My Gypsy childhood

Roxy Freeman never went to school. But at the age of 22, she decided to get a formal education, forcing her to face up to the prejudices that blight her Gypsy community – and to shackle her wandering spirit.

Roxy Freeman
The Guardian, Monday 7 September 2009

The receptionist looked at me with disdain when I walked into Suffolk College asking to enrol. Their access course for mature students didn't have any entry requirements as such, but the receptionist warned me it was an advanced, intensive course, and there seemed to be a blank space under "educational history" on my application form. When I explained that I wasn't a dropout, I just hadn't gone to school, she looked even more scornful.

I was 22 and had never spent a day in a classroom in my life; an alien concept for many people but common in Gypsy and Traveller families. There are more than 100,000 nomadic Travellers and Gypsies in the UK, and 200,000 who live in permanent housing. Many, like me, never attend school, while others are illiterate because formal education is not a priority in our culture.

My upbringing was unusual, but not unique. Until I was eight my family lived on the road, travelling around Ireland by horsedrawn wagon. I was one of six children, with three more half-sisters, and our family was considered small. Having 12 or 13 children was common among Travellers in Ireland.

Marrying first cousins is also common among Gypsies (and a potential genetic timebomb), my parents come from very different backgrounds. My mother was born into an upper-class American family. On her gap year she literally ran away with a Gypsy – my father, who bred horses. Both are extremely intelligent and open-minded people who wanted to bring us up in a stimulating, free and fulfilling environment.

Instead of going to school, my siblings and I, like many children from travelling families, were taught about the arts, music and dance. Our education was learning about wildlife and nature, how to cook and how to survive. I didn't know my times tables but I could milk a goat and ride a horse. I could identify ink caps, puff balls and field mushrooms and knew where to find wild watercress and sorrel. By the age of eight or nine I could light a fire, cook dinner for a family of 10 and knew how to bake bread on an open fire.

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What Americans Can Learn From Gypsy Culture

Wilderness House Literary Review announces a one hour lecture by noted Gypsy (Roma) scholar Sonia Meyer at 7:00 P. M. on October 14, 2009 at the Out of the Blue Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Tickets are $5.00 at the door. Topic is "What Americans can learn from the Gypsies."

Littleton, Massachusetts (PRWEB) September 6, 2009 -- Wilderness House Literary Review is pleased to announce a one hour lecture by noted Gypsy (Roma) scholar Sonia Meyer at 7:00 P. M. on October 14, 2009 at the Out of the Blue Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Tickets are $5.00 at the door.

Sonia Meyer will speak about the Roma (Gypsy) culture and what we can learn from them in this high tech, money-worshipping society. She hopes the audience will look inside the Gypsies self-exiled world, and come to realize that their freedom is available to all of us.

Sonia Meyer was born in Cologne, Germany in 1938 and spent her formative years living in the woods among partisan and Gypsy fighters during WWII. She has been fascinated by Gypsies, or the Roma people ever since becoming a self-educated scholar of Roma (Gypsy) culture.

Meyer, who may indeed be part Gypsy herself has been intrigued by the freedom, the art, and the celebration of magic and mysticism of the Roma people. She encountered them throughout her travels in Europe, and struck up fascinating conversations with these enigmatic vagabonds. She lived much of her life like a Gypsy, moving from city to city across Europe, and eventually landing in the states. In Geneva she worked with Jewish refugees, she spent time with the Bedouins in the Negev desert, eventually moving to the States.

In the narrow and winding stacks of the Widener Library at Harvard she discovered a translation by Matteo Maximoff, Russian Gypsy, which concerned Russian nomadic Gypsies. She visited him, and traveled to Macedonia to visit the so-called "Queen of the Gypsies," and lived with a family in the Gypsy section of Skopje where the Gypsies were well off.

She is the author of a novel to be published in the Summer of 2010. "Dosha" is about a Gypsy girl. The novel spans her childhood spent with Russian partisans in Polish forests to her defection during Khrushchev's visit to Helsinki on June 6, 1957. "Dosha" will be published by Wilderness House Press (www.wildernesshousepress.com) and will be excerpted in the spring issue of Wilderness House Literary Review (www.whlreview.com ). For further information see www.soniameyer.com.

For further information contact Steve Glines, 978-800-1625 - Industrial Myth & Magic (www.industrialmyth.com ) is a public relations firm specializing in literary persona and events.
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Student holds benefit concert in Holliston for return trip to Romania

By Kelsey Abbruzzese/Daily News correspondent
Tue Sep 01, 2009, 08:46 AM EDT

A Rivers School senior hoping to return to Romania and help abandoned and disabled children there is holding a benefit concert in Holliston to raise money for her trip.

Alicia Palmisano, who grew up in Holliston and now lives in Natick, first went to Romania as part of a school service trip in March 2008. After playing with babies who had been abandoned at a hospital, doing art projects at an after-school program and helping Gypsy children with their homework, Palmisano and four others decided a six-day trip was too short.

She and the other students are looking to raise about $1,500 to cover trip expenses for another visit in May with Romanian Children's Relief. Palmisano has organized the concert with her Weston school's ensemble, The Rivers School Conservatory Honors Marimba Ensemble.

"You fall in love with the kids and feel like the trip was way too short, even though you were there for six days," Palmisano said yesterday. "Once you get into rhythm and get to know the kids well, it's time to leave. I want to go back and see if anything's improved."

The concert will take place Sept. 20 at 11:30 a.m. in Palmisano's church, St. Michael's Episcopal in Holliston.

Eileen McHenry, executive director of Romanian Children's Relief in Southborough, said the combination of the recession, a moratorium on hiring government workers - which includes foster parents - and disappearing charity funds have left more children abandoned in Romania.

"With the economic crisis, Eastern Europe is taking a bigger hit and the poorest people are the ones feeling it most," McHenry said. "The babies end up spending months in the hospital. It's really bad."

Palmisano remembers many of the children she saw during her trip. She recalled giving a piggyback ride to one of the Gypsy children all afternoon, and then returning with the children to their homes. Their houses were one room off an alley, Palmisano said.

When the students were leaving to come back to Massachusetts, Palmisano said, the children tried jumping into their backpacks, saying, "Bring us to America!"

"We all had journals, and they wrote their names and wrote 'I love you' in Romanian," Palmisano said.

McHenry said she's happy to see Palmisano and her classmates want to return.

"We just thrive on their enthusiasm. We've been doing this a long time, and people forget about Romania. The rest of the world has moved on to other crises," McHenry said. "When you have young, energetic people come in and give you a boost, it's wonderful."

The ensemble has performed at Symphony Hall, the Tsai Center, various Boston hotels and local community centers, Palmisano said. She also said the concert will be free, but the group will be accepting donations for the trip.

How Gypsy gangs use child thieves

BBC NEWS

By Sam Bagnall
This World

Across Europe thousands of Roma (Gypsy) children are being forced onto the streets to beg and steal, and law enforcement agencies are seemingly powerless to prevent it.

Cash machines in Madrid are a particular target for street crime. The cardholder is distracted at the crucial moment by one person, allowing a child to dive in, grab the money and run off.

Thirteen-year-old Daniela says she can make 300 euros (£260) from a single successful robbery without any risk of being punished.


"It's only the police that catch us. They take the money we have on us. They take us to the day centre, and the centre lets us go.

"I give [the money] to my mother so we can go to Romania to build a house. But I hide some of it for myself. I give her 150 euros, and I keep 150."

Madrid police say that 95% of children under 14 that they pick up stealing on the streets are Roma from Romania.

Because the age of criminal responsibility in Spain is 14, there is little they can do.

More than 1,000 Romanian Roma live in just one of the many camps that lie on the outskirts of Madrid.

The conditions are appalling - rats roam freely amid the rubbish, and there is no sanitation.

Every day children from the camp head out into the city to steal and beg, and many are beaten by their minders if they do not return with money.

Organised crime

Nowhere in Europe has there been more controversy over crime in the Roma community than in Italy, where the government recently declared a state of emergency following various high profile crimes blamed on the Roma.

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Gypsy and Traveller film to challenge prejudices

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 By Emily Twinch

A media charity has produced a film promoting the need for more Gypsy and Traveller sites.

The Rural Media Company’s DVD, Sites and Rights, features a series of interviews to try to dispel prejudices.

It starts by saying 150,000 Gypsies and Travellers live in houses or on unauthorised sites in England and Wales and that a recent audit revealed nearly 4,000 families had no legitimate stopping places, short or long.

Luke Clements, from Cardiff Law School, says in the video: ‘There aren’t enough sites and there are upwards of 3,000 families with nowhere to live.

‘Once a site has been built, people forget it’s there. If every borough council gave one or two permissions a year the problem would cease to exist.’

There are interviews with people who have changed their minds about Travellers and Gypsies, such as resident David Hilden from Warwickshire.

Since they moved in next to his home he says in the film ‘they’re no trouble at all’.

Viewers are also given a tour of Roma Gypsy Bobbie Jones’ family home.

A Communities and Local Government department annual progress report on the government’s policy of increasing site provision, published last month, concluded: ‘The current position on site delivery remains unsatisfactory.

‘It is clear that local authorities need to increase the pace at which suitable locations are identified that can be used as Gypsy and Traveller sites.’

SOLE STREET: Complaints about gypsies are 'racist' says farm owner

1:55pm Monday 24th August 2009

By Michael Purton

A FARM owner has hit back at criticism of her decision to rent a field to gypsies, saying the complaints are racist.

Last week Beverley Smit rented one field of her 50 acre home, Cranbourne Farm in Sole Street, to a travelling pentecostal gypsy church.

Around 300 people in almost 200 caravans stayed in the field off Copt Hall Road until Sunday (August 23), holding services and welcoming local residents to join them.

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However, many residents complained to Gravesham Council, with leader Councillor Mike Snelling saying he had been “inundated with calls”, and a Daily Mail article today called Mrs Smit a “villain”.

The 56-year-old, who has owned the farm for ten years, said: “The people who stayed in the field are Christians who want to spread the word of God, and they caused no trouble while they were here.

Riots between Gypsy and Nigerian Immigrants in Palma de Mallorca

"This is open urban warfare".

These were the excited words of the President of the Orson Welles Neighbourhood Society, Ginés Quiñonero Solano, after more than a thousand people rioted today in Palma de Mallorca, leading to running battles between ethnic Gitano (Gypsy) groups and African Immigrants, mainly Nigerian. Police battled to keep control, and three people were left seriously injured. Most of the disturbances happened in the Son Gotleu part of the city.

"The Authorities are powerless to stop these fights, which are a culmination of tensions that have built up over the last few years" said Mr Solano to El País newspaper. Mr Solano, an important community leader who has appealed for calm, said that the problems were a direct result of the city council forcing immigrants into poor parts of the city with no social support, leading to resentment from people already living there.

All over a pair of sunglasses

According to the Balearic Islands Police Department, the fight started after a local Gypsy woman dropped her sunglasses out of the window. When she managed to park and walk back, she found a Nigerian man trying them on. She remonstrated with the man, and the fight escalated into a small riot as friends of both sides joined the fight. "Within minutes", according to bystanders, stones were being thrown, urban furniture uprooted and windows smashed.

Two units of the Police were called but were powerless to intervene. They requested riot police backup, who tried to stop the rioting.

Mr Solano told reporters that the fight "has been building for years. There is a hatred between the two social groups... a pressure has been building over the last few years. The fires of war have built by numerous small confrontations between the youths of both sides".

Mr Solano has been an active voice in the past, warning of the possibility of rioting.

Residents of Son Gotleu are scared, and police, fearful of a reoccurence of events such as in El Ejido last year, have the area in a complete lockdown.

Hungary: 4 Detained in Gypsy Killings

By NICHOLAS KULISH
Published: August 21, 2009

The Hungarian police arrested four people early Friday in connection with a series of killings of Roma, commonly referred to as Gypsies, that have shaken the Roma community and raised ethnic tensions across Hungary. The police said the suspects were arrested at a bar in Debrecen in eastern Hungary. A half-dozen Roma have been killed over the past year in nighttime attacks with shotguns, firebombs and other weapons at the victims’ homes, usually on the edges of Roma neighborhoods. In the most recent attack, a Roma woman was shot and killed this month and her 13-year-old daughter seriously wounded in the eastern village of Kisleta.

Madonna booed in Bucharest for defending Gypsies

AP: BUCHAREST, Romania – Thousands of fans have booed pop star Madonna after she spoke out against the discrimination of Gypsies in eastern Europe during one of her concerts.

Madonna paused in the two-hour concert to say that Gypsies, also known as Roma, were discriminated against in eastern Europe. She said that made her "sad" and nobody should be discriminated against.

Thousands in the crowd of 60,000 booed her. She did not react.

Roma musicians and a Roma dancer were featured in her show, held just yards from the giant palace of ex-communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Their performances were applauded by the crowd.

There are officially some 500,000 Roma in Romania, but the real number could be around 2 million. They face prejudice and discrimination in Romania and other east European nations.

Community group helps pay off Phuket sea gypsy loans

RAWAI, PHUKET: Threats of beatings and electrocution by loan sharks have abated for scores of Moken sea gypsies since a Phuket-based community organization stepped in to help.

The ‘Poor’s Right to Develop Phuket Network’ (PRDPN) paid off debts worth more than half a million baht for 162 Rawai sea gypsies earlier this month.

Nevertheless, hundreds of residents of the sea gypsy village near Rawai Beach remain in debt and living in fear of punishment.

The loan sharks, themselves residents of the village, charge interest of up to 60 percent for loans over periods as short as 15 days.

The creditors threatened those who couldn’t pay with a punishment they called ‘2-7-2’: two kicks, seven punches and two electric shocks.

Villagers said they were forced to take out loans because on many days during the monsoon season they couldn’t go fishing, which is their usual source of income.

Sucheep Janrung, 60, said the PRDPN had repaid thousands of baht of her debts, but she still owed 3,000 baht and lived in fear of punishment.

She said she had seen people who couldn’t pay being taken away and beaten.

“One lady who sold somtam for a living came to live in the village and ended up 50,000 baht in debt,” she said.

“Some men tricked her into going to Saphan Hin with them. When she came back, she was covered in bruises.”

Mrs Sucheep said she wasn’t aware of anyone being electrocuted but feared it would happen to her if she couldn’t pay.

“Even if I die, the debt will move onto my family and they’ll have to pay,” she said.

Chalong Police in early June arrested six members of a gang who entered the same Community to collect on loans, confiscating a list of 35 debtors and 11,000 baht in cash.

Police estimate there are over 40 loan shark gangs operating on the island. – Atchaa Khamlo

Roma not a 'dirty' word

A young activist is on a mission to debunk stereotypes and end discrimination against one of the worst-treated ethnic groups in Europe.

By Brian Salmi for Southeast European Times in Podgorica -- 17/08/09

Clean-cut, dressed nattily and well-groomed, Jaha Samir is about as far away from the Gypsy stereotype as he can get. He is educated, articulate and industrious -- a poster child for a new generation of activists who are out to change the way the world thinks of his people. And, no, he does not mind if you call him a Gypsy.

Samir acknowledges that his people use the term, and that they do not object strenuously to others doing so as long as the intent is not to disparage. “Gypsy", Samir explains, "originally meant 'dirty - do not touch'". The dirty label has stuck to his people ever since it was first applied to them centuries ago. In 1973, a concerted effort began to replace the term Gypsy with Roma, a term he is more comfortable with.

Against long odds, Samir is attempting to erase the stigma that his people bear. He says a new team of leaders is now emerging in Europe to lead the Roma nation out of the social exile it has existed in since it first migrated from India a millennium ago.

In the 1980s, modern-day Roma, with a great deal of help from various international organisations, started to claw their way out of the ghettoes, both real and mental, that they have been locked into, says Samir. "That was the first time Roma were admitted into European universities in significant numbers," says the 25-year-old father of one, who is the director of the Montenegrin NGO Young Roma. That trend has continued over the past two decades, and today 250 Roma graduate from Macedonian universities every year.

Roma NGOs across Europe have been actively recruiting Roma university students. "Those students understand that they can build successful careers and help other Roma at the same time," says Samir.

There are only ten Roma enrolled in post-secondary education institutions in Montenegro. To date, only two have emerged with degrees, one of whom will soon be employed by the Montenegrin Ministry of Minorities. Samir plans to become the third to graduate; he is working on a degree in early childhood education and hopes to have it wrapped up next year.

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Czechs seeking Gypsy attacks mastermind

Published: Aug. 17, 2009 at 4:13 PM

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- Czech police are seeking an ultra-rightist who likely orchestrated racially motivated assaults on Gypsies, a Czech lawyer said.

Four men, all in their mid-20s, last week were charged in an arson attack that police described as the "attempted murder" of a Gypsy family, but attorney Markus Pape told the Czech news agancy CTK the suspects were mere pawns.

Police are now focusing those who gave the orders, Pape said.

Martin Pecina, Czech interior minister Sunday suggested the arson was connected with the far-right Workers' Party DS, but party leader Tomas Vandas denied any links.

The four suspects are charged with tossing gasoline bottles that sparked fire in the village of Vitkov near Ostrava in the northeastern Czech Republic in April.

Three Gypsies, or Romanies as they are formally called, were injured. One of them, a 2-year-old girl remains hospitalized with serious burns on 80 percent of her body.

The four men are suspected of supporting ultra-rightists and the Czech neo-Nazi National Resistance, a group banned by a Czech court, CTK quoted experts in extreme nationalist groups as saying.

On the road to change: dealing with domestic violence in Gypsy and Traveller groups

Fifteen years after the UK's only refuge for Gypsy and Travelling women opened, a new generation is acknowledging the problem of violent relationships.

Jill Clark
The Guardian, Friday 14 August 2009

For Kay, the beatings came three weeks into her marriage. She and her partner, both from Irish Travelling families, met on the road as teenagers before becoming pen pals. It wasn't until they settled down on a caravan site in Yorkshire that he threw his first punch. "He'd just flip out, slapping me, kicking me," says Kay (not her real name). "He wanted me to jump when he said, to sit when I was told." Despite the violence in their relationship, the couple had three children together and Kay says she felt powerless to leave. "I just accepted it as normal. In my culture the woman is the heart of the family, the man is the head – what he says goes."

Kay's story may be similar to that of the 25% of women in the UK who are thought to experience domestic violence during their lifetimes – six to 10% of women suffer it in any given year – but a recent paper by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, suggests that women from the Gypsy and Traveller communities who report domestic violence will often have suffered it more severely and over a considerably longer period than other women. Although there is no conclusive evidence about the prevalence of this abuse, the paper cites a study in Wrexham, which found that between 61 and 81% of married Gypsy and Traveller women had experienced direct abuse from a partner.

Cultural barriers are believed to be one reason that Travelling women stay in violent relationships for longer than other women. Kay, who endured 14 years of violence (twice the UK average) before she had an injunction brought against her husband, feared that she might have to leave behind her whole way of life by entering a bricks-and-mortar refuge or being relocated into a house. "It would have killed me stone dead," she says. "I've lived in trailers all my life; it's all I know. In a house, I'd feel cooped up and boxed in; I'd be so alone. I worried my kids would get stick for being Travellers and we wouldn't feel welcome, that we'd get judged and treated as outsiders and would never be able to admit where we came from."

A reluctance to deal with the police, coupled with a lack of knowledge about mainstream services, may complicate the situation. Kay admits, "For all those years I'd refused to report his abuse. If you're seen talking on your own to police, you can be labelled a grass, and a grass isn't allowed in our community. I'd seen them [police] come to the site uninvited, trashing our property, talking down to the kids. There was no trust there. But in the end it was my brother who said: 'Leave him.'"

Kay also felt that she would be stigmatised for talking about the abuse. "We're taught to stand up for ourselves as strong Travelling women. If word gets out you're being hit – by man, woman or whoever – you can be seen as weak."

Kathleen Lowther Morrison, a Traveller from the community group Leeds Gypsy and Traveller exchange, says many Travellers have traditional views on marriage, with divorce a rarity. And a woman leaving a marriage can be ostracised. "If they've lived in a closed community all their lives and have had little education, if they've barely been to school, they can assume all men are violent and domestic violence is normal. Gypsies see domestic violence going on all their lives: if it isn't happening to their mum, it's happening to their sister or their neighbour."

Although community campaigners admit that discussing violence within marriage has always been a taboo, 15 years after Solas Anois – the UK's only refuge for Gypsy and Travelling women – was set up, it is being tackled head on with new initiatives. This summer saw the first conference on domestic violence in the Traveller and Gypsy communities, with another planned for October.

Lowther Morrison says it is essential that help comes from within the community and that more people attend domestic violence courses. "I went on a training course myself," she says. "It was like a light flashing in my head. I never knew what domestic violence was till then. Half of our women still don't, they think a good hiding is part of our culture."

Bernie O'Rourke, who works at Solas Anois – Gaelic for "comfort now"– says attitudes in the community are changing. "More Travelling women than ever are seeking help. More mothers are willing to assist their daughters in leaving violent relationships. Women feel more empowered; change is coming."

