ANGELA Y. DAVIS

PHOTO BY ADALIA FROM SAN FRANCISCO BAY VIEW

Angela Davis was born on 26 Jan. 1944.
Angela is one of my consistent heroes.  She has been an important influence in my own politics and activism.  I have admired her since her "FBI 10 MOST WANTED" days.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANGELA,
Morgan

Following are two articles about Angela.
The first is a short biography.
The second is a recap of an interview/presentation.
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FROM SPARTACUS EDUCATIONAL

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAdavisAN.htm

Angela Davis, the daughter of an automobile mechanic and a school teacher, was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on 26th January, 1944. The area where the family lived became known as Dynamite Hill because of the large number of African American homes bombed by the Ku Klux Klan. Her mother was a civil rights campaigner and had been active in the NAACP before the organization was outlawed in Birmingham.

Davis attended segregated schools in Birmingham before moving to New York with her mother who had decided to study for a M.A. at New York University. Davis attended a progressive school in Greenwich Village where several of the teachers had been blacklisted during the McCarthy Era.

In 1961 Davis went to Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts to study French. Her course included a year at the Sorbonne in Paris. Soon after arriving back in the United States she was reminded of the civil rights struggle that was taking place in Birmingham when four girls that she knew were killed in the Baptist Church Bombing in September, 1963.

After graduating from Brandeis University she spent two years at the faculty of philosophy at Johann Wolfgang von Goethe University in Frankfurt, West Germany before studying under Herbert Marcuse at the University of California. Davis was greatly influenced by Marcuse, especially his idea that it was the duty of the individual to rebel against the system.

In 1967 Davis joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party. The following year she became involved with the American Communist Party.

Davis began working as a lecturer of philosophy at the University of California in Los Angeles. When the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1970 informed her employers, the California Board of Regents, that Davis was a member of the American Communist Party, they terminated her contract.

Davis was active in the campaign to improve prison conditions. She became particularly interested in the case of George Jackson and W. L. Nolen, two African Americans who had established a chapter of the Black Panthers in California's Soledad Prison. While in California's Soledad Prison Jackson and W. L. Nolen, established a chapter of the Black Panthers. On 13th January 1970, Nolan and two other black prisoners was killed by a prison guard. A few days later the Monterey County Grand Jury ruled that the guard had committed "justifiable homicide."

When a guard was later found murdered, Jackson and two other prisoners, John Cluchette and Fleeta Drumgo, were indicted for his murder. It was claimed that Jackson had sought revenge for the killing of his friend, W. L. Nolan.

On 7th August, 1970, George Jackson's seventeen year old brother, Jonathan, burst into a Marin County courtroom with a machine-gun and after taking Judge Harold Haley as a hostage, demanded that George Jackson, John Cluchette and Fleeta Drumgo, be released from prison. Jonathan Jackson was shot and killed while he was driving away from the courthouse.

Over the next few months Jackson published two books, Letters from Prison and Soledad Brother. On 21st August, 1971, George Jackson was gunned down in the prison yard at San Quentin. He was carrying a 9mm automatic pistol and officials argued he was trying to escape from prison. It was also claimed that the gun had been smuggled into the prison by Davis.

Davis went on the run and the Federal Bureau of Investigation named her as one of its "most wanted criminals". She was arrested two months later in a New York motel but at her trial she was acquitted of all charges. However, because of her militant activities, Ronald Reagan, the Governor of California, urged that Davis should never be allowed to teach in any of the state-supported universities.

Davis worked as a lecturer of African American studies at Claremont College (1975-77) before becoming a lecturer in women's and ethnic studies at San Francisco State University. In 1979 Davis visited the Soviet Union where she was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize and made a honorary professor at Moscow State University. In 1980 and 1984 Davis was the Communist Party's vice-presidential candidate.

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The following is a recap of a presentation/interview  Angela gave in 2009

FROM SAN FRANCISCO BAY VIEW

http://sfbayview.com/2009/angela-davis-tours-the-nation-calling-for-the-abolition-of-prisons-reports-from-the-university-of-virginia-and-chicago%e2%80%99s-south-side


BY ANNE BROMLEY

Angela Davis came to KPFA recently to record an interview with Block Report Radio. –

Walking around the University of Virginia’s Academical Village, activist and philosopher Angela Davis remarked that the Lawn rooms seem as cramped as prison cells.

The feeling made her realize that Thomas Jefferson’s architecture compels the observer to think about his legacy, Davis said in her keynote address for the Carter G. Woodson Institute’s conference, “The Problem with Punishment: Race, Inequality and Justice,” held April 16 and 17.

The connection is no mere coincidence. The rooms on the Lawn provide student residents with the privacy to contemplate knowledge, while prison cells confine the prisoner to give him the privacy to penitently contemplate his crime.

The idea of the penitentiary emerged at the same time as the American Revolution, but it has proven a failed experiment in democracy and an institution of racial injustice when one in 100 Americans is behind bars and half of them are Black, she said.

Davis called for a new movement to abolish what she called “the prison-industrial complex” in the U.S., which has become the largest jailer in the world.

Violent people should be dealt with, she said, in the context of the reasons behind the violence and how it is perpetuated. “Simply dumping these people in prison only has the tendency to reproduce more violence,” she said.

The American-style penitentiary system is spreading internationally and having a devastating effect, she said, with prisons serving as receptacles for people who can no longer find a place in their societies.

This may be an auspicious moment in U.S. history to confront the prison crisis, marked in part by President Obama’s election and the economic crisis, she said.

Davis was one of about 30 scholars and others who participated in the multidisciplinary two-day symposium that aimed to contribute serious discussion to the growing national debate on the growth of the prison-industrial complex and racial disparities in the U.S.

In residency at U.Va. for the week, Davis spoke Thursday night to a packed house in Newcomb Hall Ballroom that included hundreds of students – some even traveling from Charlotte, N.C. – as well as faculty, conference participants and community members, including those who identified themselves as ex-convicts and ‘60s radicals during the question-and-answer period following her talk.

Davis and Deborah McDowell, director of the Woodson Institute, both mentioned that Jefferson designed not only his renowned buildings at the University and Monticello, but also an early penitentiary. He contracted architect Benjamin Latrobe to design the first prison in Virginia, with cells for solitary confinement.

Putting offenders in prison was considered a more enlightened idea than the less humane conditions and practices criminals were subjected to around the turn of the 19th century, Davis said.

The example of Jefferson’s legacy, she said, tells us “to be aware of the histories we inhabit.”

The prevalence of corporal punishment for actions that were considered crimes clashed with ideas for the new democracy. Because of slavery, however, the need for corporal punishment persisted, she said.

For example, Davis recounted what ex-slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass told a British audience in London at the time: Although laws were written to sentence a white man to capital punishment only for the crime of murder, there were 70 crimes that could lead a Black man to his death.

“These are the historical roots we see today. The ideas were incorrect, but the early American government saw prisons as progressive, a move away from retribution,” said Davis, who was active in the Black Power Movement and spent time in jail in the early ‘70s, before being acquitted at trial.

“Prison was supposed to allow people to reform themselves. Incarceration turned out to be far more damaging to the psyche … and could not effect rehabilitation,” she said. “We have to undo past damage.

“Racism fuels the prison-industrial complex,” she said. “The vast disproportion of Black people makes it clear. … Black men are criminalized.”

Law enforcement surveillance determines who gets caught and who goes to prison, Davis explained. Many people commit acts that, if discovered, would result in prison sentences, but they are safe because the police don’t target their communities for surveillance.

‘Racism fuels the prison-industrial complex,’ said Angela Davis. ‘The vast disproportion of Black people makes it clear. … Black men are criminalized.’

The assumption, even among some African-Americans, that Black people have a proclivity to criminal activities is part of the daily working of racism.

“The fear of free Black bodies is contained in the systems and strategies that criminalize racism,” Davis said.

She advocated for more productive modes of addressing people who do harm to others and their communities.

‘The fear of free Black bodies is contained in the systems and strategies that criminalize racism,’ Angela Davis said.

“When we think of 2.3 million Americans being in prison on any given day, and all the resources required to sustain the system, why do we not mobilize to change this?” she asked.

It is because of the fear of confronting persistent racism and its history in the U.S., she said. “We are all infected.”

Davis pointed out there are no great disparities in drug use among the range of people and communities. Recently, law officers have shifted their surveillance to rural white people and, oddly enough, that has subjected them to the same form of racism to which Black men are subjected.

Law enforcement surveillance determines who gets caught and who goes to prison, Davis explained. Many people commit acts that, if discovered, would result in prison sentences, but they are safe because the police don’t target their communities for surveillance.

