ROMEA

ROMEA wins Czech Gypsy Spirit 2010 award

Prague, 11.12.2010 10:05, (ROMEA)

The Gypsy Spirit 2010 awards in the Czech Republic were announced on the occasion of International Human Rights Day at the Prague Crossroads cultural center. The ROMEA civic association won the award in the NGO category.

ROMEA is a non-governmental, non-profit, voluntary association of organizations and individuals who have come together to support the fight against racism, to develop human rights protections, and to assist the development of democracy and tolerance in society. ROMEA has been disseminating information about the Roma world to Roma and others for several years.

The Human Rights Section of the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic announced the awards as part of the government's 2010 Campaign against Racism. Auspices for this second year of the award were provided by Czech PM Petr Nečas, the chair of the Subcommittee on Human Rights at the European Parliament Heidi Hautala, former Czech President Václav Havel, and former Czech Human Rights and Minorities Minister Michael Kocáb.

"Gypsy Spirit is an appreciation of the immense efforts of countless groups and individuals seeking to develop an understanding between the majority society and the Roma," said Czeslaw Walek, head of the Human Rights Section. Czech PM Petr Nečas gave the opening remarks at the ceremony. "Every activity that contributes toward integrating the Roma minority and to appreciation of this work contributes to better co-existence in our society," the PM said, adding that the beauty and wealth of any society lies in its diversity.

In a video recording of her greeting, Heidi Hautala emphasized the importance of culture, education, and involvement in the life of the community as key to the overall integration of Roma into society. Former Czech PM Jan Fischer also sent a video greeting in which he said he was glad the first year of the Gypsy Spirit project and its tradition had been implemented by his government.

The Gypsy Spirit 2010 awards were won by:

1. Award for a non-governmental organization – For implementing a specific project aimed at the development and support of the Roma minority and achieving results

ROMEA, o. s.

ROMEA is a non-governmental, non-profit, voluntary association of organizations and individuals who have come together to support the fight against racism, to develop human rights protections, and to assist the development of democracy and tolerance in society. ROMEA has been disseminating information about the Roma world to Roma and others for several years.

2. Award for a company/firm - For supporting projects aimed at social assistance to and support of the Roma community or the creation of a heterogeneous environment

Czech Radio – the Roma broadcast O Roma vakeren and the web pages www.romove.cz

Czech Radio has been broadcasting Roma programming since 1992. The program "O Roma vakeren" ("Roma Speak") reports weekly on news from the life of Roma in the Czech Republic and abroad, including segments on Roma culture, history, language, traditions, Roma celebrities and contacts to organizations involved with Roma. In 1997, Czech Radio established the www.romove.cz website in four languages, probably the longest continually existing web page about Roma in the Czech Republic. The aim of these various projects is to support the Roma minority, to raise awareness about Roma among the general public, to improve the image of Roma in the media, and to contribute to good mutual co-existence between the Roma and the rest of society.

3. Award for extracurricular educational activities targeting Roma children and youth

Masarykova Elementary School, Valašské Meziříčí

The Masarykova Elementary School is one of six in Valašské Meziříčí. The school is located in Krásna, which means all of the school-aged Roma children from the surrounding housing estates are within its catchment area. For non-Roma parents, the high population of Roma at the school was initially an insurmountable barrier, and non-Roma parents used to transfer their children to other schools in town. The situation (which was reported on by the media) has since calmed down and life at the school has become normal. In terms of results, statewide reviews show the school continues to be successful, and Roma are instructed there together with everyone else thanks to a system developed by educators and management.

4. Individual awards – For long-term work contributing to improving the position of Roma

Karel Holomek

Mr Holomek is the chair of the Roma NGO Society of Roma in Moravia and a founding member of the Museum of Roma Culture. He was a Roma consultant on the accession of the Czech Republic to the European Union as part of the "EU Consultative Bodies". He is also a construction contractor who exclusively employs Roma, and Editor-in-Chief of the Roma biweekly newspaper Romano hangos. During the 1990s, Mr Holomek was a member of the Czech Government Human Rights Council, the Czech Government Council on National Minorities, and the Czech Government Council on the Roma Minority.

5. Action of the Year – For a contribution to saving a life or improving the quality of life of an individual

Projekt Ptáčata

This project was designed and directed by Kamila Zlatušková and produced and directed by Ladislav Cmíral. It was inspired by a petition through which the parents of non-Roma children refused to enroll their children into the same class as Roma children. The authors decided to film a 16-part documentary serial about children who have been marginalized by prejudice. The children were equipped with small video cameras and became the co-creators of this reportage about their lives which provides the majority society with the opportunity to see the world from a different perspective. The hope does exist that this long-term project might become a much-needed step forward on the road to a better, more colorful and more flexible image of minorities in the Czech Republic. This improved image could help break down the stereotypes (negative and positive) governing all of our perceptions. For more, see www.ptacata.cz.

ROMEA, translated by Gwendolyn Albert
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YOUNG ROMANI IN CZECH REPUBLIC

Czech Roma receive anti-discrimination prize in Berlin

Berlin, 16.12.2010 11:42, (ROMEA)

FROM ROMEA.CZ

Today in Berlin, Roma organizations based in Germany gave awards to a group of young Roma from Ostrava, Czech Republic, who succeeded at the European Court for Human Rights in 2007 with a lawsuit against the Czech state over discrimination in education. The award was given for their courage in standing up against human rights violations. According to the German organizations, the Czech Roma created a precedent by bringing the case which will help reduce "the discriminatory practices of the authorities" vis-a-vis the Roma in other European countries.

The special prize of EUR 5 000 was awarded to the Czech Roma during a ceremony at the German Foreign Ministry as part of the European Sinti and Roma Prize for Human Rights. Former EP chair Simone Veil of France was the recipient of the prize. German Roma organizations gave another special award to the Hungarian Roma rights fighter Ágnes Daróczi.

"This means a lot to us. We are glad to receive this award and we are also glad we won the case," Katrin Dzurková, one of the Czech citizens receiving the award, told the Czech Press Agency. The Roma from Ostrava and their families objected to decisions by the Czech authorities to assign them into "special schools" during the second half of the 1990s. After their complaints to Czech courts were unsuccessful, they turned to the European Court for Human Rights. Three years ago, the Grand Senate decided the Czech Republic had violated both their right to education and the ban on discrimination. The verdict required the Czech state to pay them compensation for moral damages of CZK 4 000 in addition to court costs in the amount of EUR 10 000.

Seven of the original 18 Roma plaintiffs from Ostrava came to Berlin today, accompanied by Kumar Vishwanathan of the civic association Vzájemné soužití (Life Together), which helps the Roma minority in North Moravia. Vishwanathan regrets the fact that the Czech state views the verdict as a loss. "It was not a loss. If it is viewed as such, then all of the institutions will resist changing a situation which is illegal," Vishwanathan said. In his view, the educational situation in the Czech Republic has not changed for the better yet. "Unfortunately, we have not yet reached the 'happy ending'," he claims.

The European Sinti and Roma Prize for Human Rights is awarded every two years by the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, its Heidelberg Documentation and Culture Center, and the Manfred Lautenschläger Foundation. The prizewinner is awarded EUR 15 000. The prize was first awarded in 2008 to former Polish Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski.

This year's prizewinner won the award for her efforts to see the Nazi extermination of the Roma recognized as a racial genocide no different from the Jewish Holocaust. Veil, who is Jewish, is herself a Holocaust survivor. She was imprisoned in concentration camps including the infamous death camp at Auschwitz. During the Second World War, Hitler's regime murdered as many as half a million Roma and Sinti (one of the groups of Roma) on Nazi-occupied territory.

Czech Press Agency, translated by Gwendolyn Albert

ROMEA

FORCED EVICTIONS IN ROMANIA

FROM ROMANO LILORO

Urgent action: Forced evictions of Roma in Romania

By Marie-Francoise

17/12/2010

PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 31 DECEMBER 2010.
The authorities in Cluj, a city in north-western Romania, are preparing to carry out the forced eviction of Roma communities living in Coastei and Cantonului streets by the end of December. Amnesty International is concerned that reportedly houses will be demolished, and some families will be moved to new housing units that do not meet the criteria of adequate housing while others may face homelessness.