In 2008, 44 women were accommodated at the refuge: a further 21 had to be turned away because of lack of space. O'Rourke says more specialist refuges are essential to acknowledge and accommodate the particular needs of the women from the Gypsy and Traveller communities. "A lot of Travelling women have low literacy and numeracy – a CD or DVD version of the refuge rules and information can help. Some can't tell the time or aren't interested in it; their children may not have structured bedtimes. Their life is very different from that of the settled population." She points out that they can be deterred from entering mainstream refuges if they experience difficulties observing cleanliness rituals, known as the Mochadi laws – one bowl for washing up, another for washing the body, for example. Particular standards of hygiene – such as using bleach to clean dishes – can also cause problems with other refuge residents.

Six months ago, Irish Traveller Bridie Jones started holding cultural awareness workshops in Kent. Now, she says, "The police no longer take dogs into trailers, or search a whole site to locate a single person. It's about building trust so women will come forward, report violence and have confidence in what the police, social services and other agencies have to offer." She also runs three separate domestic violence support groups for Gypsies and Travellers at homes in her area. "I don't want people thinking that every man I know is going around hitting women, because that would be far from the truth. But domestic violence needs talking about more in my community; it needs bringing out from beneath the carpet."

Lowther Morrison agrees, and says Gypsy and Traveller women now want more equality in their relationships. "My husband respects me and what I do, but there's plenty of women without that – where it's OK for a Gypsy man to remarry but not for a woman, where a woman cannot disrespect a man. It's a long road ahead, but people are coming around to the idea more and more." Her project report, One Punch Kills, recommends opening a caravan site in Leeds for families fleeing domestic violence. "We're not going away, this issue needs looking at and it needs more funding."


Romany Gypsy Janie Cadona, of One Voice, a domestic violence advice organisation for Travellers in the east of England, takes women through their options when experiencing violence from a partner. She agrees that culturally familiar alternatives such as "safe" trailers would help. "For those who have been living out in the open on a site all their lives, or if they're continuously nomadic, it can be too big a shock living with new people in a refuge or hostel. They can feel confined and isolated; anxiety and depression can set in. They risk leaving their life behind, so they stay in a violent situation for longer. Often, Travellers turn up at refuges with six kids in tow – there isn't always room to take in the whole family."

The Irish Traveller Movement in Britain is currently developing a women's group. Director Yvonne MacNamara says such groups can challenge sensitive issues and empower more women like Kay. "A lot of Travellers don't like the terminology 'domestic violence', some won't touch the topic. But others are saying, 'Do something,' which is an incredibly brave thing to do for this community. It's about getting information out there, about teaching men, women, children, young and old, that violence isn't the way. The approach needs to be sensible, it needs to be different and now, I believe, is the time to do it."

The 24-hour National Domestic Violence helpline number is 0808 2000 247.

Sonia Meyer: A local writer who throws a light on the secretive Gypsy culture.

By Doug Holder
Off The Shelf

I admit it. I was among the ilk that bought into the tired stereotype of the Gypsies as jobless vagrants, with a lot of kids, living in a tent camp, with the requisite dancing and fortune teller. I never took the time to think of them as anything more than stick figures. Being a Jew I heard from my relatives about the atrocities my family and the greater Jewish people experienced under the Nazis. But the Gypsies also suffered greatly. Why wasn't this talked about in school and at home? I really needed a serious education. That's when I ran across Sonia Meyer. I interviewed her and she introduced to a world that I was woefully ignorant of. Meyer is a novelist, as well as a scholar of Gypsy culture, who has completed a novel about a Gypsy girl named: "Dosha."

The Gypsies have lived and criss-crossed Europe for 600 years. They were among the first European settlers to enter our own country. Yet most of us, know them only through prejudice.

Sonia Meyer was born in 1938 in Cologne, Germany into a multi-ethnic family, who was very opposed to the Nazi regime. When co-agitators started to be publicly hung on street-corners, Sonia's family left overnight and made for the German hinterlands and later the dense forests in Poland, where they survived in the company of partisans and some Gypsies the Germans had not managed to capture. Flushed out by the victorious Russian army, who often killed those who had escaped the German massacres, they returned across a devastated land and killer fields to a Cologne that was leveled to the ground. Again she came across and befriended a group of Gypsy children.

Like them she would ultimately leave the memories of war and its aftermath behind, by simply walking into the future. Helped by a wealthy aunt, her travels would take her across the world, through a variety of professions to finally settle in the United States, where she had a family and entered the most noble of Gypsy professions of all, the breeding and dealing of horses.

Having found peace and happiness after a tumultuous journey, she started to long for the one part missing in her life, Gypsies. She decided to look into the history of the people she had found comfort with during the tumultuous years of war and its horrible aftermath.

But some twenty plus years ago, there was close to none research material on the Gypsies available. At Harvard's Widener library, she discovered a translation of a novel by a Russian Gypsy, by the name of Matteo Maximoff. She contacted him and they became fast friends. She then immersed herself in the life of Gypsies, traveling to Macedonia, and Kosovo and Hungary pursuing her research. And now Meyer has completed a novel, tentatively titled" "Dosha", that tells the tale of a Gypsy girl Dosha. The novel is bookended by Nikita Khrushchev's state visit to Helsinki in 1957. The story is of, a Gypsy, and her hardscrabble childhood spent with Russian partisans in Polish forests, to her defection during Khrushchev's visit..... .

In her research, her travels, when she lived with them, followed them to some sacred Gypsy sites, Sonia was struck how familiar their way of thinking and living was to her. And thinking back at the nomadic life most of her mother's siblings, she finally asked her mother who was on her death bed, "That grandfather of mine, the dark one, the one who worked in the circus with horses, the one who kept leaving home all the time, was he...a Gypsy? Her mother replied:

"I was not born under a wagon...so I decided long ago to declare myself a Rhinelander...as you by now should know: reality is like a rubber band. You can stretch it anyway you desire." This always stayed with her.

Meyer, a self-taught scholar of Gypsy culture and history is concerned with a possibly precedent setting case in Florida. For the past 5 years Broward County has been trying to seize the property of the Christian Romany Church, whose 300 Roma members are considered ethnic Gypsies. The County feels it has the right of Eminent Domain, overriding the Religious Freedom Law. Has the disregard for the human rights and equality followed them all the way to this country?

There is a last minute twist, in this long-drawn out fight of the Gypsies for what they consider rightfully theirs. The County did win the suit, and settled with the Roma church for a certain amount of money,not enough however to buy a new church. The Gypsies were given six months to vacate the church. Those six month were expiring at the end of August. Suddenly, several county officials are questioning the decision of depriving the Gypsies of their church. "That's just it," Sonia informed me with great excitement. "That's why I chose this country to live in. No matter how tough things get, here there is always hope."

Hungary: Assaults on Gypsies hurt country

BUDAPEST, Hungary, Aug. 11 (UPI) -- Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom condemned assaults on Gypsies and warned such incidents could undermine the country's stability.

Solyom was commenting on the Aug. 3 slaying of a 45-year-old Romany, or Gypsy, woman and the multiple gunshot wounding of her 13-year-old daughter in their home in Kisleta village, northeast Hungary.

The president said the assault is not only a Gypsy affair but it strikes at the stability of Hungary, the MTI news agency reported Tuesday.

The situation now is explosive and the authorities should find perpetrators of the killings and attacks as soon as possible, he said. Providing safety of the Romany minority is the country's prime task, Solyom said.

Hungary's Romany leaders estimate their minority amounts to about 500,000.

At least six Gypsies have been killed in Hungarian villages in the past year.

Burial for victim of attacks on Hungary's Gypsies

The Associated Press
Friday, August 7, 2009; 1:15 PM

KISLETA, Hungary -- Hundreds of people gathered Friday to pay their respects at the funeral of a 45-year-old woman, the sixth fatal victim in a series of attacks against Gypsies in Hungary.

Police say the attacks are linked, may have been committed by the same small group, and that the weapons used in Monday's shooting of Maria Balogh and her 13-year-old daughter in their home in Kisleta, a small village in eastern Hungary, had been used in at least two of the previous attacks.

Balogh's daughter survived the shooting and is recuperating in a hospital.

Police have 100 officers working on the crimes, the first of which took place in July 2008, and this week doubled the reward for information that could solve all the attacks to 100 million forints (euro370,000, $525,000).

The attacks usually have been carried out at homes at the edge of small villages near highways providing a quick escape route.

Balogh and her daughter were attacked Monday before dawn but were discovered only hours later when Balogh's sister came to pick them up for work at a tobacco farm.

Gypsies, or Roma as they sometimes prefer to be called, are among the poorest and least-educated Hungarians. They make up about 5 percent of Hungary's population of 10 million and many lost their jobs as the communist system crumbled and the large state-run factories which guaranteed employment were closed or privatized.

Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai expressed his condolences to the family and said that the murderers had attacked the whole Hungarian nation.

"To drive back extremism, to hold society together and to improve on the condition of Gypsies is not simply a government task," Bajnai said. "It is also a national responsibility."

Scaled down Gypsy caravan taking shape at Hartlebury

8:24am Thursday 6th August 2009

AN 80-year-old volunteer is building a scale model of a Gypsy caravan - with a little help from a teenage friend.

Ced Lewis has been working at Hartlebury Castle’s County Museum on the two-thirds-size bow top wagon for more than a year.

He has been supported by Aaron Bannister, 16, a member of the traveller community, who attends Baxter College in Kidderminster.

The main structure of Bita Rawni, which, in the Romani language means "little lady", has been built and it is expected to be finished in about six months.

When completed, it will be open to visitors, including schoolchildren, so they can experience the feeling of living in a Gypsy wagon.

Mr Lewis, who has been travelling from his Wolverhampton home twice a week for more than 18 years to volunteer at the museum, said: “Kids love the caravans. There’s so much history about them and they are so attractive.

“Everybody who comes here is fascinated by them.”

Mr Lewis said he enjoyed working at the museum, as it was like a “fairy land” to him.

He explained: “The opportunity to build and restore horse-drawn vehicles has been great. It’s been a fantastic 18 years because it’s opened up a whole new world to me.”

Aaron wants to pursue a career in woodwork and has already made a model of a traditional Gypsy wagon himself.

A full-sized wagon owned and lived in by Aaron’s grandfather is also currently on display at the museum, run by Worcestershire County Council.

Romanian Gypsy crown prince dies in Prague

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- A 17-year-old son of the Romanian Gypsy king died of a brain seizure Monday in a Prague hospital, Czech authorities said.

The young crown prince and a would-be successor to the Romanian Gypsy throne suffered serious internal injuries when he nearly drowned while swimming in a Czech lake outside Prague 13 days ago, Jana Jelinkova, spokeswoman for the hospital said, the Czech news agency CTK reported.

The patient's condition has been critical ever since he was hospitalized July 22.

On word of the death, about 50 Romanian Gypsies gathered outside the Prague-Vinohrady hospital, CTK said.

More than 150 Gypsies had arrived from Romania to be close to the youth, staying in makeshift camps on private or municipal land outside Prague, the report said.

Hungary Gypsy woman killed, daughter hurt

BUDAPEST, Hungary, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- A Gypsy woman was shot to death and her daughter was seriously injured Monday in northeast Hungary in what was characterized as a racial assault, police said.

The mother and her daughter, 13, were attacked in their home on the outskirts of the northeastern town of Kisleta, a local government official told the Budapest Times.

Kisleta Mayor Sandor Penzsesz said neighbors heard three to four shots.

Preliminary results on the crime scene indicate it was the latest in a series of racially motivated assaults against Gypsies in Hungary, a police statement said.

The girl was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries, Kisleta police spokeswoman Rita Fedor said, the Times reported.

At least six Gypsies, or Romanies as they are formally called, were killed in the past year in Hungary.

'Why should I live by Gypsies?'

By Helen Grady
Producer, Beyond Westminster

Every year millions of pounds are spent by local councils on evicting Gypsies and travellers from illegal camp sites. The government thinks the answer is to create more authorised sites, but who should decide where they go?

Len Gridley has some problems with his neighbours. The first is that there are 1,000 of them. The second is that they have set up what has become Europe's biggest illegal traveller site next to his back garden.

"All I want is for the council to clear the site," said Mr Gridley as he showed the 8ft fence he has fitted to separate his garden from his neighbours' homes.

"Who wants to live next to a Gypsy and traveller site? My house used to be worth £500,000 and now it's worth £150,000. No one wants to live here. People have sold up at a loss just to get away."

The site is in Cray's Hill, a picturesque village in the Essex countryside, which has become the focus of a planning row that is likely to cost the local council £3m.

Illegal settlement

The site backing onto Mr Gridley's bungalow is known as Dale Farm. It is owned by Gypsies and Irish Travellers, some of whom have been living there since the 1970s.

Grattan Puxon, a spokesman for the Dale Farm Residents, said the site expanded after some families bought an old scrap yard adjoining the original site. "As the families got bigger, they believed it was a quite a reasonable idea to clean up the old scrap yard and move onto it," he explained.

But only half of the Dale Farm site has planning permission and more than 400 people are facing eviction following a ruling by the Law Lords in May.

Basildon District Council, has spent almost £1m on the legal battle to evict the Travellers and set aside another £2m to pay for bailiffs to clear the illegal section of the site.

Council leader Tony Ball said it was worth the cost, adding "It's quite clear - they are living on green belt land without planning permission. UK law says that site has to be restored to green belt. What price upholding the law? The alternative is anarchy."

But families at Dale Farm claim they have nowhere else to go. And, although they are travellers by birth, they say they need a base.

"I don't know how to read or write," said Jean Sheridan, a mother-of-four. "I've been brung up like a proper traveller - travelling from site to site and on the roads constantly, so I never got the chance to go to school and get an education.

"This is somewhere for us to live, plus somewhere for us to get our kids looked after in the lines of doctors and dentists and education and things like that."

"I'd be happy to move if they could find us another site," added a neighbour, who asked not to be named. "But nobody wants us, so where are they going to put us?"

Political dilemma

That is a dilemma politicians have been grappling with for decades. So far, a solution seems elusive. Although most Gypsies and travellers live in authorised sites, it still costs councils in England at least £18m a year to evict people from illegal sites.

The government thinks the best way to cut these costs is to create more authorised sites and is offering councils £32m each year in grants for these sites.

There is some evidence to suggest this approach could work. Kent has 17 council-run sites across the county and has slashed its eviction costs by 80%.

But other local authorities have proved reluctant even to identify Gypsy and traveller sites, never mind creating council-run ones.

In England, each region must agree how many sites each local council will set aside for Gypsies and travellers in a document called the Regional Spatial Strategy.

However, some councils are threatening to take legal action rather than agreeing, even in principle, to provide what they see as "more than their fair share."

Candy Sheridan, a Liberal Democrat councillor in North Norfolk and a member of an Irish Traveller family, said a big part of the problem is that even authorised sites are unpopular with the settled community.

"There is no ideal site," said Ms Sheridan. "I sit on a planning committee and whenever the word Gypsy or traveller comes in, you get hundreds of people coming to public meetings and everybody is goaded up to say no to planning permission.

"Councillors who have signed up to creating new sites have lost their seats. What you have to do is take the responsibility away from local politicians."

At the moment, even though councils must assess the housing needs of Gypsies and travellers and have a strategy for meeting those needs, there is no legal duty to provide sites.

Labour MP Clive Betts, a member of the Communities and Local Government Select Committee, thinks that should change.

He told the BBC: "I think a lot of local authorities would welcome a statutory duty to have to do something because at least then they can go to their residents and say, 'we have to do something, let's find the best sites'."

Extra sites

But shadow local government spokesman Bob Neil said such decisions should be made at a local level and that the Conservatives would scrap the Regional Spatial Strategy.

Meanwhile Basildon District Council is advertising for bailiffs to evict the illegal Dale Farm residents and councillors are resisting calls to provide an extra 60 Gypsy and traveller pitches as part of the Regional Spatial Strategy.

Said Coun Ball: "If every authority in the country took an additional seven pitches that would deal with the demand that's out there at the moment.

"We would take seven extra pitches. But it is inequitable that, while Basildon already provides a 100, some are not providing any."

is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 1 August at 1100 BST. Or listen again via the BBC
Or download the programme

Should Gypsies and travellers be housed on official sites funded by the taxpayer? Who should decide where they go - councils or Central Government? Are you a traveller? Do you live near an authorised site for travellers or an illegal camp? Send us your comments by filling in the form below.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8171273.stm

Published: 2009/08/01 01:26:51 GMT

Schools exclude pupils less often

The number of exclusions from England's schools went down last year, latest figures show.

There were 8,130 permanent exclusions from primary, secondary and special schools in 2007-08, 6.4% less than the year before.

There were 383,830 fixed period exclusions, down 9.8%. Boys featured in three times as many cases as girls.

The number of appeals lodged by parents dropped a quarter to 780. Of these 26% succeeded, up 1.3 percentage points.

Appeal panels ordered children to be reinstated in their school in just over a third of the successful cases (35%), down five percentage points on the previous year.

Pupils from black Caribbean backgrounds were three times as likely as all children to be permanently excluded and twice as likely to be suspended (given a fixed period exclusion).

The exclusion rate was highest for Gypsy/Roma children, though they accounted for fewer than 2,000 cases in total nationally.

'Myth'

Shadow Schools Minister Nick Gibb said: "There is a serious problem with discipline and poor behaviour in English schools.

"The fact that nearly 500 children a day return to school after assaulting an adult or a classmate shows that teachers do not have sufficient powers to keep control."

The statistics show there were 71,330 fixed period exclusions for assaulting another pupil and 17,870 for attacking an adult - though both sets of figures were lower than last year.

But Children's Minister Dawn Primarolo said: "It is time to put to bed the myth that behaviour is deteriorating with teachers powerless to act.

"The truth is that we have given teachers the powers they asked for to tackle bad discipline and today's figures, as well as the trend over the last several years, show that the action we have taken is working in improving discipline in schools."

'Fiddling'

She said programmes such as Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (Seal), which ensures that young people understand the consequences of their actions and are taught how to respond to situations responsibly, had had a positive impact on discipline.

"But we can always do more and that is why we have strengthened home-school agreements to make sure the worst behaved children have clear expectations of behaviour and schools can force parents to take action if they do not live up to these expectations."

Liberal Democrat spokesman David Laws said: "Although permanent exclusions are down, there is a strong suspicion that the government is fiddling the figures by not declaring the transfer from one school to another of children who have effectively been excluded.

"Yet again, we can see a divide between rich and poor in our education system, with those children entitled to free school meals being far more likely to be excluded."

Poverty

It was this aspect that most concerned a charity that works with excluded youngsters, UK Youth.

Children entitled to free school meals were three times as likely as the average to be excluded, and secondary schools in the most deprived areas had more exclusions than those in the least deprived areas, it noted.

UK Youth chief executive John Bateman said: "Young people who are at risk of exclusion need access to a personalised curriculum that motivates them together with support from teachers, youth workers and mentors who can provide appropriate support and guidance."

He said they responded well to being given access to vocational subjects which allowed them to gain skills and qualifications and to have a clear sense of how to manage their lives when they left school.

Councillor faces rap over gypsy comments

A SENIOR councillor's controversial comments about travellers are being reported to police.

Candy Sheridan, a Romany councillor for North Norfolk District Council, contacted the News to say she will be reporting Cllr Lister Wilson to police for "incitement to racial hatred".

It follows the Cambridgeshire county councillor's stinging attack on plans for 159 new travellers' pitches in South Cambridgeshire, which he said would make nearby properties "virtually unsaleable" and "near worthless".

He added that travellers had got away with a litany of crimes, including theft, vandalism and intimidation, saying: "Non-travellers cannot do these things and get away with them."

Branding his comments "cheap, unjustified claims", Cllr Sheridan said: "Cllr Wilson needs to be reminded about his code of conduct - he certainly would not be saying these things about Jewish people or any other nationality.

"He seems to think house prices will go down near traveller sites, which has never been proved in any study despite the Joseph Rowntree Trust work on this point.

(MORE)

Wild East Capitalism and the Gypsy Exodus

July 29, 2009
Brian Kenety

The Czech Republic last year eclipsed war-torn countries like Somalia, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka to become the seventh-biggest source of asylum seekers in Canada and at last count — with some 3,000 claims pending, up from a handful back in 2006 — had skyrocketed to second place, behind Mexico.

Canada’s immigration minister, Jason Kenney, argued that most refugee claimants from Mexico were in fact middle-class economic migrants, and also pointed to “bogus” refugee claims from the Czech Republic, most filed by members of the country’s Roma, or gypsy, community.

Ottawa slapped visas on both countries on July 15. Just a couple weeks later, Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board publicly released the second of two reports from a March fact-finding mission to the Czech Republic, noting the Roma minority face “negative societal perceptions (including discrimination), inadequate housing, poor education, high unemployment, as well as far-right extremist activism.”