Americans must develop and negotiate social relations to be able to talk about racism without it being so uncomfortable, she said, adding that a justice system must be created that is not based on revenge, but rather is more restorative.

The political climate seems to be more hopeful, she said, lauding Virginia U.S. Sen. Jim Webb’s recent call for prison reform.

Anne Bromley is on the media relations staff at the University of Virginia – her beat: African-American Affairs.
She can be reached at abromley@virginia.edu.

This story first appeared at UVaToday.

BISHOP RUIZ



BISHOP RUIZ   REUTERS

 FROM BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/

24 January 2011

Mexico bishop and indigenous champion Samuel Ruiz dies


The Mexican bishop and indigenous rights campaigner, Samuel Ruiz Garcia, has died at the age of the 86.

He passed away in hospital in Mexico City from complications arising from respiratory problems and diabetes.

Samuel Ruiz served as bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas in the southern state of Chiapas for four decades.

He was best known for his role as mediator in the conflict with Zapatista rebels, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace prize several times.

President Felipe Calderon said his death was a "big loss" for Mexico.

"Samuel Ruiz worked to build a fairer, more equal, more dignified Mexico without discrimination, where indigenous communities have a voice and where their rights are respected by all," Mr Calderon said in a statement.

Bishop Ruiz led the diocese of San Cristobal de las Casas from 1959 to 2000, when he stepped aside on reaching the retirement age of 75.

Inspired by the liberation theology that swept the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America in the 1960s, he was an outspoken advocate for the rights of the indigenous Maya people of Chiapas, who are among Mexico's poorest and marginalized communities.

His followers knew him as "The Bishop of the Poor" or simply as "Jtatic" - father in the Tzotzil Maya language.

Peace broker

On 1 January 1994 Chiapas saw a shortlived armed uprising by a previously unknown rebel group, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), which said it was fighting for indigenous rights.

Bishop Ruiz was chosen to mediate between the government and the rebels.

In 1998 he was pressurized to resign as mediator by the government, amid allegations that he was too sympathetic to the Zapatistas, but the uneasy truce he helped to establish in Chiapas has held ever since.

Bishop Ruiz was also criticised by conservatives in the Church who saw him as too influenced by left-wing political ideas and too flexible in his approach to indigenous religious practices that combined Catholicism with traditional Maya beliefs.

The conflict in Chiapas raised his international profile, and he became a widely-respected advocate of indigenous rights throughout Latin America.

One of his legacies is the Father Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Centre, which he founded in 1989.

The organisation is named, like the diocese Bishop Ruiz represented, after a 16th Century Spanish priest and defender of indigenous rights.

ROMANI WOMEN

Ah, the following youtube was forwarded to me from Yvonne Slee, a Romani activist in Australia.

This is a very enjoyable clip.

Do you recognize any of these women?

Hints     Papusza

The woman who sang the last song (in Spain) in the movie Latcho Drom

and Yvonne Slee herself.

I hope you enjoy this video clip.  I did. 

Thanks Yvonne.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMHS7EMRS6E

TULLIA ZEVI

FROM JTA

Tullia Zevi, prominent Italian leader and Jewish journalist, dies


January 23, 2011

(JTA) -- Tullia Zevi, longtime Jewish leader and one of the most prominent women in post-war Italy, died in Rome.

Zevi, who would have celebrated her 92nd birthday on Feb. 2, died Jan. 22.

Italian politicians joined Jewish leaders in paying tribute to Zevi, a journalist who served as president of the umbrella Union of Italian Jewish Communities from 1983 to 1998.

"She was a distinguished intellectual and untiring promoter of the culture of peace, who worked against any form of social discrimination," said President of the Chamber of Deputies Gianfranco Fini. Italian President Giorgio Napolitano praised her "deep civic commitment and exquisite humanity and culture." She was, said Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, "a personality of great human and intellectual dimensions."

Born Tullia Calabi in Milan, Zevi and her family were vacationing in Switzerland when Italy's Fascist government imposed anti-Semitic racial laws in 1938. She spent World War II in exile in France and the United States. She worked with anti-fascist groups and studied at Radcliffe University and the Julliard School of Music, becoming an accomplished harpist.

After the war she returned to Italy and became a journalist, serving as a correspondent for Israel's Ma'ariv daily newspaper from 1960 to 1993. She also wrote for JTA from 1948 to 1963 and for London's Jewish Chronicle. Among her assignments were covering the Nuremberg trials and the trial of Adolf Eichman in Jerusalem in 1961.

Her husband, Bruno Zevi, was an anti-fascist activist and noted architect who died in 2000.

Zevi was the first, and to date only, woman to serve as president of the UCEI. During her tenure Pope John Paul II made his historic first visit to the Rome Synagogue in 1986, and the Italian state signed a landmark accord governing its official relations with the Jewish community.

Zevi, meanwhile, became a national figure of moral authority, speaking out frequently against all forms of prejudice and discrimination. In 1992 she was named Knight of the Grand Cross, Italy's highest civilian honor.

"She leaves a vacuum that will be difficult to fill," said Rome Jewish community president Riccardo Pacifici.

CANADA

FROM THE VANCOUVER SUN
Canada to study end of Czech visa restrictions

By Peter O'Neil. Europe Correspondent,
Postmedia News January 21, 2011
The Canadian government is sending experts to Prague later this month to assess whether Canada can safely lift its visa restrictions on the Czech Republic without opening the door to a new wave of Roma refugee claimants.

"The experts are going to research how the Czech authorities protect minorities and assist their integration," the Czech Press Agency reported Friday.

Alykhan Velshi, spokesman for Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, confirmed that the experts will participate in a five-day "information gathering visit" starting Jan. 31.

Visa restrictions were imposed in 2009 in a bid to shut down a wave of Roma arriving in Canada, claiming persecution in the Czech Republic. The number of claimants soared almost immediately after visa requirements were removed in late 2007.

The large number of migrants caused a strain on social services in the Hamilton, Ont., area, where many tried to settle, according to one media report.

The Czech government was infuriated by the 2009 decision and the foreign relations committee of the Czech parliament's lower house has retaliated by blocking a Canada-European Union agreement on air transportation, according to the Czech media report.

_________________________________
Wouldn't it be great if half the money spent on studies and fact finding missions actually went to do something significant for Romani and other oppressed people ?
Morgan

CANADA



PHOTO  PASAL ROSSIGNOL REUTERS  Postmedia News Toronto

FROM THE VANCOUVER SUN

 Roma asylum seekers give up on Canada

By Syed Badiuzzaman, AFP
November 3, 2010 

In recent months, France drew a chorus of international criticism for rounding up hundreds of Roma from illegal camps and sending them back to Romania and Bulgaria.

Unemployed and twice attacked in his native Czech Republic, 50-year-old Ladislav Bledy came to Canada with his family in July 2009 seeking asylum.

Frustrated after 15 months of waiting for his case to be heard by Canada's refugee board, he withdrew his application — along with hundreds of fellow Roma — and is now returning to his homeland to face yet more uncertainty.

"I came to Canada along with my wife and three children for a better life. We all waited here for 15 long months but nothing happened," Bledy said through an interpreter.

"And there is no guarantee that our case will be heard in the near future," he said, adding that he fears more assaults by "neo-Nazi skinheads" upon his return to the Czech Republic.

Some 30,000 Roma live in Canada and 15,000 in Toronto. Currently, 8,000 Roma are awaiting a hearing. They include 4,000 Hungarians, 1,300 Czechs, 500 Slovaks and the rest from Romania and few other countries.

In July 2009, Canada imposed visa requirements for travelers from the Czech Republic, an EU member, after a steep rise in refugee claims, particularly among Roma people. It took similar action against Mexico.

"A large percentage of Roma refugee claimants are withdrawing their claims and going back home," immigration lawyer Max Berger said.

More than 250 of Berger's Czech Roma clients have withdrawn their applications, fed up with endless hearing delays and alleged political interference, and feeling hopeless after seeing other bids rejected.

Canada's acceptance rate of Roma refugees from the Czech Republic topped 80 per cent prior to 2009, but it plummeted to virtually zero following a crackdown on what Ottawa said were abuses of its system.

"I find it hard to believe that the Czech Republic is an island of persecution in Europe," Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said last year.

A mid-2009 Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board fact-finding mission to the Czech Republic did not notice any persecution of Roma. Rather it found an increased level of protection for Roma, according to a mission report.

In recent months, France drew a chorus of international criticism for rounding up hundreds of Roma from illegal camps and sending them back to Romania and Bulgaria.

Paul St. Clair, executive director of Roma Community Centre in Toronto, sees similarities between France and Canada as far as the treatment of Roma is concerned.

