MINELRES: Romania: Ethnic Diversity Briefs, No.26

[MINELRES moderator]

Original sender: Mediafax <divers@mediafax.ro>


---------------------------------------------------------------
No. 26 / October 7, 2002

DIVERS
- reporting ethnic diversity -

SUMMARY
1. HUNGARY DEEMS STATUS LAW CHANGING
2. TURK MINORITY IN ROMANIA DISCONTENDED OF RULING PARTY
3. ROMANIA, YUGOSLAVIA DISCUSS ETHNIC MINORITIES
4. SWITZERLAND STARTS TO EXPEL ROMA MIGRANTS

FEATURE
5. ROMANIA CLOSES DOOR ON GYPSIES (By Nick Thorpe - BBC)
--------------------------------------------------------
 
HUNGARY DEEMS STATUS LAW CHANGING
BUCHAREST - Presidents of Romania and Hungary, Ion Iliescu and Ferenc
Madl, last week had talks at Cotroceni Palace about the Status Law
regarding Magyar from beyond the Hungary borders, as well as about the
condition of Romanian minority from Hungary. President Ion Iliescu said
that the Romanian party headed to the authorities from Budapest a series
of observations and proposals to amend the Status Law, so that to
eliminate out of this normative act the discrimination elements among
Romanian citizens, while the law to align with European standards in
field. He indicated that it is the Hungarian Parliament that is to
operate with the amendments necessary for this law. In turn, President
Ferenc Madl pointed out that the observations would be accounted as
topics for the debates held by minorities committee from Bucharest. He
replied that the law does not discriminate, it merely grants additional
rights to ethnic Hungarians from neighboring countries. The Hungarian
government is examining amendments to the law, which will be discussed
by parliament, Madl added . The Hungaria President appreciated that
possible law changes should be made based on recommendations of the
Commission from Venice, while the solution raised to account on the
interests of the two countries, as well as of the national minorities.
(DIVERS)

TURK MINORITY IN ROMANIA DISCONTENDED OF RULING PARTY
BUCHAREST - Deputy Metin Cerchez, representative of Turk-Mussel minority
in Parliament, announced on October 2 that the organizations of Turk
ethnics are not going to sign in 2004 any election-support protocols for
the ruling Social Democrat Party (PSD). "The current power remembers
Turk minority only from four to four years, that is only when they are
in much need of votes. As for the rest they do not even exist. I have
never seen a PSD deputy colleague from Constanta to fulfill their duty
in the territory of Turk ethnics villages ", said Cerchez. (DIVERS)

ROMANIA, YUGOSLAVIA DISCUSS ETHNIC MINORITIES
BELGRADE - A Romanian parliamentary delegation last week discussed
treatment of ethnic minorities in Romania and Yugoslavia at the Yugoslav
Ministry of Ethnic and National Communities, Romanian press report. Both
sides agreed that there were no major problems with the Romanian
minority in Yugoslavia, located mostly in Vojvodina and Northern Serbia
or with the Serbian minority in Romania, which lives in the Banat
region, near the Danube. (DIVERS)

SWITZERLAND STARTS TO EXPEL ROMA MIGRANTS
BERNA - The federal authorities in Switzerland say they have rejected
the asylum applications of dozens of Roma - or gypsy - migrants from
Romania who have arrived in the country since last month. The expulsion
of the first of more than 400 asylum seekers has begun lately last week.
Switzerland wants to send a strong message, said Brigitte Hauser,
spokeswoman for the Federal Refugee Office said, quoted by Swissinfo.
She said the authorities considered Romania a safe country but were
aware of the reasons pushing the Roma to head abroad. A Romanian
delegation of experts from the Interior and Foreign ministries is
currently in Bern discussing with Swiss authorities joint measures to
facilitate the speedy expulsion of the illegal immigrants.