Much has been written about the immediate causes for the massive influx of Czech Roma asylum seekers to the Great White North — which began after Ottawa lifted the visa requirement in late 2007 — with the focus on the intensification of hate crimes in the Czech Republic over the past year, coinciding with unprecedented coordination between far-right political groups and skinheads.

Ales Horvath, a Roma businessman from the town of Pardubice who has been badly beaten twice by skinheads, says the constant — and rising — threat of violence pushed hundreds of Roma to pack their families off to Canada. “We are decent people. But we can’t go out into society like normal people,” Horvath told me. “Discrimination is so common here that people don’t even recognize it as discrimination. It has become normal. Society is pushing us into a corner more and more.”

In the international press — and to a large degree also the Czech press — debate has centered on the question of whether the Roma heading for Canada are legitimate refugees or simply economic migrants (or opportunists seeking to tap into a more generous social welfare system). But the role of capitalism is fanning the flames of extremism — by which I do not mean the catch-all explanation of the global financial crisis — has gone largely ignored.

The new ghettos

Widespread discrimination aside (and it’s no small thing), over the past 20 years, the Roma were literally pushed to the edge of Czech society. Along with the break-neck privatization (and corrupt practices) that gave birth to the term “the Wild East,” an unprecedented building boom in the country has lead to the creation of new Roma ghettos.

Before the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the Roma were far more integrated into Czech society, at least in terms of proximity, with white Czechs and Roma families living side by side, albeit not without tension. By the late 1990s, however, municipalities both large and small began in earnest to sell off properties, including the housing estates in which many Roma were living.

In 2006, prominent sociologist Ivan Gabal and a team of researchers released a study showing that nearly one-third of the Roma population lived in 250 new neighborhoods — usually run-down housing estates or dilapidated buildings on the outskirts of towns — that had come into being following the massive privatization of public housing in the 1990s.

Many of the Roma who found themselves in these ghettos, often in high-unemployment regions, had been evicted (along with “problematic inhabitants,” such as rent defaulters) from neighborhoods in Prague and other big cities undergoing free-market gentrification. Within these ghettos, Gabal’s researchers found that more than 95 percent of inhabitants were out of work.

Such ghettos make visible and easy targets for right-wing extremists. Such was the case with Janov, an isolated complex of neglected high rises in the Litvinov region, where neo-Nazis marching in step with members of fringe far-right Workers’ Party clashed with Roma, capturing headlines on both sides of the Atlantic.

“The last half year has been marked by attempts to openly attack Roma communities, preceded by political gatherings, in particular of the Workers Party — that is new, new, new,” said Gwendolyn Albert, who writes an annual country report on the Czech Republic for the European Network Against Racism, in a recent interview.

“Czech public officials, from mayors to ministers, have taken a page from the tactics of fringe neo-Nazi parties for political gain,” Albert says. “They are specifically targeting the issue of the proportionally large number of Roma citizens on welfare in this country as part of their populist political agendas.”

The Czech government is now considering a ban on the Workers Party and another extremist group, the National Party, which during the June elections for the European Parliament (incredibly) broadcast a video on Czech public television calling for “the final solution” to the Roma “question.” But for those trapped eking out a living in the new ghettos, the chance for a new life in Canada is another dream squashed.

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Gypsy Summer

By Michael Johnson on 7.28.09 @ 6:08AM

BORDEAUX -- Anyone visiting Italy, France, Germany or Holland this summer is likely to be struck by increasing signs of abject poverty on the streets. Begging has expanded noticeably, often by elderly men and women or mothers carrying small babies. A woman holding her three-month-old daughter asked me for loose change outside a post office the other day on Bordeaux's most fashionable street.

At the Sunday outdoor market on Bordeaux's revitalized riverside, an accordionist plays mournful Slavic tunes as shoppers drop coins in a cup. I chatted with him the other day in a mix of French and Russian, both of which he spoke badly. He was surprisingly cheerful and seemed well fed. Now we call each other "kamarad."

With some exceptions, these dispossessed people are a long way from home. Eastern Europe's poor, mostly Roma, or gypsies, are coming west in large numbers looking for a better life or at least more charity.

Since the admission of Bulgaria and Romania into the European Union two years ago they rank as the largest ethnic minority in the Union, now numbering 12 million, more numerous than the population of Belgium or Greece.

After contributing modestly to the upkeep of the Roma for some months, I felt compelled to gain entry to this off-limits culture if only to test the veracity of scare stories circulating about them. Child prostitution and rampant thievery are common complaints from the local population. Their communal way of life, their wanderlust, their rejection of contraception and their poor language skills all contribute to the barriers that exclude them.

One well-traveled friend goes further, warning me that Roma are a "permanent criminal underclass that has taken its business on the road." The truth turns out to be more complicated.

To gain entry into their isolated quarters, I joined up with Dr. Christophe Adam of Médecins du Monde, a young physician who makes a pro bono visit to the gypsy squatters once or twice a week. On a recent visit, he was greeted as an old friend and I was just as warmly received once they came to trust me. They live in fear of racist attacks and official expulsion orders.

The doctor and I were encircled by a dozen or so men and women chattering excitedly in four languages. When they learned I was an American, one old man gave a thumbs-up sign and shouted, "Yes! Amerika!" A younger man, smiling broadly, introduced himself as "Bobby -- like 'Dallas.'"

These proud and handsome people are excluded from society where they came from -- Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia -- and more so in Western Europe. Except for members of a few charitable organizations, most West Europeans treat them as lepers.

If they identify a West Europe city that treats them tolerably well, as Bordeaux does, they write to fellow-villagers back home and tell them it is safe to come over. Thus extended families are often reunited although in deplorable conditions.

After a round of introductions at the squat, Dr. Adam and I were ushered into a large room, once a factory floor that now serves as home for about 15 people. Seven double beds were neatly arranged around the room as in a military barracks. Colorful fabrics were hung to cover the cement walls. The senior woman in the group strode toward me and introduced herself in Russian as Gladka.

I half expected her to offer me tea in a glass, Russian style, but that was beyond her. The room has no running water or toilet facilities. Electricity is pirated from a nearby utility pole.

I had a long talk in halting French with Léonard, a 19-year-old Bulgarian who said he makes enough money begging and washing windshields at street corners to buy his food, so he does not have to steal to survive. "I just want a normal life for my wife, and I don't want my daughter to become a beggar. I want to work," he said. Another man, camping in quarters next to the Bordeaux city dump, pulled at my sleeve and begged me to help him find odd jobs.

A high-level conference in Brussels last September suggested ways to bring some order to the treatment of Roma, chiefly by recommending that Roma children be accepted in the local school system.

But the law is uncompromising. The French occasionally round up the Roma and expel them for infraction of immigration laws. The Italian police sweep through the camps to count heads and collect DNA samples to match up family members.

Some manage to escape the spiral of exclusion and degradation. One such celebrated case is Cecilia Attias, the ex-wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Cecilia is the daughter of Aron Ciganer (a corruption of "tsigane," or gypsy) who was half-Jewish and half-gypsy. Two European Parliamentarians are of Roma origin. But such success stories are rare.

Their plight is neatly summed up by Dr. Adam: "The Roma problem is symbolic of our inability to live with people whose culture and habits are outside our norms."

Michael Johnson spent 17 years at McGraw-Hill, including six years as a news executive in New York. He now writes from Bordeaux in France.

Young fashionistas revel in gypsy chic

(26-07-2009)

Chic and Ha Noi are not two words usually seen together, but young hipsters in the capital are looking to change that. Phung Phuong Hanh reports.

Ha Noi isn’t exactly Paris when it comes to fashion, but a new generation of fashionistas hungry for something different are bringing a new style to the city – gypsy chic.

Gypsy chic is the antithesis to conventional printed t-shirts and tight jeans. This is a genre defined by Bohemian fashion: colourful patterns, chunky accessories and loose-fitting skirts and pants that are artfully crafted to still show off a curve here and there. Followers are dubbed gypsy chicks, Gypsyholics or Boho-chicks.

Where it’s at

You can’t be a self-proclaimed gypsy chick without visiting Chap va (Patchwork) boutique on Duong Thanh Street. At first glance, it is hard to tell exactly what the store specialises in – the window display looks like a cross between a furniture or clothes store and a contemporary art gallery, but step inside and prepare to shop.

Inside is not much different, with a grand piano and antique mirror accompanying the display of clothes and accessories with no obvious order. Despite the seemingly spontaneous presentation, all the pieces set each other off very well.

The store was the brainchild of four former Ha Noi University students Hong Mi, Anh Thu, Thi Nga and Hong Hanh.

"We opened the shop to satisfy our passion for unique styles and to share our hobby with other like minded people," Hanh says.

Although the four didn’t formally study art, their individual styles and flair for design shines through in both the ambience of the store and the pieces they create. The main theme of Chap Va follows a Bohemian style inspired by handicrafts.

When making their collection, the four girls collect second-hand clothing, then do each piece up using small pieces of coloured stone, beads or embroidery. More recently, they have started importing creations from Thailand and India.

All the clothes are loose fitting but flattering: hipsters, harem pants and long dresses take the fore. Patterns tend to be floral, or ethnic-inspired in print or embroidery. Their collection also includes earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and belts, which are all hand made.

Natural materials are favoured, especially wood and stone. Artificial flowers also feature heavily.

As well as innovations in fashion, the shop is trying out new bargain ideas with a "buffet packet" deal, which works a bit like a pick and mix. Customers are given a bag which they can fill with anything on offer and pay only VND400,000. It’s a good way to test your packing skills.

With all their new ideas, the girls faced a lot of challenges when they were starting out, Hanh says.

"It’s been difficult. We didn’t receive any encouragement in the beginning, people said we were crazy," she says.

"We didn’t know how to do it, but we tried our best and now we are reaping the rewards."

It seems the girls are living their slogan: "Cu mac ho, mac di" ("no worries, wear our clothes"). One style fits all, young or old, whatever nationality.

Not far from Duong Thanh is another popular hang out for gypsy chicks on the look out to add to their wardrobes – Hang Da Market. The market was recently rebuilt along Phung Hung and Cua Dong streets.

The venue is well-known as a top spot for second-hand bargain hunters. Clothes and accessories galore are displayed at tens of stalls, each with their own particular style. There are mountains of pieces on offer , so bargain hunters have to be careful that what they are buying is good quality.


Bargain

The hustle and bustle is a bit stressful, but the desire to find a good outfit can be enough to fuel young fashionistas for hours. Just when you begin to feel the dull ache of fatigue, there’s always an exciting piece to get you going again. Nothing beats the feeling of heading home with a couple of stylish new outfits in hand.

Combining second-hand clothes with the right accessories can give you a really unique and stylish look that’s cheap but doesn’t look cheap.

As the famous designer Savannah Miller said, a real bohemian is someone who has the ability to appreciate beauty on a deep level, is a profound romantic, doesn’t know any limits, and whose world is their own creation. — VNS

Roma convene in Prague to pray for future leader

By Katerina Zachovalova Jul 27, 2009, 13:42 GMT

Prague - From all over Europe, members of a Romanian Roma clan have descended on Prague in recent days to pray for the recovery of one of their most treasured sons, Ion Miclescu, injured last week in a swimming accident.

The young man, pegged to rule his hometown's Roma one day and considered a kind of prince, has been lying in a Prague hospital in a coma since nearly drowning Wednesday in a lake on the city's outskirts.

The clan's vigil is testing the tolerance of Czech society and has exposed racism that is often hidden from the public eye.

Miclescu, who turned 17 two weeks ago, had gone for a swim on Wednesday to refresh himself as the semi-nomadic family from southern Romania paused in the Czech Republic during a journey through Europe, relatives said.

However, he slipped underwater and remained submerged for about 10 minutes before an athletic stranger managed to fish him out, they said. It took another 40 minutes for rescuers to restart Miclescu's heart. The good samaritan remains unidentified, police said.

Once alerted of Milescu's accident, his clan - Miclescu's father has seven brothers - descended upon the Czech capital in their battered BMWs from sites across the continent, including the Netherlands, Germany and Poland. They pitched camp in a park in front of Vinohrady Hospital.

'It is normal for us to come together. We wait, we pray,' said Vitomireanu Bobi-Corneliu, 29, Ion's distant cousin, who goes by Bobi and picked up English from movies.

Miclescu, the youngest son of the clan's elder, is something of a prince, Bobi explained. He has been on track to become one of a half- dozen elders of 'all Gypsies' in Ramnicu Valcea, the family's hometown in Romania, because he is 'very smart.'

At an estimated 10 million, the Roma, also known as Gypsies, are Europe's largest minority. They are also seen as the most marginalized group on the continent. Most live in exclusion, undereducated and impoverished. There are an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 Roma in the Czech Republic.

Recent economic woes have heightened racial tensions in the Czech Republic and elsewhere in Europe.

In the past few months, neo-Nazis have marched through Roma ghettos, and several houses belonging to Roma have been fire-bombed. Earlier in July, Canada re-introduced visas for Czechs to stop the country's Roma from seeking asylum there.

In opinion polls, Czechs consistently rank the Roma as the least- liked national minority. A March survey by the CVVM polling institute found that Roma are disliked by 77 per cent of respondents, followed by Ukrainians, who are disliked by 56 per cent of respondents.

Miclescu's immediate family began setting up camp near the hospital on Wednesday. Other clan members arrived later in the week and over the weekend. The impromptu gathering soon triggered a wave of residents' complaints, officials said.

A hospital security guard observed disapprovingly that Miclescu's relatives did not pay for parking. 'Police ignore it, but I would not get away with it,' she griped.

Partly to prevent potential neo-Nazi attacks, the municipal authorities moved the group from the hospital to a nearby campground on Friday, where they have been loosely separated from other visitors. The family gathering included over 100 people by Monday.

During the weekend, men were passing time quietly talking, sipping beer and smoking on benches under a willow tree, while women in long colourful skirts adorned with spangles cooked meat-and-potato stew on propane burners.

'They have their own space because they exceed our capacities,' the campsite's operator, Zita Strnadova said. But she added that some vacationers fled when Miclescu's family arrived.

Some Czech news websites temporarily shut down discussion about the family's vigil, as they were overflowing with racist comments.

One anonymous reader commented on the site of iDNES.cz on Monday: 'Czechs have no money for vacations because of the crisis and they should support the gypsy trash?' Another reader wrote: 'Send them back where they came from. As if we did not have enough of them.'

The comments surprised a local Roma who coaches boxing.

'I was astonished,' said Stefan Licartovsky, who is collecting money for the clan. 'There were people who wrote that a dead gypsy is a good gypsy. They should be jailed.'

For now, donations are covering the campground fees, but the family may be forced to move again soon.

Despite the odds, clan members are ready to stay nearby as long as Ion needs them, said his oldest brother, Laurentiu, 25.

Miclescu breathes only thanks to a respirator and has been on dialysis since Saturday, when his kidneys failed, a hospital spokeswoman said.

'I wait for a positive result. It is up to God,' Laurentiu said, glancing up to the sky.

Old News — The Gypsies will get you

By Sharon Cummins

July 23, 2009 6:00 AM

Gypsies who visited coastal York County every summer starting in the 1880s repeatedly stole blue-eyed children and money from the locals. Or did they?

In 1887, Kennebunkport's summer newspaper "The Wave," reported as fact "A band of Gypsies that passed through here last week had with them a little blue-eyed child that did not in the least resemble his dusty companions. Suspicion was aroused that he might have been stolen and such proves to have been the case. It was the son of James Welch of Nashua, N.H. Pursuit is now being made for the rascals and the little child will undoubtedly be rescued." After the band of Gypsies was followed up the coast by police for a more than a week, a Bath Times reporter wrote that the frantic Gypsy mother of the blue-eyed child finally presented her son's authentic birth certificate to Justice Henry Ragot of Brunswick and the judge declared her innocent of kidnapping. The Gypsies performed in Brunswick that day with their dancing bear and offered Justice Ragot all the money they collected in gratitude for his fairness. The judge refused their gift.

In 1902, Harry Clark of Beverly, Mass., scolded his four-year-old son for standing dangerously close to the kicking feet of his horse. When the father looked for him again he was gone. Immediately, Gypsies were accused of stealing the child €¦ any Gypsies. Many seaside vacationers reported seeing the captive child in Ogunquit and Kennebunk. After fruitlessly searching every Gypsy encampment in Maine and New Hampshire, the press suggested, without a shred of evidence, that it was probably the Indians who had carried little Wilbur Clark away.

To keep them close to home, children were warned, "the Gypsies will get you and turn you into a beggar," but no such case was ever proved. The King of the Stanley Gypsies was asked about this in the 1930s. He said, "Don't you think we have enough of our own children to feed? Why would we want yours?"

Gypsies traveled from Maine seaside resort to resort staying at each until they were chased away. They usually camped on the outskirts of town near fresh water brooks in elaborately painted wagons and tents. Their pet monkeys and bears entertained vacationers at the fairgrounds and along the beach roads. Gypsy women knocked on doors to tell fortunes for money and the men bred and traded some of the finest horses available. Gypsies occasionally used their bad reputation to their own benefit. Attractive fair-skinned young Gypsy girls would trick tourists out of their money by claiming to have been kidnapped and in need of money to get home to their pure, white families. Some Gypsies did cheat and steal to survive, but often they admitted to crimes they had not committed, just to be left alone.

Two Gypsy women appeared at Mrs. Waterhouse's Kennebunk Landing door in the spring of 1931 and offered to tell her fortune. The lady of the house refused to let them in. She later discovered that $20 was missing from her pocketbook and called the police.

Deputies Roland D. Parsons of Kennebunk, Orrison Davis of Biddeford, Irving S. Boothby of Saco, and George L. Simard of Biddeford located the fortune-tellers at a farm the Gypsies owned at Oak Ridge. The two women denied stealing any money but when the police threatened to take the whole band to court, the Gypsies gave them $20.

Tracing the origin of a non-literate culture like the Gypsies' presents obvious challenges. By analyzing words common to the many Gypsy dialects, linguists have traced this unique race of people to India. An Indian origin for the Romani people, as they call themselves, is also supported by recent DNA studies. Early Gypsies led semi-nomadic lives because they were not allowed to own land. Their role in the Indian caste system was to travel from town to town entertaining the upper classes. After being driven out of India around the year 1000 they were widely scattered.

Some tribes eventually established themselves in the southern Balkan countries before 1300. There, they were enslaved. Many Romani bands came to the United States in the late 1800s from Serbia when their nomadic existence was outlawed. Others immigrated after escaping Nazi Germany where half a million Gypsies were put to death during World War II.

When enforcement of zoning ordinances made a nomadic existence impractical in the United States, Gypsies gravitated toward large cities where they could more easily get lost in the crowd. Today, the descendants of the Gypsies who camped along the Maine coast are finding each other on the Internet and learning about their hidden heritage through DNA testing.

Old News columnist, Sharon Cummins, is a historical research professional in southern Maine. She can be reached by e-mail at sharonlynn@roadrunner.com

Grahame warns caution after Lamont claims possible rise in gypsy camps

Published Date: 22 July 2009

By Mark Entwistle

LOCAL MSP Christine Grahame says comments concerning gypsies made by Holyrood colleague John Lamont may border on being racist.

The South of Scotland nationalist MSP was responding to a statement issued this week by Mr Lamont, the Conservative MSP for Roxburgh and Berwickshire.

Mr Lamont claims to have highlighted a loophole in legislation which he says could see a rise in the number of gypsy sites in the Borders.

He says the Government has indicated that gypsies should be legally entitled to set up campsites anywhere in Scotland – without the fear of police interference – in order that their human rights are not infringed.

And, according to Mr Lamont, such legislation could see a situation whereby rules were vastly different between Scotland and England, leading to gypsy communities crossing the border into Scotland to take advantage of the law.

"Our communities should be afforded the same protection of public health and local amenities as down south. It's disappointing that the Scottish Government doesn't appear to take the same view.

"Different rules between Scotland and the rest of the UK could have a significant effect on border regions such as our own. I wouldn't like to think this is giving a green light to a proliferation of illegal campsites in our communities."

However, Ms Grahame warned Mr Lamont: "I would caution him on his use of language and singling out of the gypsy community as there is a danger his comments could lead to trouble and may border on being racist.

"The Scottish Borders, especially around the Kirk Yetholm area has a long and positive association with the gypsy community going back several hundred years.

"Mr Lamont should reflect on the fact that this issue was discussed at length by the equal opportunities committee at the Scottish Parliament. The committee unanimously backed the proposals now under attack by Mr Lamont."

Told of Ms Grahame's reaction to his comments, Mr Lamont responded: "This is complete nonsense. Why should the rights of gypsies and travellers take precedence over the rights of established communities?"

In a statement to TheSouthern this week, Scottish Borders Council explained it had statutory duties to meet the needs of gypsy travellers and of other members of the public, local businesses and landowners.