On 15 December, families in Coastei street received oral notifications indicating that they have to remove their belongings by 17 December, when the municipality will move them to alternative housing. According to the municipality, there are an estimated 345 people living in Coastei street, including an estimated 140 people who do not have residency in Cluj, and who are at risk of being sent back to their place of residence, raising concerns over their right to freedom of movement.

The authorities have not consulted the affected community on the eviction plans in a full and participatory way. The Mayor announced that 40 families will be housed in new housing units constructed on the outskirt of the city in the Pata Rat area and that those who refuse to be moved will not be provided with alternative housing. This area, according to information received by Amnesty International, is in the proximity of a garbage dump and separated from the rest of the city and the residents will face difficulties in accessing work opportunities and public services, including education and health.

An estimated 429 people (around 100 families) residing in houses, improvised shacks and containers in Cantonului street are also likely to be evicted. The number of alternative housing units which is being proposed by the city authorities is limited and is expected to accommodate only 40 families, which raises serious concerns that a number of people may be made homeless if they are evicted.

PLEASE WRITE IMMEDIATELY in English or your own language:

- Urging the city authorities to ensure that any evictions of the communities currently living in Coastei and Cantonului streets are carried out only as a last resort and in full compliance with international human rights standards;

- Urging them to ensure that the eviction is put on hold until genuine consultation with the Roma community of Coastei and Cantonului Streets to identify all feasible alternatives to evictions and on resettlement options has been conducted;

- Urging the city authorities to provide adequate alternative housing, compliant with requirements under human rights law and that people are not forcibly moved to their original places of residence and prevented from returning.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 31 DECEMBER 2010 TO:

Mayor of Cluj-Napoca
Sorin Apostu
Str. Motilor 5
Cluj-Napoca 400001,
Romania
Fax: +40 264 599 329
Email: sorinapostu@primariaclujnapoca.ro

Copies to:
Prime Minister
Emil Boc
Guvernul Romaniei
Piata Victoriei nr. 1,
Sector 1, Bucuresti
Romania
Fax: +40 21 313 98 46
Email: drp@gov.ro

President
Traian Basescu
Palatul Cotroceni,
Bulevardul Geniului nr. 1-3
Cod postal 060116
Sector 6 - Bucuresti
Romania
Fax : +40 21 410 38 58
Email: procetatean@presidency.ro

Also send copies to diplomatic representatives accredited to your country.
Ambassade de Roumanie
Rue Gabrielle 105
1180 Bruxelles
eMail: secretariat@roumanieamb.be
Fax 02.346.23.45

FOR THOSE IN THE UNITED STATES
The United States Ambassador to Romania is Mark H. Gitenstein
Here are some addressess:
Write Ambassador Gitenstein through the embassy homepage
http://romania.usembassy.gov/

The United States Embassy

7-9, Tudor Arghezi Street,
District 2, Bucharest
020942 Romania
Telephone: (+40) 21 200-3300
Fax: (+40) 21 200-3442
http://romania.usembassy.gov/

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Amnesty International visited Cluj and the Roma communities living in Coastei and Cantonului streets in December 2010. The Roma communities were anxious about the threat of possible eviction. They told Amnesty International that – in the past several months - the city authorities had announced that they were to be evicted. The community in Coastei is situated about a five-minute walk from the city centre. The households receive mail to their address and at least some of them are connected to the electricity supply.

The city authorities confirmed - during a meeting with Amnesty International on 8 December 2010 - that they plan to move the families from Coastei Street to new housing units in Pata Rat area. According to the Deputy Mayor, construction of five units accommodating 20 families should be finished by 15 December. He stated that the future tenants would receive short-term rental contracts which may be extended. The municipality quoted multiple complaints from the staff of the nearby public library and an office of a multinational company in the proximity of the Coastei Street as the reasons for the eviction.

Under international law, evictions may be carried out only as a last resort, once all feasible alternatives have been explored in genuine consultation with the affected communities. The authorities then have a duty to provide them with adequate notice; legal remedies, adequate alternative housing and compensation. They must ensure that persons are not rendered homeless or vulnerable to the violation of other human rights as a consequence of eviction. According to international standards, evictions should not be carried out in particularly bad weather or at night and the authorities have a duty to provide those affected with adequate notice.

As a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Romania is also under an obligation to ensure to everyone lawfully residing within its territory the right to move freely and to choose his or her place of residence. Amnesty International is therefore concerned at the allegations that persons who are not originally from Cluj will be sent back to the places of their original residence, as this would violate their right to freedom of movement and to choose their place of residence.

Romania is a party to a range of international and regional human rights treaties which strictly require it to prohibit, refrain from and prevent forced evictions. These treaties include the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the International Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the Revised European Social Charter. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has emphasised in its General Comment 7 that evictions may be carried out only as a last resort, once all other feasible alternatives to eviction have been explored. Even when an eviction is considered to be justified, it can only be carried out when appropriate procedural protections are in place and if compensation for all losses and adequate alternative housing is provided.

GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT

Guilty until Proven Innocent

Guilty until Proven Innocent is the 35th part of the award-winning news documentary series "Mundi Romani - the World through Roma Eyes" and was shot in September 2010 in France. Since July 2010, the French government's policies on the expulsion of Eastern European Roma have fed an unprecedented media frenzy in Europe and beyond. Rarely had the world heard so much about the Roma. Rarely had so many prejudices and oversimplifications been mirrored in public speech about the state of affairs. Mundi Romani uncovers the roots of the issues at stake, brings to light damning evidence of institutionalized racism in Europe and presents one of the biggest media stories of 2010 as seen through the eyes of the Roma.


http://www.mundiromani.com/videos/?video%5Bvideo%5D%5Bitem%5D=80

ROMANI IN THE BALKANS

FROM SIFINEWS.COM

Roma in Balkans live in hazardous areas, according to a new study

2010-12-14 17:10:00

Roma (Gypsy) in Balkans live in overcrowded residences, in hazardous areas without access to infrastructure, further exacerbated by lack of security of tenure and vulnerability to forced evictions, according to research undertaken by European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC).

These findings, released in Belgrade on December 13, reveal that Roma are often unable to escape these environments, as they face racism and discrimination in seeking private accommodation and accessing social housing, as well as restrictive eligibility criteria for the latter. This study, supported by United Nations Democracy Fund, documented the housing situation of Roma in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia.

It points out that private citizens were also found to have discriminated against Roma in access to publicly available rental accommodation and to have organized campaigns during or prior to collective evictions to prevent Roma from relocating to their neighborhoods. In extreme cases, non-Roma have attacked and set fire to the temporary housing prepared for Roma.

This research reveals that local authorities continue to forcibly evict Roma. At times, local authorities destroyed the homes of Roma without allowing residents the opportunity to remove their personal belongings. Some authorities have built segregated social housing for Roma only. Some such communities are located next to garbage dumps or other hazardous areas.

Well known Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, said that Balkans needed to urgently address these Roma issues and follow the international and European law and human rights standards.

Rajan Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, further said that this undeclared apartheid of Roma in Europe must end immediately. Roma reportedly regularly faced social exclusion, racism, substandard education, hostility, joblessness, rampant illness, inadequate housing, lower life expectancy, unrest, living on desperate margins, stereotypes, mistrust, rights violations, discrimination, marginalization, appalling living conditions, prejudice, human rights abuse, etc., Zed added.

Established in 1996 and headquartered in Budapest (Hungary), ERRC is an international public interest law organization having consultative status with the Council of Europe as well as with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. Robert Kushen is the Executive Director while Dr. Jeno Kaltenbach is the Board of Directors Chair. (ANI)

NAZIS AND THE UNITED STATES

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

Published: November 13, 2010

WASHINGTON —

A secret history of the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a “safe haven” in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad.

Nazi Hunting The 600-page report, which the Justice Department has tried to keep secret for four years, provides new evidence about more than two dozen of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades.

It describes the government’s posthumous pursuit of Dr. Josef Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death at Auschwitz, part of whose scalp was kept in a Justice Department official’s drawer; the vigilante killing of a former Waffen SS soldier in New Jersey; and the government’s mistaken identification of the Treblinka concentration camp guard known as Ivan the Terrible.