"Everybody is yelling and screaming at France, but Canada is doing exactly the same thing. The difference is Canada is doing it in a legal and nicer way," St. Clair said.

Berger criticized Kenney's statement and the persecution report for creating a "bias" which has cast what he called a "pall or taint" on the refugee board's decision-making, adversely impacting Roma's asylum bids.

Several immigration lawyers launched a suit in federal court seeking to have their clients' failed asylum bids reheard and for the new panel to be ordered to disregard Kenney's comments to media.

Rocco Galati, another immigration lawyer, echoed Berger, saying Kenney's statement was "political interference with the judicial process of Canada" and "unconstitutional."

A spokesman for the refugee board acknowledged it was dealing with a backlog of cases — currently 53,658 — but denied any government influence on its decisions.

The board "is not a political organization," spokesman Charles Hawkins told AFP. "It has an arm-length relationship with the Immigration and Naturalization Services and the Canadian government.

"Claims are heard on a case by case basis. All refugee claimants are treated in the same manner. They all go through the same process."

Despite the European Union's threat of retaliatory action against Canada unless it lifted the visa requirements, these still remain in place and, according to Kenney's spokesman Alykhan Velshi, have stemmed a tide of "bogus asylum claims" from the Czech Republic.

ROMA PEOPLE IN THE HISTORY OF PAINTING



SAlVADOR DALI  FIGUERAS GYPSY

 This video is both interesting and entertaining.  Hope you enjoy it.

Watch the +RESPECT video “Roma people in the history of painting: a journey across cultures and style”


January 20th, 2011

The presence of Roma people in art masterpieces witnesses their history and traditions.

Link: http://www.morespect.eu/en2/2011/01/watch-the-respect-video-roma-people-in-the-history-of-painting-a-journey-across-cultures-and-style/

ARTICLE ON THE ROMANI



PHOTO  CAROL SILVERMAN



FROM ETHOS MAGAZINE

http://www.ethosmagonline.com/


Unraveling the Gypsy Myth

Across Europe and the United States a minority remains segregated from mainstream society. The 21st century has brought little improvements to the Roma people, commonly known as Gypsies, who have been fighting discrimination and deeply ingrained stereotypes for centuries.

Story by Nina Strochlic

Illustrations by Sarah Abadi

She wears jeans rather than a flowing ankle-length skirt. Her ears and teeth are devoid of gold adornment. She prefers living in a house to roaming the countryside in a cloth-covered caravan.

At a glance, Morgan Ahern looks nothing like what many would associate with being a Gypsy. Small with a toothy grin, she doesn’t resemble either the mysterious bejeweled Gypsies of Hollywood or the thieving ragged Gypsies of current stereotypes. Yet, Ahern is a proud member of the ethnic group often called Gypsies, though many identify with the less-loaded term, Roma.

In 1955, when Ahern was seven years old, New York authorities raided her family’s community in Brooklyn and removed every school-aged Roma child. Ahern and her brother were taken away from their parents because their traditional homeschooling was considered truancy and child abuse by the state. They were moved to a nearby orphanage. The community crumbled – her parents moved out in an attempt to get custody, but it wasn’t until thirty years later that Ahern found them.

The history of the Roma is traced like all those constantly marked as outsiders: measured in discrimination, expulsion, and genocide. Entering a Church-controlled Europe from the Punjab region of India in the middle ages, the Roma were seen as heretics for practicing fortune telling and palmistry. They were believed to be Egyptian and called “Gypsies” for short. Europeans didn’t trust the dark-skinned outsiders and Roma communities adapted to a mobile lifestyle to avoid persecution.

Today, Ahern actively works in Roma rights with a start-up mobile museum near Seattle, but initially, the forced assimilation was a success. Forbidden to speak Romany, the Roma dialect she was raised in, and barred from seeing her family, she lost all ties to her Roma heritage. Ahern lived in orphanages, foster homes, and juvenile institutions for the rest of her childhood.

“It was a system that thought the only way to fit in or exist in a culture was to give up anything that made you different,” she says in a thick New York accent. Authorities of New York State claim it was never targeting the Roma, but Ahern doesn’t believe it, saying that non-Roma kids who also weren’t in school in their neighborhood were left alone.

Ahern was forty years old when she was reunited with her mother for the first time while crossing a Denver street. As she reached the corner, she turned and so did the woman she had just passed. They walked back into the intersection and the woman called her by her Gypsy name – a traditional name that no one but a mother and child can know. The stranger invited her out for a cup of coffee. Her father and grandmother had since died, but Ahern was reunited with what was left of the family it had taken her thirty years to find.

In 1554, being a Gypsy was punishable by death in England. At the same time the Swiss were hunting Roma men, women, and children for sport. A century later, fifteen countries had laws aimed at destroying or deporting Roma communities. The Nazis murdered an estimated half million of Europe’s Roma population during World War II. And as recently as 2010, anti-Roma sentiment erupted in France, as thousands were uprooted and deported to Romania and Bulgaria.

In response to hundreds of years of attempts at dismantling their culture, most Roma communities remain insular and isolated. Since many outsiders aren’t immersed in, or even aware of, Roma societies, there are ideal conditions for breeding stereotypes. Mainstream media, like the comic strip called “Those Thieving Gypsy Bastards,” does little to dispel beliefs of Roma as thieves and vagabonds, while popular movies, including Disney’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” portray Roma women as scantily clad and promiscuous. In reality, conservative Roma men and women don’t show their legs in public, and discussions of sexuality are strictly forbidden. These misconceptions plague twelve million Roma in Europe and one million in the United States.

Roma are known as celebrated musicians even in countries actively repressing them. Despite being scattered across Europe and the United States, the Roma’s traditional music, customs, and language have woven tightly formed communities. Subgroups defined by region, traditionalism, language, and occupation make up the complicated cultural puzzle that few gaje, the Romany word for non-Roma, understand. The Kalderash, the largest group in America, specializes in fortune telling and car repair, while other Roma communities are blacksmiths or laborers.

While the prejudice may be more deep-seated across the Atlantic, Roma in the United States survive as an invisible group, faced with combating similar stereotypes and ignorance that pin them as uneducated criminals. Today, with the melting pot of ethnicities in the United States, American Roma are much less distinguishable than their European counterparts who are singled out by their dark skin and Indian features.

Kristin Raeesi is a master’s student studying communications and language preservation at the University of Wyoming. Growing up, her mother warned her and her sister to say they were Hungarian because people wouldn’t like them if they knew they were Roma.

Raeesi can clearly remember the only time she was taught about her heritage in school – when an elementary school teacher read a Shel Silverstein poem titled “The Gypsies are Coming.” The poem includes the line, “The Gypsies are coming . . . to buy little children and lock them up tight.” Raeesi was stunned. Her family didn’t steal children, she thought.

She followed her mother’s advice when starting new jobs and schools, preferring to tell people she was Greek or Lebanese. Then, during a rebellious streak at age twenty-two, she decided to move in with a traditional group of Roma in Oklahoma. This Roma community was known in town and the women were identifiable by their traditional long skirts.

The first time Raeesi felt anti-Roma prejudice first-hand was in a Tulsa drug store. She was shopping for makeup with one of the other girls when she noticed the shop employee trailing them through each aisle. Shocked, Raeesi confronted the woman, asking why they were being followed.

“Get out of here . . . I know who you are and where you guys live,” the woman screamed. “I’m going to tell the manager that you were trying to steal something.”

With Roma constantly portrayed as swindlers and thieves, communities are often targeted in criminal investigations. In 2006, Los Angeles Times published a story exposing a group of 800 detectives hailing from across the United States called the National Association of Bunco Investigators (NABI). According to the article, the investigators collaborate on monitoring and targeting Roma communities. Executive Director Jon Grow denies allegations that Gypsies are singled out. “No group has an exclusive right to commit any certain type of crime, but some crimes are more prevalent within certain groups,” he says. “Some crimes we look at Gypsies do, but we don’t classify anything as Gypsy crimes.”

Confrontations are more prevalent when she divulges her heritage or in places with an obvious Roma presence, Raeesi says. When she tried to apply for a minority scholarship, she was told she couldn’t because the Roma weren’t a real ethnic group. She fought back and was later granted the award. Recently, a fellow graduate student told Raeesi that she wasn’t like the Gypsies in her native Romania who are all dirty and uneducated. Later, a student presenting on Gypsy music in one of her classes blatantly stated that all Roma are primitive and without a real culture.