"Scottish Borders Council has one formally designated gypsy traveller site in the Borders (at Innerleithen) and is actively considering alternative site options to further meet the needs of gypsy travellers," said a spokesperson.

But according to the Scottish Government, concerns expressed by Mr Lamont appear to be stemming from confusion over the introduction of new temporary stop notices which are designed to allow local authorities to immediately halt unauthorised works, such as building works without planning consent.

A Government spokesman told TheSouthern that such notices cannot be used to evict people from their homes or caravans, and this fact had led to some incorrect coverage in the national press, suggesting that the measures would make it easier for travellers to set up illegal campsites.

"But this is not the case, as local authorities such as Scottish Borders Council still retain the powers they have always had to deal with unauthorised campsites and to move people on from such sites," said the spokesman.

However, Mr Lamont says there will be widespread confusion over what exactly the situation is and told TheSouthern that gypsies/travellers at St Boswells for their annual fair this month had expressed the belief that the new legislation surrounding the new notices would give them increased protection from being moved on.

Mr Lamont added: "These new notices could have knock-on consequences and it would be better to debate this issue further, instead of later having to pick apart an unholy mess of ambiguities.

Time running out for Gypsy church

FORT LAUDERDALE - In the eight years Dan Tennis has had a church, he has helped countless people through donations, food drives, and something money can't buy: faith. Today he says faith and prayer are the only things that can save the site of his Christian Romany Church from being taken by the county.

After a four-year legal battle and a court-ordered extension that allowed the church to remain where it is, time is running out. The extension ends Aug. 31. Broward County wants to build a replacement facility for the Broward Addiction and Recovery Center and its Sexual Assault Treatment Center on the church site.

But the city of Fort Lauderdale and nearby residents want the county to find another spot. Three weeks ago, the city commission approved a resolution urging the county to pursue the development of the new rehabilitation facility elsewhere.

"The church is doing something good for the community ... and we want to preserve it as much as possible," said Commissioner Romney Rogers.

The site has been zoned for a church for half a century and the city commission would have to approve the rezoning of the site for the rehabilitation and sexual assault center. But city officials are concerned that the new facility is at the bottom of the county's budget list and Broward won't have the funds to operate it.

For the past three years this has been resident Cliff Iacino's ultimate nightmare.

"Could there be anything conceivably worse than a church being put on the street," said Iacino, president of the Edgewood Civic Association. "If they're not ready to go, then why kick them out? ...They're paying $4,000 a month and maintaining the property."

The county's plans call for expanding the rehabilitation center, currently located in Sailboat Bend, from 34 beds to 50 beds in a new 38,500-square-foot facility and making the new sexual assault center large enough to accommodate the clients and staff who use it, said Mike Elwell, director of the detox center. Money for the almost $30 million project was set aside years earlier, and Elwell said both facilities still will operate within their existing budgets -- about $14 million for the detox center and $2.8 for the sexual assault center.

The funds to run the centers is included in the county's proposed budget, but the Broward commission won't give final approval on what stays and what goes until September.

In the meantime, the church's attorney says he'll ask the court for another extension. But if it's not granted, Tennis and his wife are concerned that they'll have no place to move the church to. The couple has been looking for alternate properties but have found nothing affordable.

Even with a hefty deposit, banks are not lending money.

"To get another church they have to get another mortgage and I think everyone knows that it is very difficult to get a mortgage in this economy," said Brian Patchen, the church's attorney. "It is even more difficult to find a bank that would give a loan to a church."

And losing the church, said parishioner Robert Mitchell, means losing more than just a place of worship – they would also be losing a place where they pass on the Gypsy traditions and language.

"By taking away the church they're taking a piece of our culture," he said.

Police launch drive to recruit more gypsy officers

Gypsies and travellers are being recruited by Kent Police to ensure the force best represents the community it serves.

Officers believe that by giving jobs to people from the minority group they will be able to smooth what is often a rocky relationship between the two sides.

However, some are concerned the ‘tick-box’ targets could lower standards if vacancies are given to gypsies and travellers rather than the best candidates.

Earlier this year a report by the Association of Police Authorities (APA) suggested all forces should seek to recruit from under-represented groups.

Assistant Chief Constable Allyn Thomas said this was something Kent Police fully supported.

He said: “We seek to recruit staff from as wide a background as possible and we welcome applicants from all ethnic backgrounds.

“To support us in this we have a Gipsy and Traveller Action Group, the members of which advise us on issues and who provide support in the recruitment of new personnel and the progression of existing personnel.

“We believe recruiting officers from a variety of ethnic groups enhances the legitimacy of policing in the eyes of those minority communities.”

The initiative has been backed by campaigners for travellers’ equality, including the Canterbury Gipsy Support Group, which provides diversity training to Kent Police.

Vice-chairman Joe Jones said it was important his people were given the same career opportunities as others, but admitted he did not think there would be a mad rush to sign up.

He said: “Gypsies and travellers are far from being policed in the real sense. The only time we meet is when our camps are being raided or when we are being made to move on.

“We are the most misunderstood group of people in the British Isles and nobody really cares about us, but by the police looking to recruit us it shows that we have finally arrived in society.

“Over the years the police have acted as piggy-in-the-middle between us and various other authorities and there are a lot of issues that need to be overcome before gypsies and travellers really start to go for jobs in the force, but it’s obviously something we would like to see more of.”

The recommendation by the APA to recruit more gypsies and travellers has been ridiculed by the TaxPayers’ Alliance and the Campaign Against Political Correctness, both of whom fear standards of policing will go down if candidates are judged more on ethnic background than suitability for the job.

However, Kent Police Federation chairman Ian Pointon pointed out that all potential recruits have to pass the same entry exams to be considered for a job.

He said: “It could bring a better understanding of the ways and customs of travelling communities and help break down barriers between us.

“We’re all aware of notorious traveller sites but there are also ones many people don’t know exist that are peaceful and absolutely spotless, and where I’ve been able to sit down and have a nice cup of tea with the people who live there.

“As long as they meet the grade then I can see no reason why we shouldn’t seek to recruit more gypsies and travellers.”

Travellers hit back

A SUPPORT group for gypsies and travellers has blasted Henley Town Council’s decision not to help supply legal sites.

A spokesman for the National Federation of Romani Gypsy and Traveller Liaison Group said councillors should “come out of the dinosaur age”.

She said: “It is frustrating for us that people still have these antiquated views about gypsies and travelling people.

“We have had laws changed to protect us. People can still speak about gypsies in a very derogatory way. They would never speak like that about other people.

“Romani gypsies are an ethnic group who don’t choose their lifestyle — they have never known any other way. Gypsy people won’t change — by tradition they have an aversion to bricks and mortar.”

The Government Office for the South-East is asking the opinions of councils about providing land for travellers. It hopes that official sites would allow travellers better access to schools and healthcare, ensure that taxes and rent were collected and reduce illegal sites.

Last week, Henley councillors warned that offering parts of the town would lead to more illegal sites in the area and an increase in litter.

Speaking at a meeting of the finance strategy and management committee, Cllr Chris Pye said: “I don’t think we should be obliged to support travellers’ sites. There seem to be more and more travellers and increasing numbers of Eastern Europeans are arriving every year.

“By creating and providing more sites we are actually encouraging travellers to enter the country. Travellers, by their nature, always move on. They won’t want to stay at one legal site. They will come along for a brief time, do some roof repairs and then leave, normally dumping quite a lot of rubbish.”

Cllr Peter Skolar said: “If this scheme gave local authorities the power to remove illegal sites then I may be in favour of it but it doesn’t.

“There are already a lot of legal sites in Oxfordshire — the county council has been awarded a Charter Mark for its work — but we also have an awful lot of illegal sites.”

The Government says gypsies are the most excluded ethnic group in the UK. In June last year, there were 3,169 caravans in the South-East of which 2,466 or 78 per cent were authorised.

A government report on site provision is due next year. Locations for legal sites will then be decided by local authorities as part of their own area plans.

There are six permanent council-owned sites in Oxfordshire, providing 80 pitches, with another seven privately-run areas. The closest to Henley is The Sturt, at Oakley Wood, which has five plots.

What do you think? Write to: Letters, Henley Standard, Caxton House, Station Road, Henley, RG9 1AD or email letters@henleystandard.co.uk

Gypsy artists are coming to town

Published Date: 29 May 2009

TOP gypsy artists are coming to Doncaster to mark the second national Gypsy Roma Traveller History month.

The Baro Ziro Big Time Festival will be running for a week in June as part of the Hothouse arts programme, and will taken place at three venues across the borough - including a traditional circus tent in Chequer Road's Arts Park.

The main marquee line-up will feature entertainment from world music chart-toppers, KAL, Czech Eurovision entry Gypsy CZ and the rarely seen traveller music legend Ambrose Coop and Family.

There will be tales of life on the road with the UK's leading traveller storyteller, Richard O'Neill, an evening of performance, tunes and stories directed by the internationally acclaimed theatre director Alan Lyddiard, and a special screening of Shane Meadows' iconic film King of the Gypsies.
The gallery at The Point, on South Parade, will play host to the creation of an installation by renowned British traveller artists Delaine and Damian Le Bas, and British Traveller photographer Patricia Knight will bring her exhibition to Cusworth Hall.

Baro Ziro runs from Saturday June 13 to Saturday June 20. Tickets are available from the Doncaster Civic Theatre box office on 01302 342349

Gypsies, citizens without rights

Friday 22 May 2009

FRANCE 24’s reporter went to meet gypsies in Russia. Considered second class citizens, they are victims of numerous discriminations. This report was filmed in Chudovo, south of Saint-Petersburg.

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Human Rights for Gypsies

25. 5. 2009

Gypsies, the long-lost children of northwest India, number about 12 million worldwide. The Gypsies first arrived in Europe in the thirteenth century as asylum seekers, fleeing forcible conversion to Islam by the invading Turks. Their descendants today number 8 million, constituting Europe's largest ethnic minority­, a marginalized and much maligned minority, whose contributions to Western culture are often ignored.

Three examples of luminaries they produced: Sonya Kavalesky, who, in 1884, became the first woman university professor in the world ­ in Sweden, teaching mathematics; Charles Chaplin, the legendary filmmaker; and Bill Clinton, the former president of the United States. Both Chaplin and Clinton are descendants of British Gypsies. Ian Hancock, himself a British Gypsy, in his book We Are the Romani People (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2002) includes brief biographies of more than one hundred major Gypsy contributors to Western culture. Hancock is professor of English at the University of Texas, Austin. His book describes Patricio Lafcadio Hearn, who in the late nineteenth century pioneered the journalistic style of writing; Antonio Cansino, the creator of the Bolero dance, and his granddaughter, Margarita Carmen Cansino, widely known under her Hollywood name, Rita Hayworth.

Hancock's book attempts to correct European disdain of Gypsy history. Two other recent books with the same objective are W. R. Rishi's Roma: The Punjabi Emigrants in Europe (Punjabi University Press, 1996) and Isabel Fonseca's Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and their Journey (Random House, 1996). Also remarkable are the films of Tony Gatlif, of French Gypsy descent, especially his documentary Latcho Drom: A Musical History of the Gypsies from India to Spain, which won the Cannes award in 1994.

When Isabel Fonseca, an American journalist, set out to write her book in 1991, she "had in mind that the Gypsies were 'the New Jews of Eastern Europe.'" She lived with Gypsy families for four years while researching in the libraries of many European countries. Her conclusion: "Gypsies alongside with the Jews are ancient scapegoats."

Traditionally, Gypsies did not keep written records and not all groups sustained an oral history. The research on their origin began in the late 1700s with a systematic philological analysis of their language, Romani, which was then firmly established as a Sanskritic language. Words like dand, (tooth), mun, (mouth), akha (eyes) are identical with those in Punjabi spoken in northwest India. If confirmation were needed, it is readily provided by the Gypsy music's use of the Indian ragas such as Bhairavi, Mulkausa, and Kalyani as well as the bol (the rhythmic syllables -- tak, dhin, dha -- imitating drum beats).

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Czech neo-Nazis air anti-Gypsy TV ad

Published: May 21, 2009 at 10:42 AM

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, May 21 (UPI) -- The Czech public television network said Thursday it will sue a far-right party for submitting an anti-Gypsy racist ad so it will not have to air it again.

Czech television received the National Party video clip, which promises a "final solution" of the Gypsy problem, and broadcast it Wednesday, the first day of a publicity campaign for the European Parliament elections in June, Prague Radio said.

Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer condemned the anti-Romany video as illegal, the radio said.

A Czech television spokesperson said the station complied with a law that orders it to air all ads received from political parties in the pre-election period.

The spokesperson said the ad will not air again and the network will file a lawsuit against the National Party, accusing it of racism.

Michael Kocab, Czech minister for minorities and human rights said the station should have obeyed the criminal code, which bans distributing racial hate messages, instead of observing the election law.

Interior Minister Jan Pecina said he plans to try to ban the far-right National party.

Italy: Mayor 'pays' Roma-Gypsies to leave the city

Pisa, 21 May (AKI) - The mayor of the central Italian city of Pisa, Marco Filippeschi said the city was paying Roma-Gypsies who lived on the outskirts of the city to leave. "We send them back to their home in Romania," said Filippeschi, quoted by Italian daily 'Il Giornale'.

Filippeschi, from the centre-left Democratic Party, said he decided to demolish the shanty towns along the Aurelia and behind the hospital of Cisanello.

"The initiative has been coming for a long time. It involves 42 Roma-Gypsies from Romania, European Union citizens, who have voluntarily chosen to take part," said Filippeschi.

"As a grant to the families, the initiative cost 21,500 euros (or 511,90 per person), or a total of 30,000 including the bus trip escorted by the Red Cross. We cannot say that this is an exhorbitant price."

The group of Roma-Gypsies were taken to the Romanian city of Craiova, located in southwest Romania.

Filippeschi, when asked whether he was a member of the Northern League party known for its anti-immigrant and anti-Gypsy stance, insisted he was a member of the Democratic Party and this was not a deportation.

"By no means. I am a member of the PD. This was not a deportation, you know?. Everything was done respecting the law, informing the prefecture, police headquarters and the relevant foreign ministries. It is called 'voluntary repatriation' anyway."

The mayor said that the area of Pisa hosts around 1,000 Roma-Gypsies, half of whom live in villages where they pay rent or expenses, and the other half who live as squatters in makeshift huts.

"This winter there was a major flood in one of the camps and now the fire season is about to begin. Many of the illegal immigrants are targeted by the police for crimes such as thefts and receiving stolen goods," said Filippeschi.

Funds for the repatriation were taken from a European fund for immigration set aside for the region of Tuscany.

Under the agreement with the Roma-Gypsies the administration pays for a 'soft' return home, and in return, they commit not to come back to Italy for at least a year.

According to Filippeschi, it would be more costly for the Roma-Gypsies to return because their shacks have already been demolished and the areas already reclaimed.

There are 70,000 Roma-Gypsies in the country who are Italian citizens. Many others come from European Union countries such as Romania and Slovakia while others came from the Balkans.

Romanians are currently the largest immigrant group, and many Roma Gypsies have Romanian nationality.

Hungarian Blues

posted by Eyal Press on 05/18/2009 @ 3:03pm

I spent much of last year in Hungary, leaving just before the IMF cobbled together a rescue package to prevent the nation's economy from imploding. A full-scale implosion has been averted, at least for now, but Hungary is still in dire shape. Its economy is projected to shrink by 6 percent this year, unemployment is rising, and the country's disgraced socialist leader, Ferenc Gyrunscany, recently had to step down after several years of feckless rule that boosted the popularity of the Hungarian right.

This is bad news for all Hungarians, but especially for the country's Roma gypsies, a favorite scapegoat of the Hungarian Guard, a fascist group that has also seen its popularity grow in recent years. A number of gypsies have been killed recently in unsolved murders presumed to be the work of right-wing vigilantes, and the level of anti-Roma sentiment in Hungarian society has apparently increased dramatically. "You now hear anti-gypsy sentiment at every level of society," a prominent politician recently told the Financial Times.

I found this statement alarming in part because, frankly, I heard anti-gypsy sentiment at every level of society a year ago, including from young people in Budapest who thought of themselves as open-minded. In fairness, I also met Hungarians who marched in demonstrations against racism and intolerance. The current economic upheaval has not yet brought the far-right, much less the fascists, to power in Hungary. But it has made expressions of hatred more frequent and more casually permissible, an ominous development in a place where insecurity is rising.

Standing up for the gypsies

The largest illegal travellers' camp in Britain has found a divine ally in its survival battle. Jerome Taylor reports

Friday, 15 May 2009

To say that Marianne McCarthy is house-proud would be something of an understatement. The dainty gravel garden outside her two bedroom prefab is immaculately kept, boasting two freshly painted miniature cannons and a host of cheerful garden gnomes to greet her visitors. Step through her front door and the inside of the house is spotless. A gleaming white kitchen with clear plastic stools leads into a sparse but welcoming sitting room where a simple crucifix, two chandeliers and an embroidered "God Bless Home" sign are the room's only adornments.

It's a far cry from what outsiders might expect the 68-year-old widow's home to look like. "Most people think this area will be filthy, with rubbish and sewage and everything," she says. "They think we're dangerous and that you have to come with bullet-proof vests. We've had to put up with all sort of accusations."

Mrs McCarthy expects people to have a negative perception of her modest dwelling because the "estate" on which she lives, Dale Farm, where she has called home for the past seven years, is the largest illegal gypsy site in the country.

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Czech pig farm on Nazi Gypsy death camp

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, May 13 (UPI) -- A Czech Cabinet minister said he will try to collect money to pay for the removal of a pig farm from the site of a Nazi camp for Gypsies in World War II.

Michael Kocab, Czech minister for minorities and human rights, Wednesday said he will urge companies to help form a foundation to provide $35 million to relocate the large pig farm at the southern Bohemian town of Lety, Prague Radio said.

In the Lety concentration camp, established by the Nazis in 1942, hundreds of Czech Gypsies, including 241 children, were killed.

Addressing a commemoration at Lety, Kocab said he would like to transform the camp site to a memorial.

In the 1970s, communist authorities of the former Czechoslovakia built the large pig farm at Lety.

The European Parliament and Czech Gypsy rights groups have been unsuccessful for years in urging Prague to relocate the farm. Czech government officials argued they were short of money, the radio said.

Gypsy vigilantes operate in Czech Republic

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, May 4 (UPI) -- Gypsy vigilantes have been deployed in some regions of the Czech Republic in a bid to oppose rising extremism, Prague Radio said.

Gypsy activists, who call themselves Romanies, staged the first ever countrywide peaceful protests Sunday, sparked by an arson assault in mid-April on a Romany family that left a 2-year-old girl hospitalized with serious injuries, the radio said Monday.

Several thousand Gypsy protesters gathered Sunday in 14 Czech towns to demonstrate against discrimination of Gypsies.

In Chomutov, a town 50 miles northwest of Prague, police had to intervene when several dozen ultra-right extremists, shouting Nazi slogans, attacked one of the Romany marches.

Romany activists said they will not hesitate to fight back if their lives are threatened by neo-Nazis. Vigilante groups are now operating in some parts of the country, the radio said.

U.S. FBI helps Hungary on Gypsy killings

BUDAPEST, Hungary, May 4 (UPI) -- U.S. FBI agents are helping Hungarian police investigate a recent series of killings involving Gypsies.

The head of Hungary's police Jozsef Bencze said FBI agents analyze evidence they receive from Hungarian police officers and help produce psychological profiles of killers, the Hungarian news agency MTI said Monday.

About 100 Hungarian police officers work on some 18 cases which are linked with the killings of Gypsies in northeastern Hungary, Bencze said.

The Romany community has about 600,000 members and is the largest ethnic minority in Hungary.

Last week, Bencze said he suspects the killings could be blamed on the same group of extremists.

Two Gypsies were killed in the town of Nagycsecs in November. A Gypsy father and his 5-year-old son were killed in Tatarszentgyorgy in February and a 54-year-old Gypsy man was shot dead in Tiszalok April 22.

A recent public opinion survey found 82 percent of Hungarians hold negative feelings toward members of the Romany minority, MTI said. The survey was carried out among 2,500 adult Hungarians from March 23 to April 7, MTI said.

Gypsy families in Kosovo on toxic land

NORTH MITROVICA, Kosovo No one seems to care about the gypsies.

Displaced by conflict and stranded by bureaucratic inertia, dozens of gypsy families remain on toxic land 10 years after they were relocated there by the United Nations after the Kosovo war.

Lead blackens the children's teeth, blanks out memories and stunts growth. Other symptoms of lead poisoning include aggressive behavior, nervousness, dizziness, vomiting and high fever. The children swing between bursts of nervous hyperactivity and fainting spells. Some have epileptic fits.

The two resettlement camps — the Osterrode and Chesmin Lug — were established by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1999 for gypsies, or Roma, as they are more commonly known in Europe. A traditionally nomadic people, the Roma share a common heritage that sets them apart as an ethnic group, with their largest populations in Central and Eastern Europe.