The report catalogs both the successes and failures of the band of lawyers, historians and investigators at the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, which was created in 1979 to deport Nazis.

Perhaps the report’s most damning disclosures come in assessing the Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement with Nazi émigrés. Scholars and previous government reports had acknowledged the C.I.A.’s use of Nazis for postwar intelligence purposes. But this report goes further in documenting the level of American complicity and deception in such operations.

The Justice Department report, describing what it calls “the government’s collaboration with persecutors,” says that O.S.I investigators learned that some of the Nazis “were indeed knowingly granted entry” to the United States, even though government officials were aware of their pasts. “America, which prided itself on being a safe haven for the persecuted, became — in some small measure — a safe haven for persecutors as well,” it said.

The report also documents divisions within the government over the effort and the legal pitfalls in relying on testimony from Holocaust survivors that was decades old. The report also concluded that the number of Nazis who made it into the United States was almost certainly much smaller than 10,000, the figure widely cited by government officials.

The Justice Department has resisted making the report public since 2006. Under the threat of a lawsuit, it turned over a heavily redacted version last month to a private research group, the National Security Archive, but even then many of the most legally and diplomatically sensitive portions were omitted. A complete version was obtained by The New York Times.

The Justice Department said the report, the product of six years of work, was never formally completed and did not represent its official findings. It cited “numerous factual errors and omissions,” but declined to say what they were.

More than 300 Nazi persecutors have been deported, stripped of citizenship or blocked from entering the United States since the creation of the O.S.I., which was merged with another unit this year.

In chronicling the cases of Nazis who were aided by American intelligence officials, the report cites help that C.I.A. officials provided in 1954 to Otto Von Bolschwing, an associate of Adolf Eichmann who had helped develop the initial plans “to purge Germany of the Jews” and who later worked for the C.I.A. in the United States. In a chain of memos, C.I.A. officials debated what to do if Von Bolschwing were confronted about his past — whether to deny any Nazi affiliation or “explain it away on the basis of extenuating circumstances,” the report said.

The Justice Department, after learning of Von Bolschwing’s Nazi ties, sought to deport him in 1981. He died that year at age 72.

The report also examines the case of Arthur L. Rudolph, a Nazi scientist who ran the Mittelwerk munitions factory. He was brought to the United States in 1945 for his rocket-making expertise under Operation Paperclip, an American program that recruited scientists who had worked in Nazi Germany. (Rudolph has been honored by NASA and is credited as the father of the Saturn V rocket.)

The report cites a 1949 memo from the Justice Department’s No. 2 official urging immigration officers to let Rudolph back in the country after a stay in Mexico, saying that a failure to do so “would be to the detriment of the national interest.”

Justice Department investigators later found evidence that Rudolph was much more actively involved in exploiting slave laborers at Mittelwerk than he or American intelligence officials had acknowledged, the report says.

Some intelligence officials objected when the Justice Department sought to deport him in 1983, but the O.S.I. considered the deportation of someone of Rudolph’s prominence as an affirmation of “the depth of the government’s commitment to the Nazi prosecution program,” according to internal memos.

The Justice Department itself sometimes concealed what American officials knew about Nazis in this country, the report found.

In 1980, prosecutors filed a motion that “misstated the facts” in asserting that checks of C.I.A. and F.B.I. records revealed no information on the Nazi past of Tscherim Soobzokov, a former Waffen SS soldier. In fact, the report said, the Justice Department “knew that Soobzokov had advised the C.I.A. of his SS connection after he arrived in the United States.”

(After the case was dismissed, radical Jewish groups urged violence against Mr. Soobzokov, and he was killed in 1985 by a bomb at his home in Paterson, N.J. )

The secrecy surrounding the Justice Department’s handling of the report could pose a political dilemma for President Obama because of his pledge to run the most transparent administration in history. Mr. Obama chose the Justice Department to coordinate the opening of government records.
The Nazi-hunting report was the brainchild of Mark Richard, a senior Justice Department lawyer. In 1999, he persuaded Attorney General Janet Reno to begin a detailed look at what he saw as a critical piece of history, and he assigned a career prosecutor, Judith Feigin, to the job. After Mr. Richard edited the final version in 2006, he urged senior officials to make it public but was rebuffed, colleagues said.


When Mr. Richard became ill with cancer, he told a gathering of friends and family that the report’s publication was one of three things he hoped to see before he died, the colleagues said. He died in June 2009, and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. spoke at his funeral.

“I spoke to him the week before he died, and he was still trying to get it released,” Ms. Feigin said. “It broke his heart.”

After Mr. Richard’s death, David Sobel, a Washington lawyer, and the National Security Archive sued for the report’s release under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Justice Department initially fought the lawsuit, but finally gave Mr. Sobel a partial copy — with more than 1,000 passages and references deleted based on exemptions for privacy and internal deliberations.

Laura Sweeney, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the department is committed to transparency, and that redactions are made by experienced lawyers.

The full report disclosed that the Justice Department found “a smoking gun” in 1997 establishing with “definitive proof” that Switzerland had bought gold from the Nazis that had been taken from Jewish victims of the Holocaust. But these references are deleted, as are disputes between the Justice and State Departments over Switzerland’s culpability in the months leading up to a major report on the issue.

Another section describes as “a hideous failure” a series of meetings in 2000 that United States officials held with Latvian officials to pressure them to pursue suspected Nazis. That passage is also deleted.

So too are references to macabre but little-known bits of history, including how a director of the O.S.I. kept a piece of scalp that was thought to belong to Dr. Mengele in his desk in hopes that it would help establish whether he was dead.

The chapter on Dr. Mengele, one of the most notorious Nazis to escape prosecution, details the O.S.I.’s elaborate efforts in the mid-1980s to determine whether he had fled to the United States and might still be alive.

It describes how investigators used letters and diaries apparently written by Dr. Mengele in the 1970s, along with German dental records and Munich phone books, to follow his trail.

After the development of DNA tests, the piece of scalp, which had been turned over by the Brazilian authorities, proved to be a critical piece of evidence in establishing that Dr. Mengele had fled to Brazil and had died there in about 1979 without ever entering the United States, the report said. The edited report deletes references to Dr. Mengele’s scalp on privacy grounds.

Even documents that have long been available to the public are omitted, including court decisions, Congressional testimony and front-page newspaper articles from the 1970s.

A chapter on the O.S.I.’s most publicized failure — the case against John Demjanjuk, a retired American autoworker who was mistakenly identified as Treblinka’s Ivan the Terrible — deletes dozens of details, including part of a 1993 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit that raised ethics accusations against Justice Department officials.

That section also omits a passage disclosing that Latvian émigrés sympathetic to Mr. Demjanjuk secretly arranged for the O.S.I.’s trash to be delivered to them each day from 1985 to 1987. The émigrés rifled through the garbage to find classified documents that could help Mr. Demjanjuk, who is currently standing trial in Munich on separate war crimes charges.

Ms. Feigin said she was baffled by the Justice Department’s attempt to keep a central part of its history secret for so long. “It’s an amazing story,” she said, “that needs to be told.”

The Nazi-hunting report was the brainchild of Mark Richard, a senior Justice Department lawyer. In 1999, he persuaded Attorney General Janet Reno to begin a detailed look at what he saw as a critical piece of history, and he assigned a career prosecutor, Judith Feigin, to the job. After Mr. Richard edited the final version in 2006, he urged senior officials to make it public but was rebuffed, colleagues said.


When Mr. Richard became ill with cancer, he told a gathering of friends and family that the report’s publication was one of three things he hoped to see before he died, the colleagues said. He died in June 2009, and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. spoke at his funeral.

“I spoke to him the week before he died, and he was still trying to get it released,” Ms. Feigin said. “It broke his heart.”