Raeesi is currently working with Voice of Roma, a social justice group, to launch a school for Roma children in California. In the Roma communities of the United States, many parents chose to keep their children out of school as a measure to preserve their culture from outside influences. Since Roma history and traditions are virtually absent from lessons and textbooks, conservative Roma families feel mainstream education has no relevance, Raeesi says.

She has been discussing plans for a new school with the communities and is hopeful that parents will feel more comfortable when they know which subjects are taught and who the teachers are. “There was an indication that people are starting to realize the value of education and what it can give you because traditional ways of making a living are getting more difficult,” Raeesi says.

The Roma are the largest ethnic minority group in Europe, but also the poorest, with a poverty rate about ten times higher and a life expectance ten to fifteen years shorter than the average European citizen. Despite living in Europe for almost a thousand years, Roma are still seen as outsiders and prejudice remains deeply ingrained across the continent. What distinguishes their situation is that compared to those living around them, Roma communities have seen little improvement in social conditions through the centuries.

Segregation tactics prevail across Europe. Roma populations are pushed further into the fringes while suffering constant discrimination, police brutality, and poverty. Since Romania and Bulgaria joined the European Union in 2007, thousands of Roma fleeing from persecution or searching for work and decent living conditions continue to travel from Eastern Europe to Italy, Germany, and France. The large number of immigrants has embittered many citizens of these countries who have been taught to fear the Roma.

New migrants form ramshackle communities outside large cities where social services are barely existent and outsiders routinely and indiscriminately abuse residents. Government authorities perceive crime and unemployment in Roma camps as irremediable ethnic problems and use them to justify the separation rather than amend it. Cities in the Czech Republic and Slovakia have walled-off sections of towns to segregate Roma occupants.

To combat this influx of Roma, governments across Europe instated mass deportations. Thousands have been kicked out of Germany, Italy, and France in the past two years under policies that equate eliminating Roma to eliminating crime. In July 2010, an internal police document explicitly singled out Roma communities in France as the focus of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s crackdown on illegal workers. Sarkozy ordered 300 Roma camps to be dismantled and their residents sent back to their homelands, claiming the deportations as a measure to decrease illegal activity.

Under European Union law, countries are allowed to expel immigrants under certain circumstances, but not for ethnic reasons. The EU Justice Commission threatened legal repercussions against France, until deciding to drop investigations in mid-October after the French government agreed to their treaties. Human rights groups like Amnesty International were outraged over what they saw as vindication for France.

Covert anti-Roma activities have been occurring for years under government auspices across Europe. Popular stereotypes have extremely negative implications for Roma communities, who are often targeted under discriminatory legislation.

Roma typically have large families because their culture puts a strong emphasis on children. During the communist period in Czechoslovakia, Gypsies were considered inferior and it was state policy to sterilize the women in an attempt to curb their population. Illiterate Roma women being treated in hospitals for other medical issues were told to sign papers guaranteeing better care, only to wake up and discover they had been sterilized. As recently as 2008, doctors trying to independently curb what many consider “the Gypsy problem” continued to sterilize unknowing Czech Roma women, according to the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC).

Roma often live in substandard conditions. This house is in the only Roma-majority municipality of Macedonia. PHOTOS COURTESY Carol Silverman

Gaping disparities in education have kept European Roma communities in the grasp of inescapable poverty for decades. Many children enter the school system without fluency in the national language, since they were raised in their Romany dialect. An enormous percentage get placed in classes for the learning disabled and kept there for the rest of their education. In some regions of the Czech Republic, 50 percent of Roma children are put into schools for students with learning disabilities. In neighboring Slovakia, Roma children constitute 85 percent of the students in classes for the mentally disabled in mainstream schools, even though they only make up 10 percent of the country’s population. In October, the United Nations reported that 50 percent of Roma children in Europe do not finish elementary school.

Professor Carol Silverman, head of the University of Oregon’s Anthropology Department, is a small woman with cropped hair. She has been working and living with Roma communities across Europe and the United States for the past thirty years.

According to Dr. Silverman, when Roma children do enroll in public schools, non-Roma families pull their children out. Soon the school is majority Roma and problems of substandard education persist, though recent efforts in the Czech Republic and Hungary are being made to effectively desegregate schools.

“In the end, the good districts accept [Roma] and those very same kids learn people are people—dark skinned, light skinned, whatever language you speak, whatever culture you have—people are people,” Dr. Silverman says.

In 2008, a survey in Italy found that 81 percent of Italians consider all Roma unlikeable or barely likeable. The same year, hundreds of Roma were forced to flee as young Italian protesters threw Molotov cocktails and burned settlements near Naples.

In the camps, Roma are not only abused by outside citizens, but are often victims of police profiling and receive unusually harsh sentencing. According to Dr. Silverman, there have been multiple cases of Roma taken into police custody and never returning.

“Are there police trainings? Are there Roma in textbooks [to teach] about their contribution to European history and culture?” Dr. Silverman asks. “No – the conditions that produce prejudice have hardly changed.”

In largely homogenous societies in Eastern Europe, prejudice against Roma citizens is based on physical appearance. When Monditza Fournier was four years old, she was adopted from an orphanage in Romania and moved to the United States. “In the orphanage she was beaten, not fed, and never held due to being Roma,” her mother, Criss, says. Today Monditza is a senior at the University of Washington.

Growing up, Criss strived to educate her daughter on her Roma heritage, but neither was prepared for their first return to Romania in 2007. Criss had been warned of possible discrimination against her daughter, but was shocked by the widespread hatred also apparent in Italy and Croatia. She recalls hearing cruel comments toward Monditza, watched people spit at her feet, was forced to move to different tables in restaurants, pushed off benches in the airports, and thrown out of upper-class eateries. Monditza says she was baffled until one Romanian woman told her she was easily identifiable by her facial features and recommended she tell others she was Indian to avoid discrimination.

“It’s hard to watch when a child has to lie about who and what they are to survive,” Criss says.

Although they don’t have a centralized political leadership, European Roma have formed a handful of human rights organizations over the past decades. The largest of these is the ERRC, the Hungary-based watchdog group monitoring and assisting with Roma issues across the continent.

Catherine Twigg, the ERRC’s communications officer, says they have been investigating legalities of the situation in France. By singling out Roma as an ethnic group in the expulsions, the group believes Sarkozy’s government should face legal retribution. “From the evidence gathered so far, [the expulsions] seem to violate national and European law, as well as international human rights obligations,” Twigg says.

According to Twigg, conditions of the Roma aren’t being improved because politicians are more likely to blame them for naturally being lazy, prone to criminality, and uninterested in school, than to recognize the obstacles and lack of opportunities the group faces. Public figures and media outlets follow the same path – constantly portraying Roma as swindlers and thieves. When these stereotypes are seen as natural to the Roma as an ethnic group, problems and substandard conditions are ignored or written off. Today, the theory that crime, poverty, and unemployment are natural to the Roma leads to serious marginalization by political powers in Europe.

For decades, the media has largely ignored thousands of Roma deported from France, Germany, Italy, and other European countries. This time, international focus is on France as Sarkozy legitimizes already pervasive stereotypes by putting the Roma at the center of his hard-on-crime platform.

“It’s getting the press now in France because it’s part of Sarkozy’s political campaign, and actually getting a lot of support . . . whereas in Germany, just ordinary Roma were [taken] from small communities, put on planes, and sent back to Kosovo,” Dr. Silverman says of the deportation coverage.

In the midst of the civil war in 1999, as many as 100,000 Roma fled from Kosovo and dispersed throughout Europe. Recently, the German government decided to send 10,000 Roma refugees back to Kosovo, where instability and minority-focused crime still prevail.

After vowing to deport illegal residents in July 2010, French authorities began fingerprinting all Roma, including children, to ensure they couldn’t return. Two years earlier, Silvio Berlusconi’s government in Italy declared a state of emergency to enact the same eviction tactic, backing down only after sharp criticism from the European Union. That year, a former mayor of Rome claimed the Roma are responsible for 75 percent of the city’s crime.

Social progress for the Roma is slow but powerful. From school assimilation efforts in the Czech Republic to the media focus on deportations in France, every victory counts. In order for social and economic improvement to begin, stereotypes about the underrepresented group need to be unraveled. “We aren’t just traveling in wagons and reading palms—some people do that, but you can’t just pigeonhole everybody,” Raeesi says. “Just like you wouldn’t say that all Jewish or Muslim people are the same. We are not all the same either.”

Only once negative connotations no longer pervade their name in mainstream society will the Roma be able to build themselves out of poverty and live as equals. With many European and American Roma afraid to admit to their ethnicity, the first steps are the most personal. Raeesi still remembers the first time she heard her mom tell someone she was Roma. “I think she sees that it doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” Raeesi says. “It doesn’t have to be something you’re ashamed of.”