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Murder Mystery: Who's Killing Hungary's Gypsies?

By John Nadler / Tiszalök
Friday, May. 01, 2009
Time.com

Jeno Koka's killers shot him in the chest moments after he had bid good night to his wife Eva and stepped from his house on his way to a shift at the nearby pharmaceutical factory where he worked.

The 54-year-old grandfather bled to death only a few paces from his doorstep.

Although Koka's wife said she never heard the shot that felled her husband, hundreds of thousands of others across Hungary did.

Koka's murder on April 22 was the fifth in recent months of a member of Hungary's 600,000-strong Roma community. Hungarian police believe that a small group of killers is targeting Roma, who are also known as gypsies and remain one of the most marginalized and neglected groups in Europe.

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ASYLUM IN CANADA IS NECESSARY UNTIL THE EU CAN GUARANTEE SAFETY

April 25, 2008

Roma Community Centre - Toronto

ASYLUM IN CANADA IS NECESSARY UNTIL THE EU CAN GUARANTEE SAFETY

The Roma Community Centre in Toronto wishes to bring to the attention of the current Canadian government and the Canadian people the surge in violence that is being perpetrated against the Roma minority in the eastern member states of the European Union. On March 21 in Kosice, Slovakia a group of young Roma boys were forced to kiss each other, slap each other, and then strip naked upon the orders of police who recorded this incident on video on their mobile phones, reminiscent of the events of Abu Ghraib. On April 22 in the town of Tiszalök, the fourteenth murder of a Roma citizen in Hungary was committed. Two weeks ago a Romany woman and her 2 year old daughter were burned severely in Vitkov, Czech Republic, where the daughter suffered second and third degree burns over 80% of her entire body and remains in intensive care. These are just the latest updates in a slew of pogroms that has plagued the region. It was also last week that our Canadian Minister of Immigration, Jason Kenney, claimed that the 993% increase in refugee claimants coming from the Czech Republic was due to unscrupulous commercial operations. We ask him to reconsider his statement prior to the Prime Minister's meeting with the Czech government on May 6, 2009.

Amnesty International has recently issued a statement calling on Prime Minister Topolanek of the Czech Republic to ensure that the authorities “duly enquire into all cases of racially motivated attacks, and to impose punishments on the perpetrators that would correspond to the seriousness of their guilt.” We agree with this statement and AI's call on Czech politicians to resolutely condemn all displays of hatred and intolerance, whoever their target. They must make it clear that such conduct is unacceptable and unlawful, something they have failed to do since 1989.

The Czech Minister for Human Rights and Minorities, Michael Kocab, called this most recent attack on Roma citizens an act of terrorism. It would be nice to think that there has been a change of heart in the leadership of the Czech nation. Strong words need to be backed by strong actions and unfortunately there has been no evidence of any effort to respect the rights of minorities since the fall of communism, twenty years ago. The Czechs have been receiving the benefits of being a member of the EU without having to do the prerequisite work for it: creating a civil society. They have gained visa free access to Canada as a result of the bargaining power of the EU, yet they have not attempted to remove a pig farm from the site of a former concentration camp for Romanies during the Second World War. They are waiting for funds from the EU to pay for the cost of compliance with the Helsinki Accords. This welfare mentality must stop. Czechs need to live up to EU standards. If the EU failed to hold them accountable in the screening its new members, they need to take a more active role in ensuring compliance from its new member states.

Until then Canada should continue to grant asylum to Roma from the eastern EU member states. The Czech Republic is shirking its duty to all of its citizens, not just its Romany citizens who have been present in the Czech lands for over 300 years. Numerous violent attacks go unreported. Doctors often refuse to file medical reports in cases where their testimony is critical in reporting racially motivated attacks, due to fear or reprisal from vigilantes against the medical community. The police are systemically reluctant to act on racially motivated crimes. Twenty years of these types of precedents have created an environment of tacit complicity with the extreme right wing terrorizers. Until the leadership vacuum in the Czech Republic is filled with people willing to address this, the Roma will continue to leave. It is not Canada's job to solve the problems that Czechs, Hungarians, and others in that region have failed to address. Canadians nevertheless should not turn away those individuals who come here seeking safety. We urge Prime Minister Harper in his negotiations to hold the Czechs accountable for their actions while being mindful of the lives he can save by allowing the Roma to continue to come to Canada.

Contact:
Bill Bila
1412 - 11 St. Joseph Street
Toronto, ON M4Y 3G4
(647) 408-4695
http://us.mc01g.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=wlbila@gmail.com

Fifth gypsy murder raises ethnic tensions in Hungary

Published Date: 30 April 2009
By Matthew Day

THOUSANDS of Hungarian gypsies attended the funeral yesterday of the latest victim in a series of murders that have stoked ethnic tensions and prompted fears that far-right extremists are waging a bloody secret war against the country's largest minority.

Jeno Koka, 54, was gunned down last week in the courtyard of his home as he set off to his work in a factory.

It came weeks after a gypsy man and his four-year-old son were shot dead after fleeing their home, which had been set on fire by assa

Mr Koka's shooting brings the total of murdered gypsies to five in less than a year, and police suspect the killings are related. Matching DNA samples were found at some of the scenes.

"These are professional killers," justice minister Tibor Draskovics said. "Neither the police nor I will rest till we have caught them."

The clinical execution of Mr Koka – a single shot to the heart – implies, police say, that the murderer had firearms training, so inquiries include the armed forces and even the police.

But so far the only leads are that the killer, or killers, may use a black car, and live in Budapest, as the murders have taken place near a motorway.

Gypsy rights groups have accused the authorities of complacency when it comes to protecting gypsies, or Roma as they are known.

The killings have raised tensions between the country's gypsies, who make up 6 per cent of the population, and the Hungarian majority.

Relations between the two groups deteriorated in February after the murder of one of the country's leading handball players, allegedly by a gang of Roma, outside a nightclub.

Far-right groups launched a wave of anti-Roma demonstrations, and rights groups believe attacks on gypsies have risen.

Czech Gypsies seek pope's assistance

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, April 28 (UPI) -- Czech Gypsies have called on the pope to help them improve the status of their people, who have suffered discrimination across Europe.

Roma Realia, a Czech Romany non-governmental organization, asked Pope Benedict XVI to assist in organizing a debate on the social position of Gypsies in the Czech Republic and in other European countries, Prague Radio said Tuesday.

The Romany activists, in a letter to Pope Benedict, warned of the alleged rising animosity between Czechs and Gypsies that they said might slip out of control.

The Gypsy activists condemned Czech authorities for lacking knowledge how to cope with the issue.

Last week, Vladimir Spidla, European Union's commissioner for employment, social affairs and equal opportunities, said the Romany's discrimination in Europe is unacceptable.

Addressing reporters in Prague Friday, Spidla singled out Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic as countries where Gypsies were maltreated or killed on racial motivation, the Serbian news agency Beta reported.

Hungary suspects Gypsy assaults organized

BUDAPEST, Hungary, April 27 (UPI) -- Hungary's national police chief said he suspects killings of Gypsies in northeastern Hungary could be blamed on the same ring of extremists.

Jozsef Bencze said he increased an original reward of $45,000 to $227,000 for information that could lead to the killers of members of the Romany (Gypsy) minority, the Hungarian news agency MTI said Monday.

Bencze said two Romanies were killed in the town of Nagycsecs in November, a father and his 5-year-old son were shot dead in Tatarszentgyorgy in February and a 53-year-old Gypsy was shot and killed in Tiszalok Wednesdayas he was about to leave for work in a chemical factory.

A 70-officer police team has worked on the three cases. Police questioned about 2,000 people, Bancze said.

Jewish groups should lead condemnation of attacks on Gypsies in Europe

April 27, 2009

The Times says this front-page report by Nicholas Kulish about murderous attacks on Gypsies, or Roma people, in Hungary is the paper's second-most-emailed story. As well it should be. Attacks on Gypsies recall the Holocaust, when as many as 600,000 Roma were exterminated by the Nazis.
As Isabel Fonseca and Norman Finkelsteinhave demonstrated, the Holocaust Memorial/Elie Wiesel had trouble making room for the Gypsy victims of the Holocaust. Per Finkelstein, one memorial official said the idea was "cockamamie." (In Night, Wiesel said Roma attacked his dying father in Auschwitz.) Daniel Goldhagen's book on the Holocaust all but completely leaves out the Roma.

I have a sense Jewish official attitudes are improving (Mitchell Bard's virtual library seems to honor the Roma experience). The Holocaust Memorial states:

The fate of Roma in some ways paralleled that of the Jews.

Now when the Roma are facing pogroms and terror in eastern Europe, Jewish groups should express solidarity with their fellow-victims, and be in the forefront of condemning the violence.

Posted by Philip Weiss at 03:32 PM

Gypsy children fed poisonous rice

Staff Report

LAHORE: Around 10 gypsy children went unconscious on Monday after some unidentified person provided them with poisonous rice in F-Block near Liaqat Chowk in the Sabzazar area.Rescue 1122 officials reached the scene and shifted the children to the Jinnah Hospital. The victims were identified as Tanveer Akram (5), Mani (4), Ali Hussain (7), Nirma (4), Moona (4), Ayesha (6), Sidra (7) and Shagufta (4).

As Economic Turmoil Mounts, So Do Attacks on Hungary’s Gypsies

NYT
By NICHOLAS KULISH
Published: April 26, 2009

TISZALOK, Hungary — Jeno Koka was a doting grandfather and dedicated worker on his way to his night-shift job at a chemical plant last week when he was shot dead at his doorstep. To his killer, he was just a Gypsy, and that seems to have been reason enough.

Prejudice against Roma — widely known as Gypsies and long among Europe’s most oppressed minority groups — has swelled into a wave of violence. Over the past year, at least seven Roma have been killed in Hungary, and Roma leaders have counted some 30 Molotov cocktail attacks against Roma homes, often accompanied by sprays of gunfire.

But the police have focused their attention on three fatal attacks since November that they say are linked. The authorities say the attacks may have been carried out by police officers or military personnel, based on the stealth and accuracy with which the victims were killed.

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Czech Gypsies to protest across country

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, April 24 (UPI) -- Activists of the Romany, or Gypsy, minority in the Czech Republic said they plan countrywide protests against rising extremism and discrimination.

Leaders of the minority, estimated at 300,000 members by Czech authorities, said the protests will be organized in some 15 towns and cities on Sunday, May 3, Prague Radio said Friday.

The protests are coming amidst increased political tensions sparked by the last week's neo-Nazi march in the northern Czech town of Usti nad Labem and the firebombing of a Romany family's home in the villlage of Vitkov, in the northeast region of Opava.

A 2-year-old girl was in critical condition with burns on 80 percent of her body after a petrol bomb was thrown into her parents' home. Her parents were also hospitalized with serious injuries.

The Romany activists have offered a reward for information on those responsible for the Vitkov attack, Prague Radio said.

Packed gypsy meeting in Risborough attended by 350 residents

Published Date: 24 April 2009

A MEETING to discuss the arrival of gypsies near Princes Risborough held last night was so well attended that around 150 could not get in.

The 200 people who did manage to cram into The Royal British Legion Hall on Thursday heard from police, councillors, planning officers and the secretary of the Gypsy Council regarding the arrival of the gypsies at Hemley Hill off of Shootacre Lane.

Residents were angry that the gypsies had not asked for planning permission before starting development on the site, which they have bought.

Wycombe District Council is now preventing development through a stop notice.

Alistair Nicholson, development control manager at WDC, said the council was currently gathering information on the site and was visiting on a regular basis to make sure further development was not taking place.

However, he said that the erection of fences around the site was permitted.

He added that in his experience these type of planning issues last for 'months rather than weeks'- he cited one example where because of appeals, it had taken two years to resolve.

Joseph Jones, secretary of the Gypsy Council and based in Bucks, said the extended gypsy family had no where else to go- but if the council could find them a more suitable site, then it might be possible for them to move there.

Neighbourhood inspector for Wycombe Rural district, Insp Ray Wilks, said: "At the end of the day we have a little addition to the community and they will be policed the same way as the rest of you.

"We will deal with any reported crime and make sure no one is harassed on either side."

He added that there was an 'awful lot of rumours going around' but that crime had not gone up since their arrival.

At the end of the evening, deputy leader of WDC, Cllr David Carroll, who chaired the meeting, praised the behaviour of those who attended:

"I thought it would be a very difficult meeting to be honest but you made it very easy for me so my thanks to you. We are all up front and being honest."

Gypsies 'won't be a bother to anyone'

Published Date: 22 April 2009

THE backlash to the arrival of gypsies on a site near Princes Risborough is 'nothing new,' the secretary of The Gypsy Council has said.

Joseph Jones, who runs the floating support service for the gypsy and traveller community in Bucks, and who has visited the family at Hemley Hill, said: "There's bound to be people who are concerned, it is fear of the unknown and it is the bad press which the gypsy-traveller community always gets."

He blamed local councils in Buckinghamshire for not doing enough to identify sites where gypsies and travellers could settle, adding that he expected any planning application to go to appeal, where 'two out three cases are successful'.

A local resident who spoke to The Bucks Herald, who asked not to be identified, said locals feared an increase in crime and anti-social behaviour, which Mr Jones denied would be the case.

"There is crime and there are criminals but there is no such thing as gypsy crime," he said. "Criminals come from any community."

Speaking at the site, gypsy Eileen Cash said she was positive about the welcome they had received from nearby residents.

"So far the people have been very nice from what we know of them but we don't know what they're saying behind our backs," she said.

She said the nine families who will live on nine pitches were all extended family.

They include a 22-year-old blind woman who needs a permament home in order to be able to get a guide dog, and an 'old lady who is very very ill' who also needs a permament base for medical reasons.

"We will keep ourselves to ourselves, no noise and we wont bother anybody," she said. "Residents would not bother us so we wont bother them.

She said that they want to tidy up the site, install a play area for children and exchange caravans on the site for mobile homes. "It will be nice and respectable, a very pemament site. I want to spend the rest of my life here," she said.

Councillor censured after row with gypsy

9:30am Thursday 23rd April 2009

By Phil Hill

A COUNCILLOR has been censured and ordered to undergo training following a run-in with a Romany gypsy over a planning issue.

The standards committee at Taunton Deane Council upheld a complaint against Conservative Cllr Denise Webber and ruled that she breached the Code of Conduct.

The committee heard that during a planning meeting Ms Webber said words to the effect: “I’ve heard some excuses for a gypsy applying for planning, but this is the worst.”

The complainant, Sally Tucker Woodbury, chairman of the Romany Gypsy Advisory Group, also alleged that Ms Webber was abusive to her during a phone conversation.

The standards committee said that Ms Webber, who was not at the hearing, failed to treat Mrs Tucker Woodbury with respect and her behaviour fell short of what people expect of councillors.

She was ordered to undertake training in equalities and diversity.

Speaking afterwards, Ms Webber said: “I don’t think I’ve shown any disrespect to any person, but I don’t know anything about the hearing so can’t comment until I find out exactly what I’ve been accused of.”

Conservative leader Cllr John Williams said: “I regret the standards board found it necessary to take this action - let’s hope we can move on from here.”

Mrs Tucker Woodbury welcomed the decision – she said: “Being a Romany gypsy, the feeling you always get is, ‘Why should I bother? Nobody will believe me as I’m only a gypsy’.

“But thankfully the truth stood and she was brought to justice.”

Gypsies suffer widespread racism in European Union

Ian Traynor in Brussels
The Guardian
Thursday 23 April 2009

Racism and discrimination across the EU is far more widespread than previously thought, with Europe's estimated 12 million Roma, or Gypsy, population, being a special target, an EU agency warns.

In what is claimed to be the most comprehensive survey of victimisation suffered by Europe's minority and immigrant communities, the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency said "racially motivated crime is an everyday experience".

While all minorities reported disturbing levels of harassment, the Roma, scattered mainly across central Europe and the Balkans, and black people, were particularly singled out for abuse, the survey said.

Based on detailed questioning of almost 30,000 people in all 27 EU states, the survey found that 55% of immigrant or minority populations believed racism was rife in their countries, with more than one in three having suffered racist conduct, 12% being victims of racist crime and 4% being physically assaulted or threatened.

One in four Roma respondents said they had been assaulted, threatened, or harassed four times on average in a 12-month period. "They emerge as the group most vulnerable to discrimination," said Morten Kjaerum, director of the Vienna-based agency.

Levels of racism and discrimination were not reflected in police or official statistics, the report said, because of the victims' lack of confidence in the authorities.

From beggar to Big Brother: Italy's Gypsy celebrity

John Hooper in Rome
The Guardian,
Wednesday 22 April 2009

A 22-year-old Gypsy who as a child begged on the streets of Italy has been voted winner of the latest Italian Big Brother reality show on Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset network.

Ferdi Berisa's victory, which had echoes of the movie Slumdog Millionaire and Susan Boyle's appearance on Britain's Got Talent, won him €300,000 (£265,000) and the prospect of fame as a celebrity.

But he told a press conference in Rome yesterday he would spend the money on a house and "then go back to my job as a sous-chef" while studying for a place at university. Berisa, from Montenegro, entered Italy 13 years ago as a clandestine migrant after a night-time dash across the Adriatic in a high-powered launch. He said his father made him beg and take part in staged fights with other boys.

Aged 11, the young Roma was put into care in the town of Fano near Rimini and spent two years with foster parents.

He said he thought he had won because of "my diplomacy and my always keeping out of stupid argument". Critics agreed. The website of the daily Corriere della Sera speculated that the eight million viewers had been won over by "the sense of normality that, despite his stormy past, the mild-mannered Ferdi was able to convey".

His victory came as other Gypsies were under unprecedented pressure from the authorities who, in several parts of Italy, have demolished their settlements. Politicians in Berlusconi's Freedom People party routinely talk of a "Roma emergency".

The Big Brother producers delivered Berisa video messages from his estranged mother and sister, both of whom live outside Italy. He said he was ready for a family reconciliation, but added that now, "We live in different worlds".

Hungarian Neo-Nazi lead war on gypsies

22 April, 2009, 09:30

In Hungary, fascist groups are targeting Roma gypsies, but the government seems to turn a blind eye on the problem of ethnic minorities, and offers no protection for them.

A cold and brutal crime has torn a young family apart. Robert and his five-year-old son were shot dead, and his two other children seriously injured when their home was attacked. A homemade bomb was thrown through the front door and immediately sent the entire house up in flames. The young family had just finished building their small but modern house.

Their only crime was being Roma gypsies.

Robert’s family lives next door, and are reminded daily of the terror of the tragedy, but what haunts them more is the way the criminal investigation is being carried out.

“They pretended not to see 18 bullet holes in the small boy’s body. How is it possible that an experienced police official could not see this? Then it was reported that the fire was electrical. But there are remnants of a bomb everywhere,” says Robert’s mother Erzsebet Csorba.

The European Roma rights centre strongly supports the family’s claims.

“The police were not acknowledging that a murder had taken place. I’m not aware that there has been any progress,” said Rob Kushen from the European Roma Rights Centre in the Hungarian capital of Budapest.

Fighting for their rights, activists also fear that the economic crisis will lead to an increase in hate crimes against Roma in poorer EU countries.

“So far they have done a good job in keeping the peace – which is a recipe for disaster,” Kushen believes.

Attacks on Roma haven’t only increased since the onset of the crisis, but a neo-Nazi trend is also growing in Hungary. The far-right Jobbik party, said to be affiliated with a banned fascist group called the Magyar Guarda, is growing in popularity. They often hold protests against Roma, insisting they are criminals.

Bela Kovacs, President of the Jobbik Party for a Better Hungary is unequivocal in his views:

“Gypsy crimes are growing every day, and it's getting so bad that people are afraid to go out at night,” he said.

But the party refused to comment on its connection with the extremist group which often attends their protests.

Robert’s family believes the Magyar Guarda brutally attacked their loved ones, and will never be punished, especially under the wing of a growing political party.

In the past year alone in Hungary, there have been 18 attacks on Roma homes, and six people have been killed. No one has been caught.

Should India Speak Up for the European Romani?

April 20, 2009
Vinod Joseph

I heard of the Romani for the first time over a dozen years ago when I was still in college. Term was about to get over and we were all preparing to go home. A friend of mine was packing his bags to leave for Prague where his father, a diplomat, was posted. While we would catch a train or bus to get to our destinations, this chap would fly to Prague. Naturally we were all very jealous and it came as a surprise when my friend told me that Prague is not the nicest places on earth, for an Indian that is.

‘Why is that?’ I asked him.

‘Because Indians tend to get mistaken for Gypsies.’

‘Gypsies?’

‘That’s right. There are Gypsies in Prague who look like us.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah! And the Czechs don’t like the Gypsies.’

Apparently my friend was advised carry a book and wear glasses to show that he was educated and not a gypsy.

