Recent Romnews postings
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Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1998 11:32:18 +0300 (EET DST)
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Subject: Recent Romnews postings
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Recent Romnews postings
Usti Nad Labem /CZECH REP. (RNN Coresspondent) June 10th 1998
A delegation of Czech Roma handed the mayor of the northern town of
Usti nad Labem a petition on Tuesday against a plan to isolate a
troubled tenement block of Roma families behind a wall.
"This is an insult to all Roma in the Czech Republic," said Josef
Sivak, spokesman for the Association of Roma in the Czech Republic,
before presenting the petition. "If we allow this here, other towns
will follow suit and then you will have ghettos, followed by ovens,
and that will be the end of the Romany," he said.
Mayor Ladislav Hruska said the wall was a reasonable way to protect
the town's "decent" inhabitants. "This wall is not meant to separate
people. It is not racially motivated. We simply want to separate the
decent people from those that are not," Hruska said.
He initially told the delegation the petition was not worded correctly
and that they did not have an appointment but that he would take it
into consideration.
The Usti plan, to divide a street with a wall up to four metres high,
has added to controversy over the Czech Republic's treatment of its
300,000-strong Roma minority which was highlighted last year when
hundreds of Roma sought asylum in Britain and Canada. Only a handful
were granted asylum.
The European Union, in membership talks with the Czech Republic, has
said the Roma suffer discrimination.
In recent months, there have been a number of racially-motivated
attacks. The government has set up a commission to help integrate
minorities into Czech society and President Vaclav Havel has said a
permanent office for human rights should be established.
The Usti trouble started in 1994 when the local authority moved the
Roma into the tenements, opposite non-Roma families. The street's
original residents began to complain to the town hall of noise late
into the night, garbage on the street and of being threatened by the
Roma.
Now the town hall says it plans to build a wall down the middle of the
street unless the Roma clean up their act. "This is not a ghetto. It
will not restrict the Roma movements," said town hall spokesman Milan
Knotek. "It is simply our effort to separate the decent inhabitants
from those who are not."
The delegation members and the street's Roma inhabitants do not deny
that the tenements are a mess. "There were rats the size of my forearm
running round the yard," one inhabitant of the street said. "It took
us four months to get the town hall to send us trash containers."
Nonetheless, they refuse to accept a wall as the solution. "We will
accept many sanctions, but not a wall," said delegation member Ondrej
Gina. "This is just a test of how far they can go. It indicates that
democracy in the Czech Republic is still not working the way it
should."
------------------------
Roma families killed by Albanians
Tirana/ ALBANIA (RNN Correspondent), Hamburg/GERMANY (RNN Agency) June
the 18th 1998
Due to the reports of some correspondents from Macedonia, Yugoslavia,
and Albania, the encroachments of the Albanian army against Roma
refugees have remarkable increased.
As Nezded Mustava, town mayor of the Macedonian town Sutorel said, the
Albanian army stopped many Roma families from crossing the border or
even shot them while
crossing the border.
During the last census in Kosovo, which showed that 60% of the
population are Albanians, Roma were put under pressure from Albanians,
before and during the election to pass themselves off as Albanians and
not as Roma.
As to the information of the Roma National Congress there live 600.000
Roma in Kosovo, that are almost 20% of the total population.
Romnews is published by the
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