GERMAN DEPORTATION

FROM ROMANO LILORO

Roma woman dies following deportation to Kosovo


By Elisabeth Zimmermann

19/01/2011 - The village of Mayen, near the city of Koblenz in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, is governed by a Social Democratic Party (SPD) administration. A Roma family originating from Kosovo had lived in Mayen since 1999. Despite the serious illness of one of the members of the family, Mrs. Borka T., the whole family was deported under inhumane conditions in early December to Kosovo. Just a month later, Mrs. T. died of a brain hemorrhage.

In the early hours of December 7, police picked up Mrs. Borka T. with her husband and her 14-year-old son Avdil from their home in Mayen. They were given just 30 minutes to pack a few personal belongings. They were then taken by police to Dusseldorf Airport and together with other refugees deported to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo.

Mrs. Borka T. was examined at Düsseldorf Airport by a doctor whose job was to give the okay for her deportation. Mrs. T.’s own specialist doctors had diagnosed her as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and neuralgia. Due to these symptoms, she received regular medication and therapy with the support of the Caritas organisation. These facts were known but ignored by officials at the airport.

The ailing woman’s condition was also swept aside by the local administration in Mayen-Koblenz, which ordered the deportation of the family. The Trier Administrative Court then upheld the deportation, knowing full well that no possibilities of treatment for the woman existed in Kosovo.

The Mayen-Koblenz administration denied any responsibility on its part even after the death of Borka T. was announced earlier this year. A spokesman merely declared that the authority had relied on the judgement of the Trier Administrative Court, which had stated that there were options for her treatment in Kosovo. The spokesman refuted any correlation between a lack of drugs and the woman’s death as absurd, declaring with cynicism: “Intracranial bleeding is always a possibility”.

The lawyer for the family, Jens Dieckmann, issued a press release on January 7 describing the family’s traumatic experience in Kosovo and the subsequent brutal deportation of Borka T. and her family:

“In October 1999 Mrs. T. came to Germany with her family. Previously they had lived in Mitrovica, the city in Kosovo was at the center of fighting (in the Yugoslav war) and was divided (and remains divided) between Serbs and Kosovo Albanians. She witnessed the destruction of her house during the war and the death of many of her neighbors, friends and relatives. Mrs. T. and her family are members of the Roma ethnic group and were trapped in the war between the crossfire of warring Serbs and Albanians. The Albanians expelled the family of Mrs. T., together with other Roma from Mitrovica, accusing them of collaboration with the Serbs. The family subsequently fled from the ruins of Mitrovica.

“Since fleeing from Mitrovica, where Mrs. T. experienced burning houses and countless dead and wounded, she has suffered post-traumatic stress disorder. In Germany, she was therefore in constant specialist care and with the support of Caritas underwent a specific trauma therapy.”

The lawyer then went on to describe how the court in Trier upheld her deportation, although the court was fully aware of her condition. Ignoring humanitarian grounds for denying the deportation, the court preferred instead to rely on thoroughly erroneous information from the German Foreign Office that the woman would be referred to specialists in Kosovo and given immediate treatment.

In fact, the conditions on the ground in Pristina were very different. Any claim by German authorities that they could not have anticipated such a lack of medical facilities in Kosovo is completely untenable.

A number of reports and studies by refugee aid organisations such as ProAsyl or the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, have documented the desperate social and political situation in Kosovo.

There are only about 300,000 jobs for Kosovo’s 1.8 million inhabitants, and the official unemployment rate is 45 percent. For the Roma and Ashkali communities, the rate is 95 to 100 percent. There is virtually no form of support for the unemployed, and medical care is only available to those who can pay for it. Education is also bound up with paying fees. The province’s agricultural system is not competitive, and there is no significant productive sector. Kosovo’s main export is scrap metal.

In a report by the Council of Europe, Kosovo is described today as a land dominated by “mafias and organised crime”. The commander of the KLA and current prime minister, Thaci Hacim, is accused of heading a criminal cartel involved in murders, prostitution and drug trafficking. (See “Washington’s “humanitarian” war and the crimes of the KLA“)

When the T. family arrived in Pristina there were no doctors, German-speaking employees of the German Embassy or aid workers to meet them. After completing their immigration formalities, the family was completely abandoned. “You can go wherever they want,” they were told. The only money in their possession was the sum of €220.

On arrival, Mrs T. underwent a panic attack and declared she would not return to Mitrovica. The family then drove for about two hours by taxi to a brother of Mrs. T. in southern Serbia. There, around 40 family members live in a number of poorly equipped barracks. Each hut has a kitchenette and living room, where everyone eats together and at night sleep on the floor. There were no adequate facilities for a bath or shower.

The 14-year-old son Avdil, who has lived and attended school in Germany since the age of three, was totally shocked by the poverty surrounding him. Lacking any knowledge of the language, he has no chance of going to school there.

Denied essential medical treatment and drugs, Mrs. Borka T. collapsed shortly after New Year. She was taken to a clinic in Kragujevac where she fell into a coma and then died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

The tragic death of Mrs. Borka T. is yet another damning indictment of the German asylum and deportation system. Every year, thousands of people suffering from severe illnesses are deported to their countries of origin. In many cases, they have lived for years or even decades in Germany. There, they were denied a right to permanent residence and lived in a permanent state of insecurity.

Many of those deported are children who were born in Germany and grew up in the country. These children are brutally torn from their schools, their familiar surroundings and friends and deprived of any future prospects.

Even given such circumstances it was entirely within the remit of the administration in Mayen-Koblenz to grant a residence permit to the T. family on humanitarian grounds. Just two weeks before the deportation of a family, the Conference of Interior Ministers had issued a decree making such decisions possible. The state of Rhineland-Palatinate, however, decided to implement this regulation only on December 23, over a month after the decree was issued.

In his letter to the press on January 7, the family’s lawyer raised number of vital questions:

1. Why was there no medical examination of Mrs. T. immediately prior to her deportation?

2. Why were no specialists and relief organisations present in Pristina at the airport when the German authorities knew that a mentally ill woman was being deported on that day?

3. Why did the state of Rhineland-Palatinate not join the ban on the deportation of Roma from Kosovo, which had been agreed by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia? The state government in Düsseldorf had made its decision based primarily on advice from the Foreign Office and information describing the catastrophic situation facing Roma in Kosovo.

4. Why was there no stop to the deportation practice following the decision of the Conference of Interior Ministers on November 19, 2010? At the conference, it was agreed that a residency permit could be awarded to refugees who had integrated properly and protected against deportation at least until children in the family reached the age of 18. Avdil attended a school in Germany for years and would undoubtedly have fulfilled the criteria laid down.

According to his class teacher, Avdil was a good, hard-working and inquisitive student who was popular with his classmates. Nevertheless, he and his family were brutally deported.

This bureaucratic cruelty, however, is intentional. Deportations to Kosovo are the avowed aim of the agreement signed by German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere (CDU) and his Kosovar counterpart, Bajram Rexhepi, on April 14, 2010. It commits Kosovo to accept 14,000 refugees from Germany. In addition to more than 10,000 Roma, this figure also includes Ashkali, Kosovo-Egyptians and members of the Kosovo Serb minority in Kosovo.

Most of the Roma fled from Kosovo in 1999 during the NATO war against Yugoslavia. While the official doctrine of NATO was to protect the Kosovo Albanians from Serbian attacks and “ethnic cleansing”, the NATO- and EU-led war fueled ethnic nationalism and assisted in the campaign to drive out the Serb, Roma and Ashkali minorities from Kosovo. Some fled to Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro, but most sought asylum in western Europe or hoped for recognition as refugees from civil wars. Most of those who applied for asylum in Germany were turned down.

Now, many of those who did get into the country are being deported, despite the cold winter in war-torn and shattered Kosovo. Those returning will encounter poverty, social exclusion, and housing shortages. Many lacking proper medical care will suffer illness, and for some, like Mrs. Borka T., deportation means death.

Link: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jan2011/roma-j19.shtml

QUEEN LILI'UOKALANI

On January 17, 1893, Hawaii's government was overthrown as a group of businessmen and sugar plantation owners from the United States and Europe, backed by the United States military,  forced Queen Lili'uokalani to abdicate.

The following is the statement she made that day.

I, Lili'uokalani, by the Grace of God and under the constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen, do hereby solemnly protest against any and all acts done against myself and the constitutional government of the Hawaiian Kingdom by certain persons claiming to have established a Provisional Government of and for this Kingdom. That I yield to the superior force of the United States of America, whose Minister Plenipotentiary, His Excellency John L. Stevens, has caused United States troops to be landed at Honolulu and declared that he would support the said Provisional Government. Now, to avoid any collision of armed forces and perhaps loss of life, I do, under this protest, and impelled by said forces, yield my authority until such time as the Government of the United States shall, upon the facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representative and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands.