I didn’t give that conversation further thought till I came to the UK. Gypsies or Travellers are news items in the UK and they routinely hit the front pages, usually for the wrong reasons.

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PRINCES AMONGST MEN: THE GYPSY FILM FESTIVAL!

FEATURE FILMS AND DOCUMENTARIES
ALONGSIDE A PHOTO EXHIBITION, LIVE MUSIC & DJS OVER TWO WEEK-ENDS!

www.myspace.com/princesamongstmen2007

April 24-25-26 @ The Ritzy, Brixton

May 1-2-3 @ The Picture House, Greenwich

This festival was conceived by Garth Cartwright after his book, Princes Amongst Men: Journeys With Gypsy Musicians (Serpents Tail) was published in 2005 and readers’ began enquiring as to how they could get to see the various feature films and documentaries he described. Since then lost classic feature films, brand new feature films and many documentaries have been screened. Directors, cinephiles and Roma rights activists have participated and the Ritzy’s upstairs bar has been transformed into a Gypsy-flavoured party across the weekend.

For 2009 the Festival continues with a rich offering of past classics and brilliant new material. The Ritzy also hosts FREE live music on Saturday and Sunday night in the upstairs bar and a PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBITION of an Albanian Roma community by Australian photojournalist Rob Hackman.

=======================================================
THE RITZY BRIXTON Friday 24th, Saturday 25th, Sunday 26th APRIL
=======================================================

FRIDAY 9pm: LATCHO DROM (film)
Directed by Tony Gatlif, this beautiful 1993 feature follows the musical migration of the Romany people from Rajasthan to Andalucia. Celebrated as a classic of world cinema, Latcho Drom is a haunting, visionary film.

+ post-screening Princes Amongst Men DJ event @ Ritzy upstairs Bar

SATURDAY afternoon 4.10pm: GYPSY MUSIC EXTRAVAGANZA (vintage live footage)
Vintage TV (Esma Redzepova, Gabby Lunca) live performances (Fanfare Ciocarlia), Guca festival footage and Bulgaria's Azis. Ranges from the ‘60s to ‘00s: a variety of short documentaries including 1960s footage of Esma Redzepova, 1970s Romanian TV footage of Bygone Age stars, contemporary footage from Serbia’s Guca festival, Bulgaria’s gay Gypsy pop-folk icon Azis and other footage; most never before screened in the UK before.

SATURDAY evening 6.45pm: PRETTY DYANA: A GYPSY RECYCLING SAGA & CYMBALOM LEGACY (documentaries)

Roma documentaries Pretty Dyana: A Gypsy Recycling Saga (Serbia) & Cymbalom Legacy (Holland-Hungary 45 mins) are acclaimed, brilliant award winning documentaries! Pretty Dyana finds director Boris Mitic investigating how Roma families that fled ethnic cleansing in Kosovo have built Mad Max-like vehicles from old Yugoslav Dyana cars and employ them to recycle Belgrade’s trash. It is both hilarious and life-affirming – a Balkan Slumdog! Cymbalom Legacy focuses on virtuoso Hungarian cymbalom player Miklos Lukacs. Beautifully shot and recorded by director Mano Camon, Cymbalom Legacy offers up both a history of the cymbalom and the life story of Lukacs, a young Roma musician dedicated to crossing boundaries.

+ post-screenings live music @ Ritzy upstairs Bar with French singer-guitarist FLORENCE JOELLE, accompanied by accordionist-keyboard LUCIE REJCHRTOVA, performing a blend of jazz, blues and Romany songs (Princes Amongst Men DJ support).

SUNDAY afternoon 4.30pm: ROMA HUMAN RIGHTS EVENT (documentaries)
A variety of short documentaries from Turkey, Kosovo, Serbia, Bulgaria and the UK celebrating ROMA HUMAN RIGHTS.

**** British Gypsy activist and film maker Jake Bowers will present several shorts he has directed on the UK Gypsy-Traveller community*****

SUNDAY evening 7.00pm: I EVEN MET HAPPY GYPSIES + CHILDREN OF THE BRASS BAND (film)

A very rare screening of the classic 1960s Yugoslav film I EVEN MET HAPPY GYPSIES. This brilliant, disturbing feature is rated as one of the great European films of the 1960s, helped launch Yugoslavia's "black cinema" movement and inspired Kusturica’s Gypsy epics. Supported by THE CHILDREN OF THE BRASS BAND VILLAGE, a witty and engaging 15-minute documentary that shows how ancient musical traditions continue to exist in southern Serbia.

+ post-film screenings live music @ Ritzy upstairs Bar with klezmer duo THE MATZOH BOYS (PAM DJ support).

RITZY PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBITION

A photographic exhibition of an Albanian Roma community by Australian photojournalist Rob Hackman will hang in the Ritzy's downstairs bar across April.

Hackman writes, “After emerging from 50 years of isolated communist rule the people of Albania were encouraged to invest their savings and houses in a huge pyramid scheme. An estimated $2 billion was lost when these government endorsed schemes collapsed in 1997. Today many in Albaniastruggle to rebuild their lives.

This collection of images depict the lives of a small group of Roma living in the wake of this huge financial crash.” All prints will be for sale with profit going back to this Roma community.

============================================================================
THE PICTURE HOUSE GREENWICH Friday 1st, Saturday 2nd, Sunday 3rd MAY
============================================================================
FRIDAY 6.45pm: LATCHO DROM (film)
Directed by Tony Gatlif, this beautiful 1993 feature follows the musical migration of the Romany people from Rajasthan to Andalucia. Celebrated as a classic of world cinema, Latcho Drom is a haunting, visionary film.

SATURDAY evening 6.45pm: PRETTY DYANA: A GYPSY RECYCLING SAGA & CYMBALOM LEGACY (documentaries)

Roma documentaries Pretty Dyana: A Gypsy Recycling Saga (Serbia) & Cymbalom Legacy (Holland-Hungary 45 mins) are acclaimed, brilliant award winning documentaries! Pretty Dyana finds director Boris Mitic investigating how Roma families that fled ethnic cleansing in Kosovo have built Mad Max-like vehicles from old Yugoslav Dyana cars and employ them to recycle Belgrade’s trash. It is both hilarious and life-affirming – a Balkan Slumdog! Cymbalom Legacy focuses on virtuoso Hungarian cymbalom player Miklos Lukacs. Beautifully shot and recorded by director Mano Camon, Cymbalom Legacy offers up both a history of the cymbalom and the life story of Lukacs, a young Roma musician dedicated to crossing boundaries.

SUNDAY afternoon 4pm: ROMA HUMAN RIGHTS EVENT (documentaries)
A variety of short documentaries from Turkey, Kosovo, Serbia, Bulgaria and the UK celebrating ROMA HUMAN RIGHTS.

==============================================================

THE RITZY, BRIXTON Box Office: 08707 550
Coldharbour Lane, London, SW2 1JG
Nearest tube: Brixton (Victoria Line), 3 minutes walk
www.picturehouses.co.uk/site/cinemas/ritzy/local.htm

GREENWICH PICTURE HOUSE Box Office: 08707 55 00 65
180 Greenwich High Road , Greenwich, London, SE10 8NN
British Rail is five minutes walk
www.picturehouses.co.uk/site/cinemas/Greenwich/local.html

Roma group addresses prejudice through cingeneyiz.org Web site

"I am a gypsy. One thousand years ago, Byzantines called my people 'athinganoi,' which means 'untouchable.' They were so afraid that they avoided touching us. ... Every country labeled us with expressions in their own languages:

Zigeuner, Cigani and Çingene. They thought we were different. Yes, we are different; we are poorer and freer than other people. But, we are also humans like anyone else," reads the welcome message of a Web site recently launched by a group of gypsies residing in different Turkish cities. The organizers of the Web site -- cingeneyiz.org -- said they set up the site to introduce themselves to the world and to overcome the strong prejudice people feel in their minds and hearts against gypsies. Gypsies in Turkey, or Roma as they are more commonly referred to, were back on the agenda around two weeks ago as they were celebrating the International Day of the Roma.

The celebrations were subdued in İstanbul, however, as they recently lost the battle to save their neighborhood, Sulukule, from a renovation project being carried out by the Fatih Municipality and the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality.

The İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality plans to construct 620 new houses, a hotel and a culture and entertainment center in Sulukule and is gradually demolishing the unregistered houses of Roma people in the area.

The Roma people now wish to make their voices heard through the newly launched Web site, which has a moving message: "We know that we are really different from others. We are free, strong, humanistic and creative. We have been the most peaceful people throughout history. There is no reason to make us feel ashamed. Yes, we are untouchable; evil, treachery and humiliation cannot touch us. ... I am proud of what I am. I am a Gypsy."

Editor of the Web site, Ali Mezarcı, stated that the main reason behind the launch of cingeneyiz.org is to help solve the problem of misunderstanding between gypsies and the people of the countries they reside in. "The most common source of problems we experience with other people is a lack of understanding. People are afraid of ‘the different' and ‘the incomprehensible' and prefer to keep away from them. Many tragic events have built walls between gypsies and other people. However, all people are equal and this reality disregards ethnic background. When we fully understand one another, we will see that we are same," he remarked.

Gypsies all around the world have been subjected to various forms of discrimination throughout history. They have been regarded as work-shy people or social parasites. A major study, carried out in 2004 by a rights group in Britain, revealed that gypsies are the group of people who receive the most hostility from white people in Britain. Hostility toward gypsies is called anti-gypsy racism and is very deep rooted, according to the study.

‘We aren’t a minority; we don't ask for rights'

The cingeneyiz.org team believes that specific and distinctive rights granted to groups of people will not help overcome the troubles they have faced so far.

"Minority rights given to ethnic groups or communities will not solve problems. We consider ourselves as equal citizens of this country rather than as a minority," the team stated, adding that they don't pursue the aim of voicing their demands for cultural or ethnic rights over the Web site.

The Web site shows that gypsies living in Turkey are proud of the names given to them in different countries and cultures as they believe that makes them a trans-racial and universal culture. "We are happy to be a component of different countries and to stand as a peaceful element of humanity. We will be happier if we manage to solve the problems we are facing today," remarked the team.

Sulukule tragedy: a major blow to Roma culture

One of the major topics heatedly debated on the Web site is the demolition of houses belonging to the Roma people in Sulukule as part of the renovation project in the area. Cingeneyiz.org provides up-to-date information to its visitors on the ongoing demolition works and informs them about the struggle against the destruction of a longstanding culture in the area.

The demolition of houses in Sulukule and the relocation of its inhabitants have drawn the indignation of residents and that of the international community as Sulukule is considered a significant historical site that needs to be protected.

A UNESCO progress report on İstanbul prepared last year by a four-member delegation from UNESCO's World Heritage Center pointed out that the planned urban renewal program in Sulukule would result in the destruction of the area and the relocation of its inhabitants. The report also warned İstanbul that if it failed to take the necessary precautions to protect its historical sites, it would be relegated to the UNESCO List of World Heritage in Danger.

Similarly, the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Commission), an independent government agency created by the US Congress, stated last year that it was disturbed by developments in an urban development project threatening the homes of some 3,500 ethnic Roma in İstanbul's Sulukule area and called on the Turkish government to find a solution to the problems facing the Roma.

Ombudsman in firestorm over ‘gypsy crime’ comments

Written by Attila Leitner
Thursday, 16 April 2009

Although civil rights ombudsman Máté Szabó clarified his comments on “gypsy crime”, human rights associations continued to demand his resignation last week.

President László Sólyom met with Szabó, reportedly telling him that his remarks had endangered the public’s trust in his office and warned that the protection of rights can only be effective if the four ombudsmen work together.

The president expressed his hope that Szabó will manage to get the trust of the people back by continuing his civil rights work, which has already revealed numerous irregularities. A statement from the ombudsman’s office said Szabó felt the meeting had been instructive.

In an interview with the news weekly Figyelő, Szabó said that Hungarian society needs to be warned about “gypsy crimes”. According to the ombudsman “gypsy crime” is a special type of “livelihood delinquency”, often carried out in groups. “This is a collectivist, nearly tribal society, which stands in sharp contrast with the Hungarian society’s individualist approach”, Szabó said, adding that the state has a crime prevention role and “if a criminal profile is seen, then society needs to be warned, and it has to be called what it is”.

“I am glad that the ombudsmen for data protection and minority rights would like to solve this problem, but without the majority commissioner, myself, this is not possible”, said Szabó adding again it is in the best interest of society to be warned if it is threatened by a specific group of criminals.

The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (TASZ) said that such comments coming from one of the most important persons in human rights protection were unacceptable and requested that the ombudsman put out a statement making it clear that his words were improper and offensive, instead of trying to blame the press.

In his statement the commissioner said an “unfortunate, but not malicious” headline was the cause of the outrage, adding that, just as before, he condemns racism in all its manifestations, whether in words or in actions.

A joint statement by a number of Roma and human rights organisations said that the interview and statement afterwards made it clear that the ombudsman cannot properly fulfil this high office.

The Eötvös Károly Institute noted that, besides the fact that the ombudsman’s comments were unacceptable, they make it clear that he believes the office is there to protect the majority against the minority, which shows that the ombudsman has no clear idea of what the protection of civil rights means.

In order to remove an ombudsman from office, the commissioner needs to resign or must be dismissed by a two-thirds parliamentary majority.

Gypsies relocated by UN remain on toxic land

Refugees from Kosovo conflict have developed severe health problems after decade on contaminated land.

By J. Malcolm Garcia - Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
Published: April 14, 2009 21:02 ET
Updated: April 14, 2009 22:21 ET-A

NORTH MITROVICA, Kosovo — Displaced by conflict and stranded by bureaucratic inertia, dozens of Roma families remain on toxic land 10 years after they were relocated there by the United Nations following the Kosovo war.

Osterrode Camp and Chesmin Lug Camp were established by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 1999 as a temporary measure, when the 9,000-member Roma or gypsy neighborhood on the southern shore of the Ibar River was burnt down by Albanians in the dying days of the Kosovo conflict. The Albanians had accused the Roma of collaborating with the Serb army, a charge the Roma dismiss as unfounded.

Whatever the truth behind the charges and denials, almost everyone agrees that moving Roma families near the now closed Trepca mining and smelting complex, onto land highly contaminated with lead, zinc, arsenic and other metals, has resulted in severe health problems in the community.

When the World Health Organization tested the Roma's blood for lead in 2004, the readings for 90 percent of the children were off the scale, higher than the medical equipment was capable of measuring. Such children fall into the category of "acute medical emergency" and require immediate hospitalization.

Instead they have remained in the camps, ingesting lead through the air, the dirt they play in and through their clothes dusted with lead tailings while drying on laundry lines. Even before their birth, lead enters their bodies from drinking water consumed by their mothers.

According to internationally accepted benchmarks drawn up by the United States Center for Disease Control, 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter causes the beginning of brain damage.

The measurements from the camps were much higher than in the surrounding population and at levels that exceeded any region WHO had previously studied. Twelve children had exceptionally high blood lead levels, greater than 45 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, more than four times the amount that causes brain damage.

"The Roma are victimized by lead," said Thomas Hammarberg, European commissioner for human rights. "It is sad the international community has not found a solution 10 years later. It is the single most major environmental disaster in Europe."

Zoran Savich, a pediatrician with the Health Center of Kosovo Mitrovica, saw more than 300 patients in Osterrode and Chesmin Lug between 2005 and 2008.

In that time, Savich said, 77 people died of lead poisoning, many of them children.

"I treated as many I could but they were living in the same conditions and absorbing lead,” Savich said. “When the treatments stopped, their levels went back up. It was useless."

Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations since June 1999, after the NATO bombing campaign on the troops of then-president Slobodan Milosevic, aimed at halting Belgrade's repression of the majority ethnic Albanian population seeking independence.

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MOB ATTACKS GYPSY CAMP IN SOUTHERN CHILE

Written by Cathal Sheerin
Monday, 13 April 2009

A mob of more than 100 people attacked a gypsy encampment near southern Chile's Puerto Montt (Region X) last Friday. The attackers reportedly sought to avenge the death of a local resident, whom they wrongly believed was killed by a gypsy.

The crowd of locals used fire and stones as weapons against what authorities called a peaceful gypsy community that had been there since November 2008.

The crowd had been acting in the belief that a gypsy was responsible for the recent hit-and run accident which killed a local man, Juan Alvarado, 29. Police maintain there is no gypsy connection to the accident.

Four cars were set on fire, and tents and other property were destroyed as the gypsies fled to safety. During the assault, the mob tried to stop the gypsies from escaping. The police tried to help the gypsies, but the crowd turned on them.

When a local fire-fighting unit arrived at the site to put out the flames, it, too, was attacked by locals throwing stones.

District Attorney Sergio Coronado emphasized there was no connection between the gypsies and the car-death case. “The line of investigation does not lead to the gypsies. They were ruled out at the very start. The investigation is leading in another direction, and the family of the victim is aware of this,” he said. Local officials said the gypsy community was a victim of “prejudices” on the part of the locals who attacked them.

Francisco Estevez, the director of the Region X Division of Social Organizations, said he hoped to meet with Regional Governor Sergio Galilea in the next few days to discuss the matter. Estevez said the anti-discrimination initiative currently under discussion in a Senate committee will offer victims of discrimination special recourse in law and will provide special sanctions for those convicted of discrimination crimes.

The gypsies did not formally complain to the police after the attack, but did abandon their site.

Gypsy camp spokesperson Juan Carlos Farias said his group will travel to Santiago to meet with the “King of the Gypsies” in order to discuss the matter and consider what legal action they might pursue.

Locals have asked that the gypsies never be allowed back into Puerto Montt. Octavio Alvarado, head of a local neighborhood association, asked for concrete measures to be taken against the gypsies returning. “This place has been converted into a dump, full of waste and rats. The owner of the land should come and take a look,” he said.

Francisco Nicolich, a gypsy who fled the site on Friday said, “Gypsies have never killed anyone. Every time that something happens, gypsies are blamed.”

SOURCES: LA TERCERA, EL LLANQUIHUE
By Cathal Sheerin

Invercargill bad for abuse, gypsies say

12:21PM Tuesday Apr 14, 2009

A group of about 60 gypsies say Invercargill is among the worst places in New Zealand for abuse after visiting the city over Easter weekend for the annual Gypsy Fair.

About 60 gypsies travel throughout the country in mobile homes with their families for eight months each year.

A group of them told the Southland Times they had things thrown at them and were verbally abused during their weekend in Invercargill, as had been the case in past years.

"This is the worst town in New Zealand. We dread coming here, it's that bad," fortune teller Helena Beissel said.

They said people had been driving past their camp next to Queens Park hurling abuse, throwing eggs and bottles at their mobile homes and tooting their car horns throughout each night of their stay.

They had also wandered into their camp and banged against their mobile homes in the early hours, and a bike had also been stolen, the gypsies said.

The abuse was an annual occurrence in the city, they said, with the only city that compared being Palmerston North.

Gypsy Fair field manager Gavin Mackenzie said he believed there were about "10 to 20 bloody idiots".

"If they are not throwing eggs it's beer bottles," he said.

He also made mention of past bad behaviour in Gore.

"If you go to Gore it's dead rabbits they throw at you."

Gypsy Fair merry-go-round owner Cam Taylor said Invercargill residents were marvellous and some abuse was to be expected when you were a gypsy.

"The reality is we aren't all drug-smoking idiots."

- NZPA

Serbia: Gypsies' Houses Torn Down in Belgrade

Sunday, April 12th, 2009 @ 00:00 UTC
by Sinisa Boljanovic

This July, Belgrade will be the host of the 25th World University Games. Participants will stay in the newly-built University Village. There used to be some 350 Gypsy houses near that place, the majority of which were built illegally 30 years ago. Following an order of the City Department of Inspections, about 50 houses were torn down on April 3. A few dozen children, women, old and sick Gypsies spent the night without shelter.

Gypsies protested and asked city council for other lodging in Belgrade. Instead, the authorities offered them to be moved in temporary containers to Boljevci, a small settlement about 20 kilometers from the center of Belgrade.

But residents of Boljevci protested as well. They didn’t want to give shelter to Gypsies: they threatened that they would set fire to them and their containers.

Because of this, many NGOs, which supported the Gypsies, talked about racism.

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Slovak police exposed over gypsy abuse

Published: April 8 2009 13:22 Last updated: April 8 2009 13:22

Wednesday may be International Roma Day, but Slovakia will not be celebrating any improvement in the status of its gypsies.

Instead, police inspectors will be poring over tapes depicting their colleagues humiliating Roma children in scenes reminiscent of Abu Ghraib.

Half a dozen videos apparently shot by police on March 21 at a local station in Kosice, eastern Slovakia show six Roma children being forced to strip naked, kiss each other on the cheek and then strike each other in the face.