That section also omits a passage disclosing that Latvian émigrés sympathetic to Mr. Demjanjuk secretly arranged for the O.S.I.’s trash to be delivered to them each day from 1985 to 1987. The émigrés rifled through the garbage to find classified documents that could help Mr. Demjanjuk, who is currently standing trial in Munich on separate war crimes charges.
_______________________________________________
Mental inmates in the U S have been telling this tale for years.  Nazis not welcomed here as rocket scientists, were welcomed as psychiatrists and psychologists.  Please read
MASS MURDERERS IN WHITE COATS by Lenny Lapone

GYPSIES IN PORTLAND----AND THE BEAT GOES ON

FROM THE OREGONIANLIVE.COM

Portland Gypsy leader accused of filing false tax return, faces potential prison term


Published: Tuesday, December 14, 2010
By Bryan Denson, The Oregonian


A patriarch of Portland's close-knit clan of Gypsies was accused this week of filing a false tax return, the latest development in his four-year battle with the U.S. government.

Bobbie Ephrem, a 53-year-old auto dealer, fell under suspicion in March 2006, when a police informant told IRS agents that Ephrem concealed huge amounts of cash, failed to pay taxes and often used his son's Social Security number, court records show.

The informant told the IRS that Ephrem's retail auto sales business in Northeast Portland raked in $50,000 a month and that a wholesale auto business had brought in $355,000 during a four-day auction in Spokane.

In August 2006, IRS agents carried a search warrant to Ephrem's house and asked about cash and valuables. Ephrem told them he had nothing of consequence in the home, other than perhaps his Rolex watch, the government alleges.

But in less than seven hours, agents turned up $366,768.50 in currency and the keys to safe-deposit boxes. The next day, agents seized $2.3 million more from safe-deposit boxes at three Portland area banks, bringing total cash seizures to $2.7 million.

The IRS issued Ephrem a rare "tax jeopardy assessment," accusing him of not filing income taxes for nine years and calculating that he owed taxes, penalties and interest of $8.5 million.

Ephrem hired prominent Portland lawyer Marc Blackman and sued the government. His complaint accused the IRS of stealing his family fortune, which included more than $1 million of "sacred" inheritance money that belonged to him, his three brothers and a nephew.

Lawyers representing the government and Ephrem's family argued the case for two days before U.S. District Judge Michael W. Mosman.

The government characterized the $2.7 million seized by the IRS as the misbegotten fruits of a currency-hoarding tax dodger. But Ephrem's lawyers and their witnesses argued that the bulk of the cash was inheritance money, loans, gifts and other proceeds from his extended family; it was his duty, as patriarch, to hold the money.

Ephrem's backers described him as a leader among roughly 3,000 American Gypsies in Portland, who call themselves Roma. They are a cloistered, cash-on-the-barrelhead community that -- after generations of persecution and stereotypes -- tends to eschew checking or bank accounts.

Mosman ordered the government to give back the $2.7 million, with interest, and it did.

Federal prosecutors signed a one-count felony information against Ephrem on Monday that accuses Ephrem of willfully filing a 2006 tax return that he knew was false.

The charge carries a potential prison term of up to three years.

-- Bryan Denson
_____________________________________________________________________________________
DOES ANYONE REMEMBER THE MARKS CASE IN SPOKANE WASHINGTON. 
SOUND FAMILIAR ?
AND THE BEAT GOES ON......
MORGAN

PAKISTAN

FROM DAILY TIMES

Friday, December 03, 2010


Tent village demolition

Three gypsy children die of cold after operation cleanup

By Tahir Rashid

RAWALPINDI: Three children of a gypsy family died of cold, as the gypsies was living in open after the Auqaf Department with the help of local police demolished their tent houses in Dhoke Kala Khan area on the alleged orders of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Member National Assembly (MNA) Hanif Abbasi.

Few days earlier, MNA Hanif Abbasi inaugurated an overhead water tank at Farooq-e-Azam Road in Dhoke Kala Khan. On this occasion he saw that hundreds of gypsy families were living in tent houses on a 44-kannal piece of land owned by Auqaf Department.

Abbasi ordered the Auqaf Department to get the land vacated from the illegal occupation of gypsies who were living there for the last 40 years. The department with the help of local police conducted a cleanup operation and demolished their tent homes. As the result the poor families were forced to live under open sky in the chilly weather.

During the operation, the police allegedly subjected the gypsies to physical torture and many people including children and women were injured. When the gypsies resisted, police baton charged them, demolished their temporary homes and even did not allow them to collect their belongings.

The gypsies said the department and police conducted the operation without any notice. They said a marriage ceremony was also going on at that time, and the operation disturbed the function badly.

The gypsies alleged that due to police violence and freezing weather, a baby girl died on Wednesday, while on Thursday a boy Ali and another child also expired. All the three children were laid to rest. The gypsies staged a protest demonstration on Farooq-e-Azam Road against the operation.

BELGIUUM

FROM STANDART NEWS. COM

Bulgarian Roma Welcome in Belgium


The government of the Belgian province of Flanders adopted a plan and strategy for social and professional integration of Roma from Bulgaria and Romania on the territory of Belgium, RIA Novosti reported. The Roma will be given access to labor market sectors experiencing hands shortage. So far such access was not allowed for citizens from Bulgaria and Romania although the two countries have been EU members since 2007.

“The message we would like to send is that the Roma from Bulgaria and Romania who come here will have to be ready to work,” commented Geert Bourgeois, Flemish Minister of Civic Integration.

GYPSIES IN RUSSIA

FROM OYE! TIMES
RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINES
Is there a “Roma question” in Russia
Monday, 08 November 2010 10:45
Written by Masha Fogel
Caught between nostalgia and misery, held back by criminality and discrimination, Roma (Gypsy) communities in the Moscow area struggle to adapt to modern life.

“I’m going to say it: The problem with the Roma is that there aren’t two of them who work,” said a young Russian police officer on a visit to the Roma village of Possiolok Gorodishy, about 150 km from Moscow. With his leather jacket and uniform, close-cropped blond hair and light-colored eyes, he looks amused as he gives a piece of his mind to Georgiy Shekin, a.k.a. Yalush in Romani, who works for the interregional Russian Roma rights network, and to Gendar, the village elder.

Gendar stands up for his community, whistling between his missing teeth while the police officer carries on: “Roma don’t have any education, they don’t find ways of working nowadays.”

Gendar is the baro, the village “elder.” This camp in the Vladimir region is home to Roma from the Koldiary ethnic group, one of the groups that has best preserved its customs; they were all nomadic until 1956 when the Soviet Union forcibly settled the Roma. The Koldiary, who came from Eastern Europe, were traditionally horse traders or metal workers. After the fall of communism, some adapted by opening successful central heating businesses. But here in this village, no one has had any success to speak of. “We don’t do anything during the day. We stand around and wait for it to end.” A dozen young men wearing leather jackets and dark clothing stand with their hands in their pockets. The railroad tracks lie behind them. The tracks run through the camp, whose houses stand in a typically Russian row along the main street.

“Those with a car occasionally go and bring back what’s needed to feed the family,” Gendar said. “But how does someone with no car do it? Bah, he steals; it’s simple, for the children.”

We go into Gendar’s house. “Everything nice here comes from communism. Back then, there were no poor and no wealthy,” he said regretfully. “When we didn’t have work, we would go on unemployment benefits.” The walls are hung with the splendors of the Soviet era, pink and yellow curtains and shawls with bursts of flowers that cover the chairs. The mother, half-lying on the sofa in a blue outfit, smokes with a thin smile on her face. “You want to see my niece’s wedding film?” she asked.

There are an estimated 180,000-400,000 Roma in Russia. The major problems they face include drugs, poverty, problems adjusting to the modern economy as well as difficulties handing down their language and cultureA pretty 15-year-old girl with a bouncing orange skirt and copper medals that jingle stays in the periphery even as she brings in tea, butter and marinated mushrooms. “Ah no, that’s right, we don’t have any more electricity.”

The inactivity and lack of work for the Roma is due largely to their non-integration in the urban and competitive modern economy, along with the fact that in Russia, they are no longer a nomadic population. In communist times, certain groups of Roma, especially the “Russka Roma,” those who sang for the nobility under the tsar and who are the most integrated even today, specialized in a niche market: contraband. There wasn’t much in the way of merchandise at the time. It was an illegal activity, but not criminal. “But after perestroika, all the groups in Russia started going into trade and the Roma, often illiterate, couldn’t keep up,” said Marianna Seslavinskaya, one of the directors of Roma Union, the Russian interregional Roma rights union.