Hundreds of Roma asylum seekers arrived from France almost immediately
after Paris and Bucharest agreed to tighten migration procedures in the
summer. Romania is considered a safe country, Ms Hauser said, although
she understood the reasons that pushed the gypsies to seek a better life
abroad. People who are suffering genuine political persecution will
still be welcomed in Switzerland, she said. A first group, which
includes 16 children flown to the Romanian capital Bucharest on a
chartered plane on Thursday. Romania, with a population of nearly 24
million people, is officially home to 540,000 gypsies. But that is
commonly considered underreported with the true figure estimated at more
than 1 million. In Romania and elsewhere, they are often unemployed
because of prejudice and discrimination, human rights groups say.
(DIVERS)


FEATURE

ROMANIA CLOSES DOOR ON GYPSIES
By Nick Thorpe - BBC

Romanian gypsies say it has become almost impossible to leave their own
country in the last few weeks because of discrimination by officials on
the border. Romania is near the end of the long queue of countries
waiting to join the European Union, but since January Romanian citizens
have not needed visas to travel to the Schengen group of countries - a
recognition of the progress the country has made. However, the new
freedom has made the government rather nervous about exactly who it lets
out, and the gypsy minority - who often travel abroad in search of work
- are regarded as a liability. In Romania, they live in grinding
poverty.

Insults
In the village of Dioszeg in Romania's Bihor county, for example,
barefoot gypsy children, protected from a cold northerly wind by little
more than rags, collect water from a tap, to take home to their
families. When they asked for pipes to be laid to bring running water to
each house, the gypsies say, a local official taunted them that they
should drink from the polluted stream that runs through the settlement
instead. A young man, Jakab, smartly dressed in corduroy trousers and
jacket, tried to cross the border - legally, with a passport, and the
right amount of money to show. He was turned back, he says, because of
his dark skin - he is unmistakably a gypsy. "I want to earn my bread
honestly with the work of my own two hands. As that isn't possible here,
sadly I went to work in Hungary," he says. "At the border the guard
insulted us as gypsies, which is very upsetting - we are human beings,
we are also flesh and blood and we have feelings too."

Turned back
In the village street everyone tells the same story, of being turned
back from the border. Since January, all Romanian citizens have to show
a minimum of $500 for those going to western Europe, and $250 for non EU
countries. Some admit they didn't have enough money. But most say they
had all their documents in order - and that they were turned back, just
because they were gypsies. Jakab says that at Bors, the nearest big
border crossing, he was told: "Go back to your whoring mother" and his
passport thrown on the ground in front of him. But the deputy commander
of the border guard for the three counties of north-west Romania, Lucian
Prechici, firmly refutes all allegations of racial discrimination. "We
do not discriminate against anyone on the basis of religious or ethnic
background or political preferences. All Romanian citizens are equal
before the law," he says. "If anyone wants to complain they can, but we
have not received any complaints."

Extreme example
Many gypsies I spoke to, up and down the border, said that although the
new regulations came into force in January, it only became physically
impossible to cross the border three weeks ago. That coincides with the
visit to Romania of the French Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy. He
came to demand that the Romanian authorities do more to prevent what the
French media call gypsy beggars and thieves from reaching France. But
the Romanian Government's efforts to satisfy the French have caused
alarm elsewhere. "Romania looks like the most extreme example of a
European Union candidate country attempting to please western European
governments by adopting policies that try to keep Romanians at home, and
stop them from leaving the country, and again, in particular to keep
Romany Romanians at home," says Claude Cahn of the European Roma Rights
Centre in Budapest.

Misery
A minibus-driver in Oradea, one of the biggest cities in North-west
Romania, who crosses the border to Hungary every night, says he won't
even let gypsies on his bus anymore. There is no point, he says - the
border guards are not letting any gypsies across. Poor agricultural
workers in this region earn the equivalent of $60 dollars a month. For
the last decade, they have been able to supplement that by working in
Hungary. That opportunity no longer exists.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

DIVERS is a weekly news bulletin edited by the Mediafax News Agency
with financial support from
Ethnocultural Diversity Resource Center (EDRC) in Cluj.
For now, the full version of the bulletin is only available in
Romanian and can be found at www.divers.ro
e-mail: divers@mediafax.ro