In one shot, six young Roma boys standing in a tiny room begin pulling their clothes off. A voice from above shouts at them to be quick, that the last to disrobe will be punished. One thin boy hesitates to pull off his white underwear. “Take it all off!” a voice shouts. “Hands behind your heads!” The camera that is filming this humiliating scene closes in on the boys’ genitals and then pans out to capture one of them looking up at his tormentors.

In another scene, police in uniform are restraining dogs that are barking at the same six boys. One of them is hiding behind a desk. The sound of crying can be heard. “Shut up, stop crying!” shouts a voice. “Bunch of fucking gypsies.”

In still another, the boys are made to kiss each other on the cheek and then slap each other in the face. “Give him a good one! And now you, hit him back! Now kiss each other,” says the hidden cameraman. “Hit him and shut up. I’ll tell you when to stop. If he ducks, I’ll kick him.”

Uniformed police officers can be seen filming the action on their cameras and mobile phones. The police spectators laugh as the boys, uncertain, keep looking around for instructions. “What kind of a punch was that? Hit him as hard as he hit you!”

Contacted at home in Kosice, Ivan Kroscen, 13, said that he and his friends had stolen a purse at a Kosice shopping mall, and after being arrested had been taken by the police to a downtown precinct. Their parents were not called until after their interrogation, he said. They are all in their early to mid teens.

“They kept laughing at us, and told us not to be afraid of the dogs because they were young ones,” he said. “But one bit me on the leg and in the bum.”

At a press conference on April 7 after the videos surfaced, the country’s top policeman, Jan Packa, said that up to eight policemen would be fired as a result, and that they would be charged with abuse of power. “These individuals have seriously harmed the good name of the Slovak police corps,” he said.

This is not the first time the Slovak police have been accused of abusing members of the country’s second-largest ethnic minority. In 2001, a 51-year-old Roma man was beaten to death while handcuffed to a radiator at a police station in eastern Slovakia. Seven of his police attackers were found guilty of torture last year.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

Councillor faces action over 'anti-gypsy' remark

john.downing@cambridge-news.co.uk

A COUNCILLOR could face disciplinary action for saying travellers should be left to stew in raw sewage.

Cllr Deborah Roberts is alleged to have made an offensive remark to Dale Robinson, a South Cambridgeshire District Council officer.

They met when the council was about to use its default powers to clear raw sewage from an area near where children played at the Smithy Fen travellers' site.

Mr Robinson, who said he had previously had a "very good" working relationship with the "rather challenging" Cllr Roberts, was asked by her about the cost of the Smithy Fen work.

After she said money should not be spent on "them", Mr Robinson's note of the meeting says:

"She said: 'Let them stew in their own ****'."

Cllr Roberts later said her comment was: "Let them stew in it."

An investigation by the Standards Board for England has been referred to the local hearings panel - and it meets at the council's offices on Wednesday, April 15 to decide if Cllr Roberts breached its code of conduct.

A report from the council's ethical standards officer reveals that Cllr Roberts contacted the Standards Board to deny Mr Robinson's "outrageous" claims and complain that she was the victim of a "witch hunt".

After she met Greg Harlock, the council's chief executive, about the issue, he recalled that she was "very worked up" and "her emotions were all over the place". He said: "At no time did Cllr Roberts deny having said it. What she went into was to provide background information."

But when interviewed by an internal investigator on July 25 last year, Cllr Roberts said: "No I didn't (say that). I'm sure I did say: 'Let them stew in it'."

The council's ethical standards officer said Mr Robinson's account was written soon after the meeting on January 31 last year and he had "no difficulties" in hearing Cllr Roberts' words.

Cllr Roberts said the officer's report took a "selective approach" to evidence, but the officer said all relevant evidence was used in the investigation into whether Cllr Roberts breached the code of conduct, which states: "You must treat others with respect."

If found to have broken the code, Cllr Roberts would face disciplinary action, with the ultimate sanction of three months' suspension from the council.

Cllr Roberts, who was last night unavailable for comment, is no stranger to controversy. In 2007 she escaped punishment from the Standards Board despite saying that, if she had cancer, she would launch a suicide bomb attack on travellers in Cottenham.

She was thrown out of the council's cabinet and later apologised.

Serbia Gypsies moved to sleep in the open

BELGRADE, Serbia, April 7 (UPI) -- The eviction of a small Romany community from their shanties Tuesday triggered outcries against Gypsy discrimination by Serbian officials, observers said.

About 40 Romanies have been sleeping in the open for four nights between Belgrade's high-rise apartment blocs after officials pulled down their sheds, the Serbian news agency Beta said Tuesday.

Belgrade officials evicted the Romany families from 28 tin-and-cardboard shanties erected on state land close to a newly built housing blocks in the New Belgrade district.

The authorities tried to move the Romany families to prefabricated apartments on the outskirts of Belgrade but local residents blocked the area, keeping the Romanies from settling in. Many of the Romanies returned to the New Belgrade district.

More than 43 non-governmental organizations asked the Serbian and Belgrade officials to provide proper housing for the Gypsy families that were forced out from their shanties.

On the eve of April 8, the International Day of the Romany, a number of European organizations warned that strong opposition to foreigners is on the rise amid the current economic crisis in some countries. These organizations said they are concerned over discriminatory attitudes towards the Romanies, particularly over recent escalation of incidents motivated by hatred and racial rhetoric.

International Day of the Romany

The International Day of the Roma (April 8) is a day to celebrate Romani culture and raise awareness of the issues facing Romani people.

The day was officially declared in 1990 in Serock, Poland, the site of the fourth World Romani Congress of the International Romani Union (IRU), in honour of the first major international meeting of Romani representatives, 7-12 of April, 1971 in Chelsfieldnear London.

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Defining The Gypsy Issue Correctly

A German author recently published a study which lists all the wrong the Romanian society inflicts upon its Gypsy population.

It is not the first time a foreigner comes to Romania and finds it guilty for deeds his or her own country is found guilty of by the international community. The German author goes that far as to state that Romania is to blame for abiding by the policy of deportation of Gypsies to Germany's death camps, which was enforced upon it by the regime in Berlin.

It is high time, however, for a list of the wrong the Gypsies inflict upon the majority population in Romania. For, while we do have a Gypsy population and a Gypsy problem to solve, we also have, for instance, an Armenian population and no Armenian problem to solve.

The key phrase is, therefore, integration to the majority population lifestyle - or not.

The problems the Gypsies have in Romania does not result from an innate discriminatory attitude Romanians have, as the German author claims, but from the innate inability of Gypsies to integrate.

One cannot solve a problem unless it properly identifies it.
I recall being seated at a wedding party next to a Gypsy man dressed in a smart white suit. When he accidentally spilled coffee on his trousers, I exclaimed: "Oh, what a pity to have smeared your trousers!" But, he said "not at all, this is not dirt, it is coffee ..."

There, in a nutshell, stayed the collision of two different takes on what dirt is made of.

One can notice the same different take from the pitiful status social dwellings were brought to by their Gypsy inhabitants. What was the Romanian state giving them houses to do: clean their rooms and empty their night pots?

After 1990 a lot on nongovernmental organizations with shady sources of income took upon themselves to elevate the status of Gypsies in Romania, strictly monitoring the Romanians' behavior towards the Gypsies.

While the real issue is to monitor the behavior of Gypsies towards the majority population, who resist the cultural integration to the majority population, where ever that majority may be located in Europe.

Translated by Anca Păduraru

Civil groups demand resignation of ombudsman over remarks on "Gypsy crime"

Saturday, 04 April 2009

Civil groups on Friday demanded the resignation of Hungary's ombudsman Mate Szabo, in the wake of his remarks that some crimes can be associated with the Gypsies. The ombudsman has withdrawn his statements.

The Hungarian Helsinki Committee, the Roma Civil Rights Foundation and the European Roma Rights Center protested in a joint statement against the ombudsman's remarks, and said Szabo could not fulfill his post credibly in the future.

In a Thursday interview, Szabo said that he could see "the profile of Gypsy crime" as a form of criminal activities to make a living by members of "an almost tribal group as opposed to the highly individual nature of Hungarian society."

"When we see this profile, we must warn the people and we must also give it a name," Szabo added in the interview.

The ombudsman has violated the constitution and should withdraw his remarks, the Society for Civil Liberties (TASZ) said in a statement, adding that an official airing such views was not suitable for the position.

"Szabo stigmatises groups of people and does not have a clear view of the general ombudsman's function to protect fundamental rights," said another NGO, the Eotvos Institute, founded by former Ombudsman Laszlo Majtenyi, in a statement.

The ombudsman withdrew his statements, saying that "I have surely composed my words wrongly... and I apologise if I had offended anybody".

"I withdraw all my statements that can lead to conclusions that I'd ethnicise delinquency," Szabo said on commercial television ATV on Friday evening.

However, he also said he would only resign if organisations authorised by the constitution called him to do so.

Hungary's Roma minority is estimated at 800,000. They live mostly in dire poverty and are hit by unemployment. They are also threatened by a recent surge of attacks that claimed several lives during the past year.

Meanwhile, the paramilitary Hungarian Guard has staged demonstrative marches in villages with a significant Roma population to protest against an assumed increase in crimes which they attribute to the Roma minority.

Country’s first gypsy festival hits Lahore

Festival to display gypsies’ products, stage theatrical performances

By Ali Usman

LAHORE: The first gypsy festival of the country, in which gypsies from far-flung areas of the country will participate, will commence at the Children’s Library Complex on Friday.

The festival will contain stalls and handicrafts depicting the true culture of gypsies. Around 800 gypsies are expected to attend the festival that is organised by Grass-root Organisation for Human Development (GOHD).

Meeting: Civil society representatives, lawyers, and elders of gypsies will hold a conference to discuss various problems facing the gypsies. The role of government departments in bringing the gypsies to the mainstream population will also be discussed. Government officials from various departments will attend the meeting.

Festival: The festival will put on display the products associated with the traditions and culture of gypsies. Apart from advertising their products, gypsy performers will show their art at the festival.

GODH Project Director Ahmad Bin Tariq told Daily Times at least 300 children of gypsies would attend the festival. He said gypsies from Multan, interior Sindh, and other parts of the country would depict their indigenous cultural traditions.

Tariq said gypsies from the city’s slums had confirmed their participation in the festival. He said food stalls, puppetry performances, folk singing, and theatrical performances would amuse the audience at the festival. “Many characters of gypsies like Behrupia are dying. We aim to preserve these characters along with other traditions of gypsies,” Tariq said. He said it would also help in bridging the gap between the public and gypsies.

Channel 4 doc slate to lift veil on Gypsy weddings

Published: 02 April 2009 09:39 Author: Robin Parker

Firecracker Films is to lift the lid on extravagant Gypsy weddings in a Channel 4 documentary.
The indie is filming several Romany weddings, which typically cost £100,000 – five times the UK average – for the Cutting Edge film.

The weddings often feature lavish decorations, horse-drawn carriages, extravagant fireworks, and a teenage bride in a 20-stone wedding dress.

C4 commissioning editor for factual entertainment Alistair Pegg ordered the film. He said that it would reveal a "moral world of traditional values" among the Gypsy community.

Pegg has also commissioned The World's Oldest Mums (working title), a Cutting Edge doc from Blast! Films. It will meet two Indian women who made headlines last year by giving birth in their early 70s.

Director Amanda Blue, who previously made Prescott: The Class System and Me, will explore the taboo of women over 50 who have a baby. In the UK, 100 women over 50 have IVF each year, and 20 of them give birth.

"As a nation we still have a kneejerk opinion, rooted in disgust, on this issue, but the film will show how science is way ahead of us," said Pegg.

The commissioner has also greenlit a third series of Dragonfly Film and Television's The World's… and Me, in which Mark Dolan meets people with extreme claims to fame. The 4 x 60-minute series will include the world's richest teenager, the world's closest twins and the world's fattest family. Series one has already covered the hairiest man and fattest pet.

Culture Minister vows to help sea gypsies

PHUKET: The government has set up a national-level committee aimed at resolving land rights issues and other problems affecting Moken and other sea gypsy communities in the Andaman Coast region.

Minister of Culture Teera Slukpetch on Friday afternoon visited five sea gypsy villages: the Moken villages of Ban Lam Lah and Ban Hin Look Diaw in Mai Khao; the sea gypsy village on Koh Sireh in tambon Rassada; and the two sea gypsy villages in Rawai.

At all five villages land rights issues were among the problems raised, along with poverty and a loss of traditional culture and way of life.

In some cases, youths in the communities no longer know how to fish or speak the language of their ancestors, Mr Teera was told.

Despite some of the communities having been established over 100 years ago, most sea gypsies do not have title deeds to the land they inhabit.

In some cases the land is state property, but in other cases, most notably in Rawai, the land is claimed by private sector landholders with title deeds who want to evict them.

“The government has set up the national committee and appointed me as chairman. This committee will resolve the problems of sea gypsy and Moken communities in Phuket, Phang Nga, Krabi and Ranong,” Mr Teera promised.

The government would be flexible in finding ways to resolve land rights issues on a case-by-case basis.

Communities inhabiting state land will be allowed to remain there, he said.

In cases where other parties claimed the land and had title deeds to prove it, the committee would conduct a study to see if the title deed was issued before or after the community was established.

A provincial committee on sea gypsy issues will also be set up in each province with the provincial governor chairing the panel, he added.

The Culture Ministry will also build “culture centers” in each village to help preserve their way of life and educate future generations. Phuket is set to receive 10.2 million baht to set up five centers in fiscal 2010.

These centers will be promoted by the Tourism Authority of Thailand as a way of generating extra revenue for the communities.

Many other countries use local culture, including that of indigenous tribes, to promote tourism, he said.

The government is committed to establishing sustainable tourism that will benefit all sides, he added.

Sea gypsies is a general term used in English to refer to people commonly called chao ley (“sea people”) by Thais, though the government typically refers to them as khon thai mai (“new Thai people”) as part of its efforts to integrate them into mainstream Thai society.

Some sea gypsies in Phuket are part of the Moken (or Morgan) tribe of seafaring people, while others belong to the Ourak Lawoy tribe.

Roma (Gypsy) Lecture

Apr 1, 2009, 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM

Location: Taylor Auditorium - Marsh Hall

This lecture will highlight various types of art (painting & music) of the Roma (Gypsies) in Europe.

The first half of this Lecture/Demonstration, Lorely French will give a brief overview of the Roma (Gypsies) in Central Europe and a brief introduction to Ceija Stojka's life and artworks that are being exhibited in the Cawein Gallery. Mark Ferguson, along with Stephanie Sánchez & Paul Brady, will talk briefly about the history of Gypsies in Spain and the music, flamenco, for which the Calé (Spanish Gypsies) are renowned. The LecDem on will take place on Wednesday, April 1st from 7pm to 8:30pm in Taylor Auditorium in Marsh Hall.

Posted by Mark Ferguson (mferguson@pacificu.edu) on Mar 24, 2009 at 10:44 AM

TĂRNĂ-ROM UNION INVITES GOVERNMENT TO PARTICIPATE MORE ACTIVELY IN SOLVING GYPSY CHILDREN’S EDUCATION PROBLEM

Chisinau. The Tărnă-Rom Union asks the Government and the Ministry of Education and Youth to participate more actively in solving the education problem of the Gypsy children.

Tărnă-Rom Chairman Marin Ala said at a News conference in Infotag on Tuesday that about 7 thousand Gypsy children live in Moldova and only 2.8 thousand of them attend school.

“Unfortunately, many Gypsies do not go to school because of their poverty. A monthly income of a Gypsy family does not exceed 400 lei. That is why, Gypsy children have nothing to put on and to eat. Under such conditions they cannot go to school”, Ala said.

In his words, another problem is the discrimination of Gypsy children, in the first place, by teachers, who place them separately and on last desks.

Ala recognized that there is the Moldovan Government’s decree concerning the Gypsy education, but there are no instruments for its implementation.

Everything looks very nice on paper, but in the real life there are no mechanisms, which would help Gypsy children to attend school and not to be subject to discrimination. We hope that the Government will hear us, assess the situation and work out a strategy, which will change the life of young Gypsies in Moldova for the better”, he said.

Balkan Beat Box is on top of the world

By Siddhartha Mitter
Globe Correspondent / March 27, 2009

The band's name is Balkan Beat Box. Its core membership is three Israelis who found their voice in New York subcultures and whose sound encompasses Arabic rap, Moroccan gnawa, mariachi, and dub in an electronically infused cocktail. And when the band hits the Paradise Wednesday, it'll be fresh from Mexico City, where it has a huge outdoor gig this weekend in the central plaza, the Zocalo, sharing a bill with Asian Dub Foundation, the London Indo-punk massive.

Orthodox, these guys are not. Not in their Jewishness, squarely anchored at the secular, pluralistic end of the spectrum, and even less so in their musical sensibility. But don't confuse Balkan Beat Box with one of those goofy world-fusion jam bands that peddle low-impact exotica to undiscerning ears. It may be a party band - its live shows are famously raucous - but its members have the spirit of researchers and activists.

The band's recent journeys have taken it to places like Tel Aviv, Mexico City, and Belgrade, cofounder Ori Kaplan says, recording with local musicians for its third album, due out later this year. In Serbia, Kaplan says, band members shared techniques and compositions with some of the country's Roma, or Gypsy, village bands.

"We were writing music for them and teaching them our compositions," Kaplan says. "It wasn't just taking a Gypsy brass band and adding an electronic beat. We had a real musical exchange with Gypsy culture."

Kaplan, who plays saxophone and woodwinds, is speaking on the phone from Vienna, where he is temporarily based while his fiancée, who is Bosnian, is there on a work assignment. The Austrian capital is more vibrant than its stodgy reputation suggests, he says: "Every week you find a band that's like your dream band." And he's enjoying easy access to Eastern Europe.

These items are related. Although his band's music extends far beyond the Balkan reference in its name, the intense mixing of European, Jewish, Muslim, and Roma cultures that has taken place in the region for centuries is probably the band's core feedstock. And these days in Europe, that mixing is more vibrant than ever, Kaplan says.

"There's a real cultural exchange," he says, pointing to the short driving distances among central European capitals. "In New York, it's more distance and nostalgia; people are re-creating themselves. Here, they bring it with them."

That said, it was New York's "urban urgency," as Kaplan calls it, that gave birth to Balkan Beat Box and fostered its early audience around vigorous club performances and two albums, one eponymous in 2005, and the other, "Nu-Med" (as in the new Mediterranean), in 2007.

"They're a quintessential New York band," says Bill Bragin, director of public programming at Lincoln Center, who has watched the group emerge on the scene. "They're also a band of immigrants; each one is at a minimum bicultural."

Before forming Balkan Beat Box, Kaplan and drummer and electronics guru Tamir Muskat worked with pioneering neo-Gypsy performance ensemble Gogol Bordello in New York. The third core member, vocalist and all-around agitator Tomer Yosef, divides his time between New York and Tel Aviv.

"It was one of those eye-opening experiences being right in the middle of a golden era in New York," Kaplan says of the Gogol phase - referring to the rise of Eastern European sounds in hip circles, a trend partly fueled by the rise of a progressive Jewish aesthetic curious to hear these sounds in new settings.

"It's this somewhat new tendency in Jewish music that points to the idea of a Jewish identity, not in isolation, but in conversation with other traditions," Bragin says.

While New York is still their center of gravity, the band's members are now happily unmoored from its cultural compartments. Musically, they are introducing still more ingredients to the mix - particularly from Latin America, Kaplan says, with rhythms like Brazilian batucada on the upcoming record.

They're achieving more lyrical sophistication as well, Kaplan says, loosening the reliance on groove and putting more into the structure and emotional content of songs. "We dig deeper on this album," he says.

Most of all, they're hyper-conscious of the journey that animates not just their geographical movements but also their ideas.

"We don't want to be pigeonholed, and I feel like we have avoided that," Kaplan says. "We are lucky to have an audience that is loyal that way. We're kind of like a workshop, an art house."

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

NY Gypsy Festival 5th Anniversary Season Kick-off Party with Selim Sesler, "The Coltrane of the Clarinet"

Posted: 2009-03-25

Saturday, April 11 2009
10pm - 4am
New York Gypsy All-Stars with special guest Selim Sesler Romashka
Frank London

DJ Pepe and introducing DJs Wonderlust
Gypsy Dance by Kristina Melike
Visuals & Decor by Wonderlust
Palm reading by Mephuliaat

Le Poisson Rouge
158 Bleecker St, New York
$15 tickets at http://www.lepoissonrouge.com
18+ w/ID

Enter the wild, underground world of the Gypsies on April 11, 2009 when an all-star cast of performers, DJs, dancers and colorful characters gather to launch the 5th anniversary season of the NY Gypsy Festival. The 6-hour marathon will feature live bands and DJs in a circus-like atmosphere with dancers, palm readers and visuals at Le Poisson Rouge.Headlining the soiree is one of Turkey's top clarinet players, Selim Sesler, who played two packed shows at Joe’s Pub two years ago. Described as “The Coltrane of the Clarinet” by The Guardian, Sesler will join the mighty NY Gypsy All-Stars for a must-see clash of the clarinets, and high energy Balkan funk & jazz.