Seslavinskaya and her husband, Georgiy Tsvetkov, make Roma education an absolute priority, provided that it involves Roma culture. Both work in a research laboratory at the Federal Institute of Educational Development in Moscow, but their work is underfunded: Seslavinskaya and Tsvetkov provide services to the entire country and there are an estimated 180,000-400,000 Roma across the Russian Federation. “We don’t have an allocated region, contrary to most Russian minorities. As a result, no one funds the passing down of the culture. The Roma children who go to school at age six learn Russian, whereas they speak Romani.” In 1927, authorities set up a learning program for the Roma, but Stalin abolished it in 1938.

“What is needed,” Seslavinskaya said, “is a program that would start to teach the Roma their language and, afterwards, Russian culture. Because a Roma who loses his culture doesn’t necessarily become Russian. He is marginalized. Educating Roma by saving their identity is the only solution that will allow them to adapt to the contemporary world. In order to be able to find work without getting bogged down in identity issues, or falling into poverty and crime.”

TURKEY

FROM TODAY'S ZAMAN

Roma population seminar to be held on road to EU

11 December 2010, Saturday /

AYŞE KARABAT , ANKARA

PHOTO NIGEL DICKERSON

Turkey, which has slammed France for its attitude towards the Roma, is planning to hold a “Roma citizens in Turkey” seminar on Dec. 15-16, with the participation of associations and representatives of the Roma population.

The meeting aims to reassess the situation of the Roma population in accordance with the political criteria of the EU and will be organized by Turkey’s Secretariat-General for EU Affairs (ABGS) and the Technical Assistance and Information Exchange program (TAIEX).

The seminar in İstanbul will cover aspects of the Roma population including access to social services, combating stereotypes, housing and urban renewal, working life and employment challenges, while its opening remarks will be delivered by State Minister and chief negotiator for EU talks Egemen Bağış and State Minister Faruk Çelik.

It is expected that during the seminar Roma musicians will give a concert, performing their version of The European Anthem and other classical songs.

The Turkish government last year launched an initiative to address the problems of the Roma population in Turkey, which is estimated to be around 2 million. Diplomatic sources in the ABSG underlined that the Roma in Turkey, as in many parts of Europe, are among the most disadvantaged groups; however, the Turkish government aims to address their problems.

Within the framework of the government’s Roma initiative, derogatory terms in legislation have been removed and the construction of 10,000 new houses for the Roma population throughout Turkey has already started, although some features of the construction have led to discussions on whether they are compatible with the culture of the Roma.

Bağış, who paid a three-day visit to Denmark this week, emphasized during his meetings the tremendous importance that the government attributes to the Roma initiative.

“While France was deporting its Roma population, our Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan publicly apologized to the Roma population,” he said during conferences in Denmark.

He underlined that it is interesting to note that Turkey is taking these steps as a candidate country to the EU, while some members of the EU, such as France and Belgium, are implementing discriminatory measures against the Roma population.

“It is very natural for us to remind others that obeying the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not just the duty of Turkey, but of the whole world,” he told a group of journalists accompanying him, adding that realistic solutions are needed for the problems of the Roma.

DISARM NOW PLOWSHARES

JURY FOR TACOMA TRIDENT PEACE ACTIVISTS STILL OUT


By Bill Quigley

FROM HUFFINGTON POST

December 10, 2010

The federal criminal trial of five veteran peace activists facing several charges was recessed until Monday after their jury announced late Friday they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict on one of
the counts. The Tacoma Washington trial has been going on since Tuesday. The five defendants, called the Disarm Now Plowshares, challenged the legality and morality of the U.S. storage and use of
thermonuclear missiles by Trident nuclear submarines at the Kitsap-Bangor Naval Base outside Bremerton, Washington.

The peace activists argued three points: the missiles are weapons of mass destruction; the weapons are both illegal and immoral; and that all citizens have the right to try to stop international war crimes
being committed by these weapons of mass destruction. "It is not a crime to reveal a crime," they argued.

Supporters from around the world packed the main courtroom every day of the trial. Numerous
others followed the trial in an overflow court room.

The five were charged with trespass, felony damage to federal property, felony injury to property and felony conspiracy to damage property. Each faces possible sentences of up to ten years in prison.

On trial are: Sr. Anne Montgomery, 83, a Sacred Heart sister from New York; Fr. Bill Bischel, 81, a Jesuit priest from Tacoma Washington [N.B. In fact, Bichsel was born (at St. Joseph Hospital in Tacoma) on May 26, 1928, and is presently 82 and a half. -M.J.]; Susan Crane, 67, a member of the Jonah House community in Baltimore, Maryland; Lynne Greenwald, 60, a nurse from Bremerton Washington; and Fr. Steve Kelly, 60, a Jesuit priest from Oakland California. Bill Bischel and Lynne
Greenwald are active members of the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, a community resisting Trident nuclear weapons since 1977.

The five admitted from the start that they cut through the chain link fence surrounding the Navy base during the night of All Souls, November 2, 2009. They then walked undetected for hours nearly four
miles inside the base to their target, the Strategic WeaponsFacility-Pacific. This top-security area is where activists say hundreds of nuclear missiles are stored in bunkers.

There they cut through two more barbed wire fences and went inside. They put up two big banners which said "Disarm Now Plowshares: Trident Illegal and Immoral," scattered sunflower seeds, and prayed until they were arrested at dawn.

Once arrested, the five were cuffed and hooded with sand bags because the marine in charge testified "when we secure prisoners anywhere in Iraq or Afghanistan we hood them . . . so we did
it to them."

Eight Trident nuclear submarines have their home port at the Kitsap-Bangor base. Each Trident submarine has 24 nuclear missiles on it. Each one of the missiles has multiple warheads in it and each
warhead has many times the destructive power of the weapon used on Hiroshima. One fully loaded Trident submarine carries 192 warheads, each designed to explode with the power of 475 kilotons of TNT force. If detonated at ground level each would blow out a crater nearly half a mile wide and several hundred feet deep. In addition to the missiles on the submarines, the base has an extensive bunker area where more missiles are stored. That storage area is the Strategic Weapons Facility-Pacific. That is where the activists made their stand for disarmament.

The trial brought peace activists from around the world to challenge the U.S. use of the Trident nuclear weapons. Angie Zelter, internationally known author and activist from the U.K., testified about the resistance to Trident weapons in Europe.

Stephen Leeper, Chair of the Peace Culture Foundation in Hiroshima, told the jury "the
world is facing a critical moment" because of the existence and proliferation of nuclear weapons. Though prohibited from testifying about the details of the death, destruction, and genetic damage to
civilians from the U.S. nuclear attack on Hiroshima, he testified defendants "have a tremendous amount of support in Hiroshima."

Retired U.S. Navy Captain Thomas Rogers, 31 years in the Navy, including several years as Commander of a nuclear submarine, told the court he thought the U.S. possession of nuclear weapons after the Cold War was illegal and immoral. When asked how these weapons would impact civilians, he responded "it is really hard to detonate a 475 kiloton nuclear device without killing civilians."

Dr. David Hall of Physicians for Social Responsibility testified about the humanitarian
core beliefs of the defendants.

And Professor and author MichaelHoney told the jury about the importance of nonviolent direct action
in bringing about social change.

Prosecutors said the government would neither admit nor deny the existence of nuclear weapons at the base and argued that "whether or not there are nuclear weapons there or not is irrelevant."

Prosecutors successfully objected to and excluded most of the defense evidence about the horrific effects of nuclear weapons, the illegality of nuclear weapons under U.S. treaty agreements and humanitarian law, and the right of citizens to try to stop war crimes by their government.

The peace activists, who represented themselves with lawyers as stand by counsel, tried to present evidence about nuclear weapons despite repeated objections. At one point, Sr. Anne Montgomery challenged the prosecutors and the court "Why are we so afraid to discuss the fact that there are nuclear weapons?"

The government testified that it took about five hours to patch the holes in the fences and most of the day to replace the alarm system around the nuclear weapons storage area.

The twelve person jury reported it was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on all counts and the judge sent them home for the weekend.

The extensive peace community gathered at the courthouse supported the defendants and rejoiced that the jury was taking the defendants and the charges seriously. Supporters promised to continue to protest
against the Trident and its weapons of mass destruction. They echoed the words of one of prospective jurors who was excluded from the trial because, when asked whether he would follow the instructions of the judge in this case, said "I totally respect the rule of law, but some laws are meant to be broken, that is how things change."