— Queen Liliuokalani, Jan 17, 1893

Interestingly, on this same date in 1917, the United States paid Denmark $25 Million for the Virgin Islands.  Buying and selling land and people one cannot really own.
Too examples of imperialism at work
Perhaps we should talk about "illegal aliens" eh.

THE UNITED KINGDOM



ANTI GYPSY/TRAVELER DEMONSTRATION

 The following are several articles on the siege of the Gypsy/Travelers' camp in Meriden England.

I previously posted blogs on the escalating situation in Meriden which just highlights the hostility toward the permanent camps for Gypsies throughout the United Kingdom. 

After the two articles, I've included a letter from a representative from the UNITED KINGDOM GYPSY WOMEN'S ASSOCIATION.
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FROM COVENTRY NEWS

Villagers gather in Meriden to debate illegal travellers' camps

By Cara Simpson

Jan 17 2011

Meriden RAID hosted a visit from campaigners around the country at the Heart of England Social Club.VILLAGERS from across the country on Meriden to debate how to lobby the government over illegal travellers’ camps.

Campaigners from far and wide concerned by the illegal development of travellers sites in their area gathered for a conference – the first of its kind in the country – on Saturday to pressurise the government into changing legislation.

Some 75 delegates from rural areas, including Warwickshire residents from Meriden, Barnacle and Beausale, joined forces with villagers from Blackpool, Cheshire and Gloucestershire to compile a series of recommendations for the government.

The conference was also attended by the environment secretary Caroline Spelman and Midlands MEP Nikki Sinclaire.

In Meriden, a round-the-clock demonstration has been staged for more than six months against a travellers’ camp.

Meriden resident David McGrath, who is chair of Raid (Residents Against Inappropriate Development) said: “This national conference brings villagers from across the country who are suffering unethical and inappropriate developments with no respect for the views of local people.

“These developments are designed to steal a march through the planning process and results in the destruction of greenbelt and wildlife.”

Meriden RAID hosted a visit from campaigners around the country at the Heart of England Social Club.He added that there were three main recommendations – that the government removes guidelines allowing travellers to live on greenbelt land, they create more authorised travellers sites and introduce stricter penalties for breaking planning laws.

Dan Essex, of Barnacle where villagers complain there are too many travellers’ camps, said: “We understand gipsies need somewhere to live but It’s not about preferential treatment, it’s about equality. This is a planning issue pure and simple.”

The event at the Heart of England Social Club in Meriden attracted a large police presence as it was anticipated there would be a counter protest from local travellers.

Only one member of the local traveller community – Noah Burton – turned up to demand entrance to the conference.
He said: “Nothing has ever been resolved behind closed doors. Why not allow us to have our say and input?” It’s just the usual story, everyone can come unless you are a gipsy.

“We are an outcast and everyone in the community can attend except us. How do you think we feel about that? I feel very angry about it – it’s blatant racism and bullying.”

Nikki Sinclaire, Midlands MEP, said: “I would be happy to meet with the travellers after the conference.”

Read More http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/2011/01/17/villagers-gather-in-meriden-to-debate-illegal-travellers-camps-92746-28000965/?sms_ss=email&at_xt=4d34b55a902a7961%2C0#ixzz1BKazvIyU
 
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FROM MAILONLINE
 
Opposing illegal traveller sites isn't racist, Minister tells gipsies' leader


By Simon Walters

16th January 2011

Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman rejected claims of ‘gipsy racism’ yesterday after pledging to take tough new action against illegal traveller sites.

Ms Spelman clashed with a travellers’ leader as she defended villagers in her Midlands constituency who have staged a round-the-clock demonstration for more than six months against an encampment on greenbelt land.

Travellers’ leader Jake Bowers called the protesters ‘racists’ and compared Ms Spelman’s approach to the ‘Deep South’ of America, where slavery flourished until the Civil War.

Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman defended new laws to get rid of unlawful traveller camps

Defiant Ms Spelman defended new laws to get rid of unlawful traveller camps, saying: ‘The travelling community should indeed be travelling.’

Travellers' leader Jake Bowers compared Ms Spelman's approach to the 'Deep South' of America, where slavery flourished until the Civil War

The confrontation on Radio 4’s Today programme came after Mr Bowers, editor of the Travellers’ Times magazine, claimed the protest in Ms Spelman’s Meriden constituency in Warwickshire had nothing to do with whether the camp was legal.

‘When the mask slips, the real reason they are there is because there are gipsies in their village and they don’t like it,’ he said. He added the racism charge would be given legal weight as a result of ‘gipsies and Irish travellers’ being included as an ethnic minority for the first time in the ten-year census due on March 27.

Mr Bowers taunted Ms Spelman: ‘Come on Caroline, this is more Deep South than Middle England.’

Ms Spelman said: ‘I don’t think it is an issue of racism. There is an issue with planning law.’

The camp was established after a travellers’ group exploited council workers being off over a Bank Holiday weekend to set up a permanent site without planning permission.

Villagers have been blockading an illegal settlement to prevent travellers getting building materials on to it.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1347595/Opposing-illegal-traveller-sites-isnt-racist-Minister-tells-gipsies-leader.html#ixzz1BKcUIqLX

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THE FOLLOWING IS THE LETTER FROM SHAY CLIPSON
UNITED KINGDOM ASSOCIATION OF GYPSY WOMEN

17th January 2011


OPEN LETTER TO CAROLINE SPELMAN MP.

Dear Mrs. Spelman,

I write further to both my telephone call to your Parliamentary Office on the Afternoon of Friday 14th January 2011 and the “Conference” that you attended as speaker at the Heart of England Social Club on Saturday 15th January 2011.

During my telephone conversation with a member of your staff I made enquiry as to the nature of this conference and I was informed quite clearly and categorically that the conference was for “people from various locations across the country who had problems with Travellers”. The staff member was asked if you were available but stated that you were not I asked her to pass on to you the fact that this “conference” was one that was not open to certain members of the community (the Gypsy Community), and that it was felt that this exclusion amounted to an act of racism. I was told that you were unaware of this exclusion. I asked the staff member Liz if you would telephone me in regard to this exclusion and I am still awaiting your call, although to be fair Liz did tell me that it would be unlikely that you would speak with me on this matter.

We feel in no doubt at all that you were fully aware that attendance at this conference was highly censured to ensure that only like minded individuals might attend. Application for a place at the “conference” had to be made via the Meriden Raid website, and by way of outlining the spirit of this “conference” Mr. Noah Burton was turned away at the door.

Mrs. Spelman; any right minded person could only draw the conclusion that this gathering would more accurately be described as a “Rally” and was by no means a conference. This gathering was attended by people from across the country who had “problems with Travellers”, while we will concede that these might well be issues surrounding planning, the true objections are ones surrounding “who” is applying for planning consent. The Green belt being nothing more than a convenient screen that is being used to mask and give respectability to a blatant and shameful ongoing display of racism from a certain sector of the community with whom you have no conscience at all about encouraging. This dubious gathering at which you spoke, it’s carefully selected and censured attendee’s bears all the hallmarks of a lynch mob, and brings with it chilling echoes from a not too distant past from which we seem to be hoping in vain that mankind had learnt from.

During an interview with Jake Bowers that was broadcast on BBC radio 4 you made certain comments, and we would like to take issue with you in regard to the same. Firstly it is untrue that you have never been asked to meet with the residents on the site on Eaves Green Lane. Both I and UKAGW’s Inclusion Officer Rachel Francis Ingham have written to you to on several occasions, we have also written to Mr. Bob Neil and Mr. Eric Pickles, who have also declined to meet with us. It is also untrue that you have been on the site on a number of occasions and spoken to the site resident’s, indeed the residents enquired who the lady was that their representatives had been speaking to. They have never made your acquaintance.

In June 2010 you accompanied Mr. Bob Neil when he visited the protesters at Eaves Green Lane. I personally contacted Mr. Neil’s Ministerial Office and was told that Mr. Neil was attending on your invitation and that this visit was a “fact finding” visit. Heartfelt requests from me and Rachel Francis Ingham for Mr. Neil to walk the few short yards onto the site and meet the residents were repeatedly refused. On the day of Mr. Neil’s visit Rachel Francis Ingham and myself were joined on the site by Maggie Smith Bendell from the Romany Gypsy Advisory Group Somerset, we continued our appeals to Mr. Neil who under pressure from ourselves and now in full view of the media had a last minute change of heart and visited the Burton family in the trailer and home of Mrs. Jayne Burton. Gathered there were Mrs. Burton and her extended family of son’s, daughters in law and grandchildren, where Mr. Neil was received in a warm and friendly manner. Interestingly you chose not to meet with the Burton family instead choosing to remain outside in the rain speaking to us, rather than meet your constituents on the site.