Also appearing are the 9-piece dance combo Romashka playing brassy Balkan beats & heart-twisting Russian tangos and heavyweight trumpeter Frank London, who brings his infectious energy and klezmer-brass sounds to the kick-off party. In their NY debut, Finnish duo Wonderlust are taking the Gypsy sound into club world by mixing music from both the west and east side of the Volga River. DJ Pepe rounds off the night with music from the Bosporus straight up the Danube River, right over the Hudson. West Village venue Le Poisson Rouge will morph into an Eastern gypsy town with visuals & decor by Wonderlust, palm reading by Mephulia and gypsy dances by the beautiful Kristina Melike - a feast not just for the ears but also for the eyes.

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Council's hunt for gypsy pitches

25 March 2009

LANDOWNERS are being asked if they have any room for gypsy caravans.

North Somerset Council must find 36 long stay and 10 short stay grounds by 2011 and wants people to contact them if they have a potential site.

There are 42 residential pitches in six locations across the district, but the council says it will only be able to eject travellers from illegal sites if it has the extra capacity.

The unitary authority's planning chief Elfan Ap Rees said: "We have to provide these sites over the next two years - we have no choice.

"We are inviting land owners to suggest sites but only those that meet our strict criteria are likely to be considered and even those will be subject to planning approval and public consultation.

"However if there is a sensible site available we would welcome an early planning application which meets our local plan policy.

"Frivolous planning applications for traveller sites are likely be disregarded as unsuitable."

No sites have yet been proposed, but the council will have to take into account any green belt, Mendip Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, conservation sites and proximity of services.

Travellers using the sites would have to pay rent.

Anyone with a potential site is asked to telephone the council's planning policy team on 01934 426177 or e-mail planning.policy@n-somerset.gov.uk

Gypsy Louise given traditional send off

Tuesday, March 24, 2009, 09:30

HUNDREDS of mourners gave a "true Romany gypsy" a spectacular send off at the weekend.

Trucks and cars laden with flowers followed the horse-drawn hearse taking much-loved Louie Smith to her funeral on Saturday.

Roads on the route to Lingfield were closed to allow the cortege of nearly 300 mourners to pass.

They included Mrs Smith's seven children and more than 100 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The former caravan-dweller, of Packer Close, East Grinstead, died on March 11 aged 82 after a long battle with cancer.

"She was the kindest, gentlest, most trustworthy, hardest working, loving mum I could ever, ever have," her son Charlie told the Courier and Observer.

Born in Guildford, the daughter of well-known bare-knuckle prize fighter Frank Smith, Mrs Smith's family moved to the East Grinstead area when she was two and lived in a caravan in Felbridge.

Eventually, they were able to buy a bungalow but although it was the home of the rest of the family, Mrs Smith continued to live in the caravan at the rear.

Charlie said: "She was a true Romany gypsy.

"She made pegs, primrose baskets, wooden flowers and wicker baskets which she sold door to door."

She also caught the train from East Grinstead to Croydon where she sold baskets of lucky heather in the busy shopping streets.
"She always had to earn her bread before she could eat it," her son said.

Mrs Smith's husband, Albert, was a horse and scrap metal dealer.
When she died, the family followed the traditional gypsy rituals, Charlie said.

The caravan was burnt when she moved to East Grinstead and when she died, all her belongings were destroyed.

Four black-plumed horses and the hearse hired from Harrods took Mrs Smith from the chapel of rest at Queen Victoria Hospital to her home before the procession to the church of St Peter and St Paul at Lingfield.

The service was conducted by the Rev Michael Carter and the funeral arrangements were made by Alex Jones of Lingfield.

Tamil Nadu’s gypsies demand right to vote

March 25th, 2009 - 3:34 pm ICT by IANS

Cuddalore (Tamil Nadu), March 25 (IANS) Over 100 tribals of Tamil Nadu’s Narikkorava (gypsy) community held a demonstration here Wednesday, demanding the right to vote, police said.

“This near illiterate gypsy tribe could not cast their votes so far due to their nomadic character, though they were issued ration cards 10 years ago. We are assuring them all help this time,” a police official said after persuading the tribals to give up their protest.

“We have a history going back thousands of years and are as much citizens of this nation as others. Yet, we have been marginalised, termed untouchables and (have) never voted. Now we want to assert our rights,” a spokesman of the group, Domba Raja, told IANS.

The state’s Chief Electoral Officer Naresh Gupta said the poll panel will look into the community’s grievances.

“We are particular that nobody should be denied the right to vote and will take immediate action if representations from this group reaches us directly or the district administration,” Gupta told IANS on phone from Chennai.

The tribe’s origins are traced to European Roma gypsies and to several others from Rajasthan, Gujarat and Orissa, according to accounts published by Edgar Thurston in 1909.

According to the police, most members of the tribe live in Tamil Nadu and parts of Kerala. They used to be trappers and hunters, but hunting has now been banned. One of their traditional handicarfts is the making of bead garlands.

Chaos warning over gypsy sites

chris.havergal@cambridge-news.co.uk

SNAIL-PACED bureaucracy could plunge gypsy and traveller policy in South Cambridgeshire into chaos, furious planners fear.

Hold-ups in producing a flagship strategy to identify new pitches in the district have sparked concerns travellers might have to be accommodated in the already overstretched affordable housing stock - and that sites with temporary permission will end up getting permanent consent.

Numerous sites in the area could be affected, particularly in Willingham, Cottenham, Histon and Impington.

Work on the strategy - known as the gypsy and traveller development plan document - got under way in 2006 but it is now not expected to be completed until 2011.

Consultants were employed to develop the project but were fired after less than two years because their work was not up to scratch.

It is now being produced in-house at South Cambridgeshire District Council, but members are angry about the delay.

At a meeting of the planning committee, councillors said traveller sites given temporary consent on the understanding the strategy would be ready when their permission came up for renewal might have to be given permanent approval.

And the meeting heard new developments in the Cambridge area such as Trumpington Meadows had no pitches allocated to them, when the strategy might have changed this.

It was suggested traveller families could be homed in affordable housing - but the council already has 4,000 families on its waiting list.

Cllr Sebastian Kindersley, the leader of the Liberal Democrat opposition, said waiting five years for the strategy was "simply unacceptable".

He said: "We are missing opportunities because of this. There has been no mention of it in all our growth areas where we were expecting allocations for the gypsy and traveller community."

Cllr Kindersley said developers would have to accept the need to accommodate traveller sites in their developments.

Cllr Pippa Corney said temporary permissions were already coming up for renewal in her Willingham ward.

She said: "We have got temporary consents coming up next year and the year after and I am concerned about what we are going to do with them."

Cllr Nick Wright, the council's planning chief, told members he did not think other authorities were faring any better in producing the strategy.

Cllr David Bard, its new communities boss, added: "There are reasons why this seems to take an inordinate length of time but I can assure you it is high on our agenda and we are pushing it forward as fast as we can."

Gypsy and traveller site plan in Winterbourne is refused

9:20am Monday 23rd March 2009

By Liza-Jane Gillespie

PLANNING bosses have refused an application for a gypsy and traveller site in Winterbourne.

An application had been made for the stationing of one mobile home and one touring caravan on land at Giddyend, off High Lane.

However, having deferred the decision from a meeting in January so as to allow a site visit, members of South Gloucestershire Council’s development control committee refused the application at a meeting last week.

Planning officer Helen O’Connor said: "It would be departure from normal green belt policy. This application is inappropriate development in the green belt and the onus is on the applicant to demonstrate the special circumstances that would outweigh the harm on the green belt."

The application is believed to have been made because of overcrowding at a neighbouring gypsy site owned by the same family.

The planning committee was also told that despite a shortage of gypsy and traveller sites in South Gloucestershire this site was not put forward as part of the recent Gypsy and Traveller Development Plan Document.

The planning committee refused the application because of highways concerns, which included increased traffic along Swan Lane, the unsuitable junction from High Lane onto Swan Lane and the detrimental effect it would have on safety of pedestrians and horse riders.

The committee also said the application was an inappropriate development and harmful to the green belt and that the applicant had failed to demonstrate special circumstances.

Racist Leaflets Inspire Hatred for Minority

A story sent to me from September 30, 2005

By Irina Titova
Staff Writer

Human rights experts are worried by rising racist trends after leaflets calling for violence against Roma were circulated in the city of Pskov, 280 kilometers south of St. Petersburg, in September.

“We are calling for Russia to be cleaned up! No To Gypsy Drug Barons! Save Your Children!” read the leaflets posted at the city’s bus stops, the St. Petersburg branch of non-governmental human rights group Memorial reported Wednesday.

The leaflets accused the Roma of drug trafficking and compared them to spiders.

“Pskov residents! The most terrible disease of our times — drug addiction — is spreading in our city. Taking advantage of the authorities’ negligence, gypsy families have organized the unrestricted and widespread sale of drugs in Pskov. Every day, more and more of our children get become captives of drugs,” one of the leaflets read.

The leaflets were signed by a movement calling itself Free Russia, which called for Pskov residents to provide lists of names and addresses of Roma living in the city.

The leaflets also stated that police statistics cite Roma as being Russia’s “most active drug traders.”

The leaflets have alarmed Pskov Roma, who are afraid to go out, fearing they could be attacked, said Olga Abramenko, coordinator of the Northwest Center For Social and Juridical Defense of Roma at St. Petersburg’s Memorial, on Wednesday.

“The leaflets were absolutely racist, nationalist and aggressive. And it is not true that according to police statistics Roma are the main drug traders [in Russia],” Abramenko said.

The distribution of leaflets took place not long after the kidnapping and murder of a Roma man, Vladimir Berezovsky, on Aug. 30, leading to fears that the two events are linked.

A few days after the murder, another local Roma man, Alexander Mikhailov, was beaten up after attackers questioned him about his ethnicity.

The Pskov city prosecution has opened criminal investigations into both the murder and the attack, but neither have been solved, Abramenko said.

Abramenko also said Memorial could not be sure if the nationalist group Free Russia exists in reality.

Boris Pustyntsev, co-head of St. Petersburg’s human rights Citizen Watch said that some Roma do to turn to crime as they are unable to find lawful employment due to discrimination. He stressed, however, that not only gypsies are dealing in drugs.

“When someone has no other way to make money, he often gets involved in crime. That’s not just the case with Roma — it also happens with Russians and people of other ethnicities,” Pustyntsev said.

Barnet councillor Brian Coleman condemned for 'stay away gypsies' comments on BBC show

7:20am Monday 23rd March 2009

By Kevin Bradford

A Barnet councillor attracted controversy yesterday after claiming gypsies should “stay put in Ireland”.

The often outspoken Greater London Authority member for Barnet and Camden, Brian Coleman, condemned the traveller community during a debate on the BBC’s Politics Show about the potential for increased gypsy sites across London boroughs.

It came as the Greater London Authority prepares to discuss the results of the London boroughs’ gypsy and traveller accommodation needs assessment 2008, which suggests 553 new permanent pitches are required across the capital in the next five years.

Proposals could see up to 13 sites built in the borough, and managed by Barnet Council, to match the increased demand.

But speaking on the Sunday morning show, Mr Coleman said he would not welcome “one single site” in the borough, and claimed they would not be accommodating communities that had been in the UK for decades, but instead a group of people “who offer to Tarmac your drive”.

He said: “Successive councils in Barnet, Labour-controlled and Conservative, have examined the borough thoroughly and found no suitable sites.

“I do not know any councillor of any mainstream political party who would support traveller sites in their ward.

“We’re not talking traditional gypsies here, we’re not talking about this romantic vision of gypsies in attractive caravans, we’re talking about the itinerant Irish traveller community who come over and want to resurface people's drives and repair their roofs.

“This is a commuter who comes over from Ireland looking for work that should frankly stay put in Ireland.”


Father Joe Browne, chairman of the Irish traveller movement, who was also on the panel, said there is a shortage of legal sites in London which impacts negatively on gypsy groups, and went on to condemn Mr Coleman’s comments.

“I’m shocked Brian would take that attitude,” he said.

“It’s simply unacceptable to say they should stay where they are.”

Andrew Slaughter, Labour MP for Ealing Action and Shepherds Bush, responded on the show by branding Mr Coleman “loudmouthed” and saying the comments were “inflammatory and quite disgraceful”.

He said: “[The comments] would be completely unacceptable when talking about any other ethnic minority.”

Potential gypsy sites cut from 26 to 12

Published Date: 16 March 2009

Anxious members of the public turned out for a meeting on Thursday (March 13) to hear the results of a consultation on gypsy and travellers sites.

The crowd, of around 25 people, listened as the planning committee agreed with Dacorum Borough Council staff to shave 12 areas from the list.

The decision, if agreed by Cabinet, will leave only the following as possible sites: Grovehill West, PolADVERTISEMENTehanger Lane, Featherbed Lane, Fields End Lane and Long Chaulden in Hemel Hempstead, Swing Gate Lane and Sandpit Green in Berkhamsted, Dunsley Farm and Icknield Way in Tring, The Ridings in Markyate, plus Green Lane and the airfield in Bovingdon.

The committee also suggested that avoiding land within the green belt should be made a priority.

Councillor Alan Anderson: "This is a very difficult subject and one that Dacorum has not traditionally had to deal with.

"There are a number of issues to consider but can we request that green belt land is avoided as much as possible?"

But planning senior manager Richard Blackburn told the committee that building on green belt land was viable where there was a need to do so.

He added: "The way people have responded to this consultation suggests they would like to see the sites far away from settled areas.

"By not using any green belt land the sites would be even closer to settled parts of the borough."

More than 1,800 people put their concerns into writing when possible spots for gypsy and traveller sites were announced last year as part of
a wider consultation on housing.

The plans, which would bump pitches in Dacorum up from 36 to 59 by 2031, aim to meet government targets for more homes and traveller sites.

Most letters opposing the proposals cited the loss of green belt land, as well as social issues such as integration.

Around 150 responses were excluded from the report because they were deemed racist under The Race Relations Act 1976.

The issue will be discussed by Cabinet on March 31.

Bowd land IS gypsy home target

16 March 2009

LAND at the Bowd on "The gateway to Sidmouth" HAS been targeted to home travellers and gypsies- and its owner has "expressed a positive interest" in the prospect.

The Government has ordered East Devon District Council (EDDC) to find an additional nine pitches by 2011 and the Herald reported last month how land off the A3052 is one of four sites in the region that was earmarked to fulfil the quota.

EDDC planners discussed the matter in private this week and a spokesman said:

"Land owners of identified sites were contacted to seek their views on the potential use of their land. One land owner, in respect of land at the Bowd in Sidmouth, expressed a positive interest in making his site available for future use by gypsies and/or travellers."

Development control committee members agreed on Tuesday that the council "should" now embark a full public consultation exercise on this specific site.

Members also agreed to:

- invite the public, land owners and any other interested parties to suggest potential sites, and:

- continue discussions with land-owners of potential sites; and:

- hold further discussions with the County Gypsy Liaison Officer and gypsies and - travellers themselves on gypsy and traveller needs and sites; the joint think tank meeting again to consider any additional sites that might be suitable.

Collection of Romany Gypsy wagons to be auctioned

One of the largest exhibitions of Romany Gypsy wagons in the country, held at Paultons Park in the New Forest, Hampshire, is being auctioned. The collection was put together by the museum's owners in the early 80s to preserve and remember the New Forest Romany culture. However, due to a steady decline of visitors to the exhibition, the items will go under the hammer at Paultons Park on Wednesday.

SEE PICTURES

Times change even at the Gypsy bride market

Europe Features
By Elena Lalova Mar 12, 2009, 2:07 GMT

Mogila, Bulgaria - When a Roma from a southern Bulgarian clan is looking for a bride, he goes to the traditional gathering which his folk stage in Stara Zagora each year in late winter or early spring - though as of recently some brides want to dance more than to marry.

Gypsy families from the clan have for centuries presented their daughters for marriage at the so-called bride market in Mogila, a village 220 kilometres south-east of Sofia, on the first Saturday after Easter fasting begins.

Some 2,000 from far and near - from Bulgaria's second-largest city Plovidiv, from Yambol and Sliven - made the pilgrimage again last Saturday to eye would-be-brides in seductive dresses and plastic flowers in their hair.

'I came with my daughter, my friends with their son. They are to meet and fall in love,' Kalina, arriving from Kapitan Andreevo on the Turkish border, says without any beating around the bush.

A pretty bride does not come cheap - a family of a good-looking young woman would not give her away for marriage without compensation running into the 'thousands of euros,' a woman getting off a train at the nearby station says knowingly.

The festival, on a field in Mogila next to the cattle-and-poultry market, starts with an explosion of Oriental music streaming from speakers mounted on a centrally-parked car.

A 17-year-old girl in a bright-green dress and a 21-year-old trader from Haskovo jump on the roof of their Lada and start dancing, celebrating and announcing that they married 10 days before. As on cue, others send their daughters to dance on cars.

Soon many 17- and 18-year old girls are showing off their belly- dancing skills as entire families, many with small children in tow, mill about.

But not all dancers - as two sisters from Plovdiv, dressed in dark green and maroon gowns and with heavy golden necklaces - are in Mogila to find a husband. One of them, 18-year-old Darinka, says she is 'still too young.'

'Times have changed,' Kalina laments. Around 50, with a face deeply furrowed by hard life, she wears a long braid and a colourful headscarf - the traditional signs of a married woman.

When she was introduced to her husband at the same place many years ago, she was neither asked nor offered a chance to give an opinion about her own maturity for marriage.

The Roma who gathered in Mogila belong to one of the largest Christian-Orthodox clans, traditionally working as pewter craftsmen throughout southern Bulgaria.

'Before, the girls in our clan were wed at 15. Our young would meet here, because they were not going out to cafes and clubs,' says Mariyka, 76.

'We want to keep the tradition, despite all this novelty,' she says, cursing and pointing to a flashy mobile phone hanging around the neck of a young man and rows of gleaming, expensive cars lining the field.

No identity crisis for Romany Gypsies

Posted on Monday, March 09 @ 07:37:03 CDT by editor

A ROMANY Gypsy association in Didim has launched a new drive to recruit members from within its 1,000-strong community and promote their culture to the wider public.

The Association, launched last September, has already recruited 60 members, but some within their community are against publicly declaring their cultural identity, because of perceived injustices from the wider public.

Association chairman Metin Çakır said he understood their reaction as many had encountered difficulties at work, school and on the streets for declaring their Romany Gypsy heritage.

As part of the association’s initiative to appeal to Romanys and the public, members held an event on February 28 with folk dance shows.

With an estimated 1,000 gypsies living in and around Didim, there are 221 gypsy associations in Turkey – with a staggering 167 in the Aegean Region. İzmir alone has 18 associations and two federations.

Mr Çakır said that they were trying to explain the importance of being organised to the gypsy community in Didim, but were still facing difficulties from within.

While most of the members are young, including non-gypsy members, some of the elders within the Romany community have railed against the association.

Mr Çakır said: “Unfortunately some of the gypsies are timid in declaring their identity. Yet, when attended the federation meeting in İzmir, they witnessed the interest of the authorities from the European Union.

“They are interested in the gypsies perpetuating their cultural identity in Turkey, in their educational and life standards. The EU offers grants to some of the gypsies studying at the university.

“We are now trying to have the high school students to benefit from these scholarships as well. If we can unite in Didim, we can then benefit from these rights.”

Pope urges Romans to "welcome" immigrants

Richard Owen in Rome

Pope Benedict condemned "discrimination" at a council meeting with the mayor of Rome.

Pope Benedict XVI today condemned "intolerance and discrimination" and urged residents of Rome to be more welcoming towards foreign immigrants during an historic visit to the Campidoglio, the Rome city hall on Capitol Hill.

Pope Benedict - only the third pontiff to attend a Rome city council meeting, after Paul VI and John Paul II - greeted a crowd of well-wishers, including a group of Roma gypsy children holding up a "No to Racism" banner, gathered on the Campidoglio piazza in front of the office of Gianni Alemanno, the mayor of Rome.

Since gaining office in elections nearly a year ago which marked a shift to the Right both nationally and locally Mr Alemanno, a former neo-Fascist youth leader, has cracked down on crime and illegal immigration, dismantling illegal gypsy camps in the grimmer Rome suburbs. A series of rapes in the capital has been blamed on immigrants - above all Romanians - and has led to a series of vigilante attacks on targets ranging from vagrants to Romanian-owned businesses.

The perceived crime wave by immigrants has also given rise to "neighbourhood watch" patrols by residents, some authorised by the local authorities but others mounted autonomously by right wing groups. Addressing a special session of the city council in the Julius Caesar council chamber the Pope - whose titles include Bishop of Rome - said Rome had always been "a welcoming city, especially over the past centuries".

Growing immigration however had made it a "multi-ethni