Jury deliberations will resume Monday.

For more information on the trial and the peace activists please see the site for Disarm Now Plowshares
http://disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com/
or Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action
http://www.gzcenter.org/index/html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill=quigley/jury-for-tacoma-trident-p_b_795308.html

ROMANIA

FROM THE ECONOMIST

IRE OF THE TIGAN

Dec 8th 2010, 11:16
by R.W-M.
BUCHAREST
PHOTO  REUTERS

THE Romanies of Romania will soon be the "Tigan" of Romania, if the government has its way. A controversial bill before parliament will change the name of Romania's main ethnic minority from "Roma" to "Tigan", a word that "is associated in the collective memory of the Roma with the slavery that existed in Romania from 1385 to 1856, and also the forced deportations in WW2", according to a protest letter sent by Romani groups to heads of state at a recent OSCE summit in Kazakhstan.

The bill was submitted by a controversial MP called Silviu Prigoana, who is sometimes called Bucharest’s “King of Garbage”, owing to a sprawling waste-disposal company he owns. Mr Prigoana, who is part of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, claims that he drafted the name-change law at the insistence of (anonymous) groups of Romanies from Transylvania. But Romani organisations suspect that the law is a pet project of Traian Basescu, Romania's president, who said in September that the use of the "Roma" name was a "mistake".

We have been here before. Fifteen years ago Romania's foreign ministry issued a confidential memo which recommended replacing "Roma" with "Tigan" on the grounds that the former sounded rather too much like the name of the country, and might damage its image abroad. (You hear the same argument today.)

The document leaked, and Romani organisations were outraged. A conference was organised to discuss the issue in May 1995, and the Romanies, relying on a Council of Europe convention on ethnic minorities, successfully argued that under the principle of self-determination they were entitled to decide on their own designation.

The issue was picked up by the OSCE, which issued a diplomatic reprimand to Romania. The government backed off and cancelled its earlier note. Since then "Roma" has been the term used in all official documentation and at international meetings. But the underlying issues were not addressed: Romania's Romanies still live in dire poverty, and Romanian media continued to encourage the impression that the presence in western Europe of people called "Roma" was damaging Romania’s reputation. The recent economic crisis, which has hit Romania particularly hard, has added fuel to the glowing embers of resentment and prejudice.

Nicolae Gheorghe, a sociologist and former Roma adviser to the OSCE, helped lead the charge against the proposed name change in 1995. He told me that the current proposal shows "the populist and nationalist direction that the present leadership of Romania is going in". He explains that "the term 'Roma' was never used by all Romani groups, particularly at the local level, but it has become the internationally accepted generic term that groups from Spain, Romania and other countries choose to call themselves. If this name change takes place it will represent a big step backwards."

Of the 19 public institutions that were consulted about the proposed name change, just one supports it: the Romanian Academy, a bastion of elderly scientists and linguists charged with defending Romanian culture. In a statement, the academy says that it supports the name change on the grounds that "many European countries use, without any restrictions, words with the same origins [as Tigan]". In Germany the term is "Zigeuner", in France "Gitani" and in Russia "Tzigan". The concept of self-determination deployed successfully by the Romanies in 1995 is nowhere to be seen in the academy's statement.

Not everyone agrees. "The term 'Tigan' does not exist in the Romany language", Delia Grigore, a lecturer in Romany language at Bucharest University, has written. "It is a word that is profoundly insulting to the Roma and comes from the Greek term for 'pagan', 'heretic' and 'untouchable.'" Over 100 Romani activists marched on the Romanian Academy last Tuesday, demanding a public debate on the issue. The Roma Civic Alliance of Romania issued an open letter [link in Romanian] which accused the government of acting in a "totalitarian manner" and violating the constitution.

PAKISTAN

FROM THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE

150 CHILDREN CATCH PNEUMONIA AS STRUGGLE FOR LAND CONTINUES
Slum-dwellers refuse to move despite suffering casualties.

BY AZAM KHAN

RAWALPINDI: As the slum dwellers of Dhok Ali Akbar continue to resist the authority’s efforts to evict them from the land they are encroaching on, 150 of their children have developed pneumonia. The 22 kanals belong to Auqaf Department and the slums built here are illegal encroachments. The gypsy families had vowed to resist efforts to make them vacate the land. However, last week, four children died after the police allegedly uprooted their tents.

Now that authorities disconnected electricity and water supply to the makeshift settlement, 150 children have reportedly fallen sick. Their families insist that they are “too poor to afford treatment”.

On Wednesday, police had visited the area and allegedly baton-charged and tortured many of the locals. At the time MNA Muhammad Hanif Abbasi had insisted that the land was being illegally occupied and that he would have it vacated at all costs.

On Sunday, however, he told The Express Tribune that no further disciplinary action was being taken against the people. He said that one of his friends, Raja Saji, had donated a piece of land near Tarlai area of the capital city for these families. “They are shifting there by their own will,” he claimed.

On the contrary, Muhammad Munir, father of two daughters suffering from pneumonia said, “Today (Sunday) Auqat Department and Town Mucipal Administration (TMA) officials threatened us with consequences if we did not vacate the area within a few hours.”

Aasia Bibi w/o Jameel, told The Express Tribune that she did not have the money to buy medicine for her two-year-old son Ahmad who was suffering from pneumonia. The same was true of 18-month-old Iram Shehzadi, daughter of Shahid, another resident of the slums.

Shama Bibi said that most of the families had been living in the area for the past 35 years. She said that it was not easy for the families to just get up and move since most of them were from far off areas. “No one is ready to hear us, they just want to blame us and make us appear evil,” she said.

Haleema Bibi, a single mother of seven, said that poor people were dying due to the ‘merciless’ conduct of the concerned authorities. She said that locals were not ready to come forward and help others. He daughter Tasleem, is soon to be wed, but that will have to be postponed as the family has gone from organising celebrations to organising survival.

When The Express Tribune originally brought this matter to light, Muhammad Aslam, 30, had given us his version. He now claims that police registered an FIR against him for speaking to this newspaper.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 6th, 2010.

Azam Khan
-----------------------------
I still miss John Lennon, these thirty years after his murder.  And I continue to hope that people will realize that Yoko Ono never was a villian.  She has continued to spread John's message of peace her entire life.  I really wish people would get over their hostility toward her.  She is, and always has been, a good woman and a brilliant artist "in her own write".
Morgan

ROMANIA

FROM ROMA VIRTUAL NETWORK

PROTEST PETITION

We the Rroma people of the world along with residents and citizens of these countries, wish to express our serious concern and disappointment and to register our protest and apprehension concerning the new incidents of racism which are being perpetuated against Rroma in Romania by the Romanian government through their elected political representative. Some of these individuals who represent high level institutions are, through their public appearances, bringing serious and misinformed accusations against the Roma people whom they are accusing of ethnic criminality. Some of these accusations were made publicly by Romanian President, Traian Basescu, who has repeatedly levelled such unfounded accusations against the Rroma people to the nation which elected him to office. We also protest other forms of humiliation levelled at Rroma by parliamentary representatives of the Romanian government. Instead of showing tolerance and respect towards its Rroma citizens, they are instead levelling insults and humiliation at the Rroma people not only the Rroma citizens of Romania, but to all Rroma in the world.
Even though Rroma have lived in Romania for well over 700 years, we are still not considered welcome. On the contrary, we are prevented from integrating into Romanian society. We have been marginalized and considered second-class citizens. We are still condemned and forced to feel shame as subhuman creatures who are considered more at the level of animals than fellow human beings. It has been this way ever since we first appeared in Romanian territory and were forced into slavery in Wallachia and Moldava.

The Romanian government and its representatives, who have the legal obligation to work constructively towards the social integration of the Rroma people, are attempting through their actions and declarations to degrade the Rroma people and to spread a false picture of who we are in the public media. By doing so, instead of improving the situation, they are inciting the Romanian public against the Rroma citizens to create further hardship for the marginalized Rroma of their society. They continue to perpetuate the misery and injustices which the Rroma have suffered throughout their history in Romania beginning in 1385 when Rroma slavery was introduced until the Emancipation of 1844 and continuing even after Rroma slavery was officially abolished. We have constantly been denied our opportunity to successfully integrate into Romanian society at large as Rroma.