It had been our belief that having visited the family himself Mr. Neil might take a different view, instead he returned to the fold of the protesters and very clearly informed them that they “should not have that on their doorstep”.

In the early days of this protest the protesters made their true feelings known with racist comments abut Gypsies in local papers together with terrifying threats made towards the Burton family via facebook.

During this same interview with Mr. Bowers you claimed this protest and your support of the same was nothing to do with racism, but was in fact to do with “fairness”. Where Mrs. Spelman is the “fairness” in a meeting held behind firmly closed doors, the purpose of which is set against a certain section of society, and made even more ugly and distasteful by the very fact that, that section of society is an ethnic minority, and the victims of this sustained racist campaign are also your own constituents’.

UKAGW have said throughout that Mr. McGrath and Co should return to their homes and allow the planning process to take its course. It is very clear to us that you are not only allowing yourself to be involved in and used by this group to attempt to bring undue pressure to bear on the local planning officers but also to add enhancement to Mr. McGraths business interests, as he is undoubtedly using this unfortunate situation to further and better those interests.

It is astounding that whilst so many people can see behind the façade to the true reason behind this campaign, you and your colleagues appear blindly oblivious to the reality. There are, as they say “none so blind ……. “

Once again we request that if “fairness” is your objective that you should meet with us and the residents of Eaves Green Lane and that this meeting should be one attended by Mr. Neil and Mr. Pickles by way of taking a “fair and balanced approach”, after all a great deal of time and goodwill has been extended to Mr. McGrath and the protesters. We look forward to your response to the points rose with you.

Yours sincerely

Shay Clipson

Trustee

UK ASSOCIATION OF GYPSY WOMEN

End Discrimination Against the Romany Gypsy and Irish Traveller Community

To: UK Government

The UK ASSOCIATION OF GYPSY WOMEN

Members of the Romany Gypsy & Irish Traveller Ethnic Minority Communities

Petition the UK Government

We the undersigned; petition the government and demand our basic, fundamental human rights be restored the Romany Gypsy and Irish Traveller ethnic minorities;

we also demand the government put an end to racial discrimination against our communities.

We demand an end to the culture of impunity that prevails throughout the country.

We demand equality with all other UK citizens. We would remind the government that under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to which the UK is a party since 1976; the government should cease to restrict attempts by the above two ethnic minorities to follow their Cultural, Traditional way of life.

Romany Gypsies & Irish Travellers cannot realise their right to accommodation-their right to health-care-their right to educationtheir right to employment-their right to respect and dignity. Simply because racial abuse & discrimination towards these two minorities from public/private sector bodies; as well as the wider community and the media is acceptable to the government.

All individuals committing these acts towards Romany’s/ Irish Travellers should be subjected to disciplinary control or punishment

TO SIGN THIS PETITION, PLEASE VISIT THE WEBSITE BELOW.

Unfortunately, only residents of the U.K. are eligible to sign, but I encourage those readers from the U.K. to do so.  Thanks.
http://www.petitiononline.com/UKAGW/petition.html

IKEA

FROM ROMEA.CZ

Ikea Pays 60,000 kronor to Romani Women Who Were Followed by a Security Guard


Göteborg, 15.1.2011 18:34, (ROMEA)

Four Romani women filed a claim with the Equality Ombudsman against a security guard who singled them out as they were shopping at an Ikea department store in Gothenburg. The Equality Ombudsman and Ikea have now entered into a settlement that gives each woman 15,000 kronor.

When the four Romani women visited the Ikea department store in Hisings Kärra near Gothenburg, they found out relatively quickly that a security guard was following them and constantly monitoring them. The guard's manner of watching the women was even noticed by other customers in the store, which the women found a further insult.

The women filed a report with the Equality Ombudsman about the incident andalleged discrimination based on their ethnicity, according to the Equality Ombudsman's assessment. The Equality Ombudsman decided to file suit against Ikea, but first offered to release the company from liability through a settlement.

The Equality Ombudsman and Ikea have now reached an agreement and entered into a settlement that provides each woman with 15,000 kronor [about $2,240]. Ikea regretted that the women were discriminated against and undertook to enact measures to prevent similar occurences in the future.

"Roma are discriminated against often in daily life, in this case for example. Women who are identified as Roma based on their dress are often especially affected by harassment and insults," said Equality Ombudsman Katri Linna.

DALE FARM

FROM ROMANO LILORO

Dale Farm: Brighton Meet Supports Defence Plans


04/01/2011 - BRIGHTON will be the location tomorrow evening (5 January) for the latest in a series of public meetings being held to consolidate opposition to the Tory-inspired plan for Britain's biggest anti-Gypsy clearance operation todate.

Denounced as an act of ethnic-cleansing by the opposition Labour Party, it could cost a whopping £13 million and last up to thee weeks to complete, according to police and local authority estimates.

Answering an appeal first put out by filmstar Venessa Redgrave hundreds of people have volunteered to create a humanshield to protect the children of Dale Farm from the bulldozers.

Many have pledged to join mothers and chain themselves to caravans in order the thwart the notorious Constant & Co bailiffs, the anti-Gypsy security firm hired for the job. They will also defy the movement of heavy plant machinery supplied by H.E.Services and George Moore, both earning themselves a bad name for aiding violent action against the homeless.

Dale Farm is a long established Travellers' community in the countryside near Basildon, Essex. The largest of its kind in the country, it is home to nearly 1,000 people. Half the residents are now under threat of imminent eviction, after being refused permission to live on their own land.

In response to an Urgent Action Appeal from the residents of Dale Farm, including Richard Sheridan, head of the Gypsy Council, the Brighton meeting will dicuss practical solidarity and nonviolent defence tactics that have been prepared in advance of the eviction, expected this spring.

Travellers have been living on the threatened part of the Dale Farm estate for ten years. They have a strong attachment to the nearby catholic church and their children go to local schools.

The community has been resisting forced eviction attempts by Basildon District Council since May 2005 when it voted to clear a large part of the settlement at a costy of £3m. Basildon has refused all attempts to regularise the planning situation and instead have contracted Constant & Co, Both Labour and Liberal councillors have denounced the eviction as ethnic-cleansing.

In March 2010 the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) issued a letter urging the UK Government to suspend the eviction until an positive solution is achieved, with the participation of the community,guaranteeing protection of housing rights through provision of adequate alternative accommodation.

After a long struggle to register as homeless, some families have been offered substandard council flats. All have refused as they want to keep their community together and continue a traditional way of life. However, county court judge has ruled that they should accept conventional housing and appeal to the high court is now being prepared. It will be argued that an offer of land for the Travellers from the Homes and Communities Agency makes it possible and practical for Basildon to allow development of a new mobile-home park as an alternative for those facing eviction.

Meanwhile, the community-based Dale Farm Housing Association has submitted a planning application to create such a park on HCA land.

After the recent eviction of seven families from Hovefields near Dale Farm the council failing to provide any alternative accommodation. All were left homeless and most were moved on by police under s61 of the Criminal Justice Act wherever they tried to camp.

During the eviction legal observers identified numerous breaches of international human rights law, including the disruption of children's education, and a failure to keep heavy machinery within the safety perimeter.

Two supporters were arrested early in the day, and a seventy-two year old man, John Lee, had his nose fractured after his face was smashed against his caravan.

This eviction tore apart a community and has shown Basildon's complete disrespect for Travellers' right to private and family life and the secure enjoyment of their homes (Article 8, European Convention on Human Rights [ECHR]).

The new UK Coalition Government has cancelled the duty to provide much needed new caravan parks for nomadic Gypsies and Travellers and removed the requirement to designate land for their accommodation.

Many thousands of Traveller families are thus forced to live illegally on land they have purchased but where they have been denied through strict planning laws to set up permanent homes.

Another generation of Travellers are losing the chance of a regular education for their children, while the old and the sick are deprived of care and medical attention.

The stand being made by residents at Dale Farm is therefore vital to the future of Romanies and Travellers in the UK. It should be seen as part of the fight-back by Roma all over Europe following the burning of camps in Italy, deportations from France, murders by neo-fascists in Hungary and Romania, and wholesale ethnic-cleansing from Kosovo, among many other acts of intolerance and racism that have occurred in the past two decades.

The Dale Farm community is seeking your solidarity. Practical support is needed in the form of legal observers and human rights monitors, as well as nonviolent resistance during the planned eviction operation.

