

• Refugee camps.  Wars in Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo. Squalor. Cut off from traditional homes, sources of income.

• Assimilation - pressed by most nations - at the cost of Roma identity.  This from Nicolae Gheorghe, a delegate. Is self-determination the best way.

2.  Lawsuits.  

• Service and hiring.  Anti-discrimination. Many modeling after USA civil rights issues (as in Brown v. Board of Education). From 2002:  The Romani Baht Foundation, founded in Bulgaria in 1995, see ://baht2000.free.bg/en.html/.  This organization  filed a lawsuit against a Bulgarian coffee shop in Stara Zagorra for refusing to serve a Roma. Dimitrina Petrova. Mikolsc, Hungary, Dateline. This one won.  Bulgarian Court, Sofia District. Further actions in the pipeline about hospitals, hiring by nightclub owners, etc.  See NYT 5/7/2006, article, Gypsies Gain a Legal Tool in Rights Fight, by Otto Pohl NYT.  An appeal was pending, but already changes had been made at state policy levels.

• European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).  This was founded in 1959, and is located at Strasbourg, France. It upholds the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is different from Court of Justice of the European Communities, that deals with the European Union, or the judicial arm of the UN, the International Court of Justice at the Hague.  This , See ://www.echr.coe.int/ECHR/SiteMap.aspx Spotty record.  Case protesting shunting of Roma children to schools for lesser-abled failed, is being resubmitted.  See School Segregation below.  This from the Otto Pohl article, NYT, below.

Note, in lawsuits, that a decision does not automatically mean change.  Civil law may remain in place for a long time. 

• Desegregation. School segregation.  Roma Anti-Discrimination lawsuits. Otto Pohl NYT article notes Strasbourg Court, European Court of Human Rights (see site above at ECHR), "rejected a case about 18 non-handicapped Czech Roma children allowed to enroll only in schools for the handicapped..."  Why? Estimates:  75% of Roma children are so shunted to the special schools. 
• How can that be?  Look again at the European Court of Human Rights above.  What is going on?

3.  Salute to Special Supporters.  This from NYT 5/7/2006, article, Gypsies Gain a Legal Tool in Rights Front", article by Otto Pohl.  Then we add our own updates.

• George Soros - a supporter of Roma groups, among other causes. He is "global financier and philanthropist," see bio at ://www.soros.org/about/bios/a_soros/  Named at Otto Pohl NYT article.  See this site, Roma Initiatives, at ://www.soros.org/initiatives/roma/  See the broad range of Soros Foundations at ://www.soros.org/about/foundations/ at the Open Society Institute and Soros Foundations Network, "Building Vibrant and Tolerant Democracies".  We need you in the US, also, Mr. Soros.  Thank you.  Search that site by country to see opportunities, activity there.

• Panayote Dimitras - This (in 2002) was the "executive director of the Greek branch of Helsinki Monitor (Finland had sponsored the conference at #1), a human rights group that also operates in the Balkans", had cited cases from Eastern Europe in Greek matters.

• Roma Police Association, Budapest.  Look again at the American model.  This is framed like the National Black Police Association in Illinois, founded in 1972, to foster race-neutral and ethnic-neutral police enforcement practices. 

• Chance for Children Foundation, Hungary, Andras Ujlaky, President (as of 2006),  focusing on desegregation for  Roma children

4.  Formal representation - Progress

• European Union, Brussels. Hungary was elected to the EU in 2004, and elected two Roma to the Parliament there.  This from the Otto Pohl NYT article, in #3.

To be continued. 
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For those who have asked, we in our family have no known connection to any Roma ethnic group.  But we are all minorities in some way or another.  Here, this writer in particular feels  a) a kinship,  b) selfish gratitude that I have not been targeted as others, but c) concerned that the discrimination, supremacy issues that underlie any Perceived-Weaker target, can - if hidden as it operates against any group - be used against anyone.  Targeting one, for purposes of advantage, targets us all. Is that so?