The recent decision of the Romanian legislature to approve a proposal by Democratic Liberal Party (PDL) representative Silviu Prigoana, to officially change the ethnic definition of Rrom to the pejorative definition of “tigan”, a synonym of “slave,” is just one more blatant example that the current Romanian government has no respect for the Rroma people, not only in Romania but also all Rroma in the rest of the world in countries which, for the most part, guarantee their rights to ethnic identity, dignity and self-determination.

THIS NEW DECISION OF THE ROMANIAN AUTHORITIES IS ONE WHICH ATTEMPTS TO RESTRICT THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF ROMANIAN ROMA, ALSO STIGMATIZES ALL THE RROMA IN THE WORLD.

We, the Rroma from in and outside of Romania, are appalled that the Government of Romania is flagrantly violating the guaranteed fundamental rights guaranteed by the Romanian constitution and the agreement that Romania signed in order to become a member of the European Union which upholds the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

The Romanian constitution, la art.6. & 1, reiterates the following:

“The State recognises and guarantees persons who belong to national minorities the right to maintain, to develop and to express their ethnic identities, and their cultural, linguistic and religious rights.”

We strongly demand that the Government of Romania review its national political stance towards Rroma integration. We strongly ask the Romanian government to see the Rroma people as a world-wide nation without borders.

We also demand that the Romanian government reverse its present stand and do not impose upon us the definition of “tigan,” a pejorative definition that was applied to us by outsiders based on our role not as equals in Romanian society but during the period beginning in 1385 when we were enslaved in the Romanian Principalities of Moldava and Wallachia and which ended only in 1844 with the Abolition of Rroma slavery in Romania.

Furthermore, we demand that the Romanian government review this negative political decision that runs contrary to the requirements of the European Union and the United Nations regarding ethic minorities in a member state. If this negative action is implemented, it will prove to the world that the Romanian government has no interest in the constructive integration of its Rroma citizens into Romanian society and will furthermore, serve as an insult to all Rroma.

Once again, by this proposed action, Romania is proving to the international community of nations that the racism and violence against Roma which resurfaced after the fall of communism in 1989 is being officially supported and perpetuated by the current Romanian government.

We the Rroma in and outside of Romania, do not agree with the decision taken by the Romanian government, which proposes to apply to our nation an ethnic definition, which we do not recognise and strongly reject. We are Rroma – not “tigani.”

We ask everyone who recognises our right to our self-ascriptive ethnic definition of Rroma to sign this petition. We also ask people to write to the Romanian consulate in their country to demand that the Romanian government reverses its decision to deny us our proper ethnic definition, of Rroma. This proposed law is illegal in a member country of the EU and a member of the United Nations. It is also an insult to the dignity of the Rroma people of the world.

THIS PETITION HAS THE SUPPORT OF THE FOLLOWING

EMILIAN NICULAE - Rrom and not “tigan’’, human rights activist and Canadian citizen.

RONALD LEE - Rrom and not ‘’tigan’’, writer and professor at University of Toronto.

NICULAE IONUTZ - Rrom and not “tigan”, 12 grade High school student, Canadian resident.

MARIUS MUNTEANU - Rrom and not “tigan”, Canadian resident.

MUNTEANU ZENDAIDA - Rromni not “tiganca”, Canadian resident.

CONSTANTIN GINA - Rromni and not "tiganca", Lawyer, Spanish resident


ANY ROMANI WHO LIVES OUTSIDE OF ROMANIA IS ASKED TO SIGN THE PETITION

http://www.petitiononline.com/sa3la3ta/petition.html

http://www.petitiononline.com/sa3la3ta/petition.html

GITANOS

IN SPAIN, GYPSIES FIND EASIER PATH TO INTEGRATION

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES


By SUZANNE DALEY and RAPHAEL MINDER

Published: December 5, 2010

PHOTO--Corina Ramirez Montero, 24, lives in a shantytown in Seville and is part of a theater group of Gypsy women touring the country.
PHOTO BY LOURDES DEGADE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES.

MADRID —

Encarnación Rómero Bastante, a manicurist, was not sure what to expect when she was hired by a government-financed program to train a 33-year-old Gypsy woman.

But within a few weeks, Ms. Romero said her student, Emilia Jiménez González, knew all there was to know about cuticles and French tips. She was so good and so nice that Ms. Romero went a step further than required and persuaded a friend to give Ms. Jiménez a job.

“She proved herself to be a real professional,” said Ms. Romero, who had never gotten to know a Gypsy before.

Throughout Europe, Gypsies (who are often called Roma, but not in Spain where the Spanish word for gypsy, “gitano,” is uttered with pride) frequently survive in isolated encampments, reviled as beggars and petty thieves. In some Eastern European countries, they face such deep prejudice that they are chased off municipal buses, and in school their children are relegated to classes for the mentally handicapped.

Even in Western Europe, France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, could count on shoring up his popularity when he decided to deport thousands of Roma to Romania earlier this year.

But things are different in Spain.

Here, more than 30 years of government programs to help Gypsies have begun to show signs of success. Virtually all young Gypsy children are in elementary school. Nearly half of their parents own their own homes. And like Ms. Jiménez, many are holding down mainstream jobs, moving away from more traditional Gypsy livelihoods like selling cattle and other goods.

Spain has become so successful, in fact, that it now serves as a model for other European countries, including Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. Some experts say Spain’s secret is that it has concentrated on practical issues, such as access to housing and jobs. In contrast, they say, some European institutions have concentrated too much on issues of prejudice and political rights.

“Perhaps as a result, a lot of money has been spent in other parts of Europe to integrate Gypsies but with few results,” said Isidro Rodríguez, director of Fundación Secretariado Gitano, a state-financed organization that administers the Acceder, or “to access,” job program that helped Ms. Jiménez. “The Spanish approach has really been different because it has been first and foremost about improving living standards.”

There are still problems. The school dropout rate for Gypsy children between 12 and 18 is a staggering 80 percent. Nearly 4 percent of the population still live in shacks.

And tales of day-to-day indignities are not hard to come by. At present, for instance, a troupe of Gypsy women is touring the country in a production of “The House of Bernarda Alba” by the poet Federico García Lorca, a performance that has been widely covered by the news media and won largely rave reviews.

But in Madrid, the actresses — who live in a shantytown in Seville and dress in traditional long Gypsy skirts — had trouble getting a taxi. Though accompanied by government officials, they were also refused service in a local bar.

Still, even advocates for the Roma say that Spain is way ahead of the rest of Europe.

One 2009 study conducted for the Fundación Secretariado Gitano looked at the housing of Gypsies in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Greece, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Spain, and found that over all a third lived in substandard housing, mostly apartments lacking heat, hot water or electricity. But in some countries, the situation was much worse. In Portugal, for instance, nearly a third of the Roma population still lived in shacks.

In Spain, 92 percent of Gypsies live in standard apartments or houses, according to the same study. Another survey, in 2005, found that 50 percent were formally employed, government officials said.

“Something like that is so important,” said Juan Mato Gómez, a director general in the Ministry of Health, Social Policy and Equality. “It addresses one of the basic myths about Gypsies — that Gypsies cannot hold down a steady job.”

Gypsies, who originally came from India, have been in Spain since the 15th century. Their traditions, such as their contributions to flamenco, have become part of Spain’s identity. Yet, until recently they faced persecution, sometimes intended to drive them out of the country, sometimes intended to force assimilation. At one point, they were required by law to marry non-Gypsies; at another, they were forbidden to gather in groups of more than four.

Under Franco’s dictatorship, Gypsies lived in fear of the military police, or Guardia Civil, which often brutally broke up their encampments and forced them to keep moving around the country.

But Spain’s democratic Constitution embraced the country’s diversity and for the first time gave Gypsies rights as citizens. By the 1980s, the Guardia Civil was being deployed near schools to protect Gypsy children from Spanish parents who did not want them in the same classrooms as their own children.