Currently, support and solidarity action is called for. In particular opposition needs to be mobilized against the special funding by the Home Office of the Dale Farm eviction. Essex police have asked Theresa May to provide up to £ 10m to cover policing. Without this funding the eviction attempt might have to be abandoned.

Send your email messages to: mayt@parliament.uk

EMAIL EXAMPLE

Dear Theresa May,

At a time when cuts are being made to many important services, and homelessness is on the rise, we urge that the Home Office decline to provide the £10 million funding sought by Essex police for policing the Dale Farm eviction operation.

This eviction, the biggest of its kind in UK history, aims at destroying the homes nearly a hundred families. It is being opposed both by the Liberal Democrat and Labour councillors on Basildon Distriction Council as inhumane, disproportionate and an act of ethnic-cleansing, besides being a waste of public money.

POLITICS IN HUNGARY (AGAIN)

January 13, 2011, 9:35 CET


Jobbik says government doing nothing to fight "Gypsy crime"

By MTI

Hungary's government has not done anything since taking power to combat what radical nationalist party Jobbik terms "Gypsy crime", a party official told a news conference in Budapest on Wednesday.

Csanad Szegedi, the opposition party's deputy leader and an MEP, insisted that so-called "Gypsy crime" statistics had worsened, yet the Fidesz-led government "was not even inclined to recognise its existence".

Szegedi said unless the basic problem was recognised the situation would further deteriorate.

Jobbik continues to propose among its measures setting up local gendarmeries, expanding boarding schools and suspending social payments to the whole family if one of its members is convicted of a crime.

SARKOZY

FROM HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST

Obama Urged to Raise Roma Expulsions during Sarkozy’s DC Visit


For Immediate Release: January 10, 2011

Washington, DC – Human Rights First is urging President Barack Obama to raise the issue of Roma rights during French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s visit to Washington, DC this week. The organization noted that the United States has often declared a desire to combat discrimination, segregation and violence against Roma and that the President’s meeting with Sarkozy offers a unique opportunity to demonstrate U.S. leadership on this important issue.

As Presidents Obama and Sarkozy met at the White House, Human Rights First’s Paul LeGendre issued the following statement:

“Since July 2010, the French government has dismantled 200 camps populated by Roma and Traveler groups. It has also expelled more than 1,200 Roma individuals from France back to their countries of origin through a variety of means, including mandatory deportation orders and so-called “voluntary” repatriations. The United States’ response to these expulsions is critical. Human Rights First urges you to condemn these acts, as well as the negative stereotyping of Roma by French politicians. Failure to raise this important issue will only undermine the security and safety of Roma throughout Europe.”

In September 2010, Human Rights First led a group of human rights leaders in urging Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to comment publicly on the expulsions and to demonstrate U.S. leadership to combat such discrimination. A copy of that letter is available here.

STATEMENT FROM THE UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MUSEUM

Press Release


January 10, 2011

UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL STATEMENT ON CURRENT SITUATION OF ROMA IN EUROPE

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which documents the tragic fate of Europe’s Roma at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II, is alarmed by the precarious situation of the Roma in today’s Europe. It calls on European central and local governments to be mindful of the danger that is unleashed when an ethnic group is singled out and targeted for discrimination and the need to uphold the rights and freedoms of Roma in accordance with international and regional obligations.

Recent anti-Roma acts and sentiment span the continent. Violent attacks against Roma have occurred in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Serbia and the Russian Federation and government authorities have organized deportations in France and Italy. In many places, Roma are singled out for isolation and denied their civil rights, and a number of national and local government officials have recently made anti-Roma statements.

The Vice Mayor of Milan, Italy Riccardo De Corato, said about the Roma “these are dark-skinned people, not Europeans like you and me.” (Italy’s Crackdown on Gypsies Reflects Rising Immigrant Tide in Europe, Washington Post, October 12, 2010). A Hungarian member of the European parliament, George Schopflin, representing the government party Fidesz, declared “the Roma are those who need to change. Their contemporary existence is absolutely dysfunctional.” (Evenimentul zilei, Bucharest, August 22, 2010). In September, the Vice Chairman of Jobbik, the far-right Hungarian party, and a member of the European Parliament, Csanad Szegedi called for the mass internment of Roma in “public order protection camps”. And in October the Czech Republic’s former deputy prime minister Jiří Čunek declared that “Romanies genetically lacked discipline”.

Roma have been an important part of the culture and history of Europe for centuries. Originating from the Punjab Region of India, the Roma population settled on the European continent between the 8th and 10th century C.E. They were called “Gypsies” because Europeans mistakenly believed that they came from Egypt. They often worked as craftsmen, blacksmiths, cobblers, tinsmiths, horse dealers, and tool makers as well as musicians, circus animal trainers and dancers.

Roma were persecuted for centuries all over Europe. During the Middle Ages, the Roma were expelled from Spain and France. At the beginning of the 15th century, the first anti-Roma laws were enacted in Germany. In Romania, which has the highest Roma population in Europe today, Roma were sold as slaves as late as 1856 by private landlords and the Orthodox Church.

Their persecution culminated during the Holocaust when they were targeted for destruction by the German government. At least 220,000 Roma were killed by the Nazis and their allies. They were murdered in Nazi killing centers in occupied Poland and in Croatia, Romania, and the Soviet Union. Several thousand Roma became victims of Nazi medical experiments. The German authorities incarcerated Roma in the concentration camps of Bergen Belsen, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen, and Ravensbruek. Thousands were deported to the killing centers of Auschwitz-Bikrenau, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. About 23,000 Roma were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau alone. At least 30,000 Roma were massacred in the Baltic States and elsewhere in the occupied part of the Soviet Union by German mobile killing units. In occupied Serbia, thousands of male Roma were shot while women and children were murdered in gas vans by German troops. In Croatia, local fascists killed about 25,000 Roma, many of them in the Jasenovic concentration camp. In Romania, the government of Marshal Ion Antonescu, the main ally of Hitler on the Eastern Front, killed approximately half of the 26,000 Roma deported to Transnistria, in occupied Ukraine. In France, thousands were interned in local camps, and Roma in occupied Belgium and the Netherlands were deported to Auschwitz.

The economic and social situation of European Roma is complex. However, they are entitled to the same rights and freedoms granted other citizens. The history of the Holocaust shows that targeting an entire group leads to an increase in xenophobia, racism, and extremism throughout society, potentially resulting in harmful consequences for individuals, communities and nations. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum urges Europeans – government officials and citizens alike -- to understand the plight of Roma within its historical context.

A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity. Federal support guarantees the Museum’s permanent place on the National Mall, and its far-reaching educational programs and global impact are made possible by generous donors. For more information, visit www.ushmm.org.

GREECE

FROM THE GREEK REPORTER

Police Accidentally Kills ROMA Girl, Community in Outrage


Posted on 06 January 2011 by Apostolos Papapostolou
Dozens of ROMA youths have been clashing with police after a 7-year-old girl was accidentally killed by a police motorcycle.

The police motorcycle hit the girl outside a ROMA settlement in the Menidi suburb of western Athens. According to eye witnesses, the girl was together with other children to sing the Epiphany carols, when she suddenly sprang on the road.

Dozens of angry family members, relatives and settlement residents gathered at the spot of the accident after rumors that the policeman had abandoned the heavily injured girl.

The youths hurled rocks, molotov cocktails and flares to riot police that came to the area and set trash bins on fire. Police used tear gas to disperse the crowd.

The anger of the ROMA targeted also a passing by train. They threw stones against the train, blocking for some hours the railway.

The girl died in the hospital where she was taken shortly after the fatal accident.

Police said a 22-year-old police office was arrested in connection with the girl’s death and is going to be charged.

Meanwhile tensions have been diffused.

More than 120,000 Gypsies, or ROMA, live in Greece, according to government estimates. Almost half of them live in tents and shacks in settlements outside cities across the country, some with poor sanitation and no electricity or running water.

THROUGH ROMA EYES

FROM OPEN SOCIETY
FORWARDED BY ROMANO LILORO

Through Roma Eyes
Please view the film at:
http://www.romadecade.org/through_roma_eyes_2011

[19:04 - English]

On behalf of the "real-time news" website Storyful, journalist and filmmaker Mary Catherine Brouder travelled to Hungary to explore the experience of the Roma. She brought back a remarkable film offering a vivid, troubling but also joyful portrait of Roma lives. Her film begins with the story of the Balogh family, who were the victims of a deadly attack in August 2009.

OPEN SOCIETY ROMA INITIATIVES      OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATION

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This is a very good film.