Since then, the government, whether leaning left or right, has consistently financed integration programs for Spain’s estimated 700,000 Gypsies. Spain has spent more on social programs for Gypsies than any other country in the European Union. Between 2007 and 2013, it will spend more than $130 million on such programs — about $60 million from European Union funds.

“Our efforts have had some very positive results,” said José Manuel Fresno, a European Union adviser on Roma issues who is also chairman of the Spanish government’s Race and Ethnic Equality Council.

At first, some programs were wrongheaded, officials said. Gypsies were moved directly from shanties into special public housing just for them and their children went to transitional schools. The results can still be seen in some parts of Seville, where housing blocks for Gypsies became broken down tenements. The transitional schools failed, too, as Gypsies shunned them and educators decided that Gypsy children should not be isolated.

Now, government policy is to scatter Gypsies in public housing and send their children to neighborhood schools. Mediators have been set up in the schools to help if problems arise. And social services help with the transition.

But whether the Spanish models can be translated elsewhere is unclear. Experts say that some countries — particularly Romania and Bulgaria, which have large Roma populations — do not have the capacity to administrate them.

“The fact is that Gypsies in some countries have lower living standards today than 15 years ago,” Mr. Fresno said.

In Spain, Acceder has helped more than 37,000 Gypsies get jobs since 2001.

On a recent day, Ms. Jiménez, who was wearing blue eye shadow and had glittery nails, was waiting for customers in a mall on the outskirts of Madrid. She said she turned to Acceder whenever she needed a job, taking advantage of the wide range of training it offered.

“It’s like a bridge for me,” she said. “Because sometimes if you are a Gypsy, it is not so easy.”

DON'T ASK DON'T TELL

I am reprinting an editorial on Don't Ask Don't Tell, which appeared in the Nov 10-Dec 11 issue of
FREEDOM SOCIALIST.
Please check out this good paper at
http://www.socialism.com/

"AN APPEAL TO GAY AND LESBIAN SOLDIERS----

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the policy of excluding open lesbians and gays from the military, must be overturned.  It is archaic, unfair and unconstitutional.

As well as an indictment of the Democratic president who won votes by promising to end it and then muscled in to save it--just as he pledged to end US war making but instead has expanded it.

The right wing and many top military brass say that the presence of out and proud gays and lesbians in the armed forces would be subversive.  When it comes to the US military, this would be an infinitely good thing.  No institution needs subverting more.

The first soldier who went to jail for refusing to fight in Iraq on grounds of conscience, Stephen Funk, is gay.  Before his conviction, he wrote an eloquent statement explaining his decision and appealing to other young people in the military to overcome their training "to be subordinate in our thoughts, words and actions" and to exercise their instincts for compassion and solidarity.

"You don't have to be a cog in the machinery of war," Funk wrote.  "Everyone has the unconquerable power of free will."

LGBTQ folk in the military can play a key role in ending the scourge of US wars and occupations, with their unbearable consequences at home and abroad.  RESIST!"

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL

UPDATE ON THE FATE OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL.
The following  is an article from THE FREEDOM SOCIALIST
http://www.socialism.com/

WRITTEN BY JANET SUTHERLAND

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: A LIFE IN THE BALANCE
Prosecutor seeks reinstatement of death penalty.

"Worldwide, the eyes of death penalty opponents and critics of the US "justice" system, especially in its treatment of Blacks and radicals, were fixed on Nov 9 on a Philadelphia courtroom.  At issue? Whether a federal appeals court would reinstate the death sentence of renowned revolutionary journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Framed and convicted in 1982 for the killing of a Philadelphia policeman, Abu-Jamal has spent 28 years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement.  And while his death sentence was vacated in 2001, he has remained on death row.

During these years, Pensylvania's political establishment and police have worked double time trying to fast track Mumia's execution, only to be stopped by a powerful movement that leveraged mass pressure on the courts.  Now activists are mobilizing again to save Mumia's life.

In 2008, a three judge panel of the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the 2001 decision, ruling that misleading jury instructions during the sentencing phase of Mumia's original trial were grounds for vacating his death sentence and changing it to life without parole.  But last year, the US Supreme Court weighed in, ordering the 3rd Circuit to reconsider the death penalty.

The new ruling could come at any time, but possibly as late as months from now.  If it goes against Abu-Jamal, Pennsylvania prosecutors can be expected to push for swift execution.  Alternatively, a favorable decision for Mamia would require prosecutors to hold a new sentencing hearing to get the death penalty reinstated.  This scenario would open an opportunity for Mumia to present evidence of his innocence.

Despite numerous appeals, Mumia has never been allowed to present new evidence.  His trial was blatantly biased, run by a notoriously racist judge who allowed tainted evidence, police and prosecutor misconduct, testimony from witnesses who were coerced (and have since recanted), incompetent legal counsel and other subversions of fairness.

Still more evidence of injustice was recently uncovered by independent journalists Linn Washington and Dave Lindorff.  Using gunshot tests, the two showed that the prosecution's depiction of the shooting was false.  In their tests, bullets left marks on the pavement neither reported nor photographed by the police.

The actual shooting could not have occurred as two witnesses testified during Mumia's 1982 trial.  This is just the tip of a mammouth iceberg of revelations that point to Mumia's frameup.

Supporters of Abu-Jamal organized nonstop for the 9 Nov. hearing.  A large contingent of New Yorkers from the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition joined activists in Philadelphia that day.  In San Francisco, The Mobilization to Free Mumia held an emergency rally.  Speakers included Jeff Mackler, with the defense committee of radical attorney Lynne Stewart (also fighting a lengthy sentence) and Merle Woo, an Asian American activist/poet and leader in Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party.

Meanwhile, the new documentary JUSTICE ON TRIAL: THE CASE OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL is bringing Mumia's story to audiences nationally.  Made by Kuoross Esmael and Michelle Alexander it premiered in Philadelphia in October.

Mumia supporters are acting on the knowledge that with the courts stacked against radicals, and especially in this climate of vicious persecution of all who fight against war and injustice, mass action is what is necessary to save Mumia's life and win his freedom."

Please visit
http://www.freemumia.com/
or call
International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal
215-476-8812
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I encourage people to check out the Freedom Socialist Party and newspaper.  They are an excellent choice for honest reporting and comments on the struggles of working peoples.

CIVIL RIGHTS PRIZE OF THE SINTI ROMA

FROM ROMANO LILORO
European Civil Rights Prize of the Sinti and Roma 2010 – awarded to Simone Veil on December 16, 2010, in Berlin – Foreign Office

02/12/2010 -
Simone Veil will be the bearer of the European Civil Rights Prize of the Sinti and Roma 2010. This was unanimously decided upon by the Award Jury headed by the Chairman of the Zentralrat Deutscher Sinti und Roma (Central Council of German Sinti and Roma) and the Dokumentationszentrum Deutscher Sinti und Roma (Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma), Romani Rose, at their meeting.

Simone Veil, former President of the European Parliament, was chosen to receive the award for her exemplary commitment to the recognition and equality of the Sinti and Roma Holocaust victims, which she couples with a tireless support of human dignity and the protection of threatened minorities, especially the 12 million Sinti and Roma, in present day Europe.

18 young members of the Roma minority from the Czech Republic will receive an exceptional "special recognition" with an endowment of EUR 5,000. They made made a successful complaint to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg against discriminatory segregation practice in school. This was not only a courageous step taken by young people, which deserves the greatest respect and recognition, but is also a very important step for the Sinti and Roma as a whole and sets a judicial precedent which will help to prevent similar practices in other European member states of the Council of Europe. It also shows that the issue of education plays a central role within the minority in contrast to the usual clichés about Sinti and Roma.

Ms Agnes Daroczy will receive a “special recognition” with an endowment of EUR 5,000, too. She has been recognized as a dedicated human rights activist for the Roma minority in Hungary, of which she is also a member, and other communities. As a result of many years of tireless work as a journalist and scientist, she has brought both the Holocaust against the Sinti and Roma to the attention of the public and has also done a great deal for the Sinti and Roma in the struggle against the current forms of anti-ziganism.

The ceremony is kindly hosted by the Foreign Office in its Berlin headquarters.

For further information please contact:
Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma
Bremeneckgasse 2
69117 Heidelberg
GERMANY