Gypsy child crime wave grips Europe

By Mark Bannerman

Updated Mon Mar 29, 2010 9:13am AEDT

One of Romania's most powerful criminals has warned his country must do something to stop the wave of Gypsy child crime that is sweeping Europe or face a backlash against Romanians.

Simply known as Breliant, he freely boasts a pedigree rich in thieves. But this week on Four Corners he explains that unless gangs run by his countrymen stop using children to rob and steal, the Romanian Gypsies will be driven out of other EU countries. 

READ MORE: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/29/2858403.htm?section=justin 

Far-right gains could put Hungary reforms at risk

(Reuters) - The scenario is classic. Hungary's economy is in crisis, its large Roma minority is an easy scapegoat, and a far-right party blaming "Gypsy crooks" and "welfare spongers" is set to be the big winner.

READ MORE: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62S1CU20100329

Racial Preconceptions, Profiling Higher in EU

By NICK WILSON

WASHINGTON (CN) - As illegal immigration has increased in Europe, so have the "ineffective and counterproductive" racial profiling practices of European police, said experts at a Monday meeting of the Helsinki Commission. "Ethnic profiling is targeting people because of who they are instead of what they have done," Rachel Neild said.

     Neild from the Open Society Institute, which is funded by George Soros, called profiling humiliating, hurtful and ineffective, saying at a Helsinki Commission briefing on Capitol Hill that the practice is accusatory in nature and erodes trust in police.

     Muslims, blacks and gypsies are three to 14 times more likely to be stopped by police than a white person, depending on the region, Neild said. And in Moscow, the chances go up to 21 times as likely.

     These ratios are higher than in the United States or United Kingdom, where there are strong traditions of immigration. In the U.S. and UK, even the worst areas for racial profiling are substantially lower the European numbers, the witnesses said. In areas where racial profiling is most prevalent in the U.S. and UK, police stop minorities eight times more than whites.

     The increases come amid bursts in illegal immigration, which have ignited more serious tensions in countries like Spain and Italy that have historically been sources of emigration. These once homogenous societies are just feeling the effects of attracting immigrants.

     In just the last decade, roughly five million people have immigrated into Spain, which now holds 46 million.

     No one on the three-person panel promoted racial profiling, but proponents say the practice simply acknowledges the visible trends among certain groups of people.

     France, which drew global attention during racial riots in 2005, has set numeric targets for capturing illegal immigrants. Neil said the quotas encourage racial profiling.

Read More:  http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/03/22/25782.htm

Shake-up will lead to faster Gypsy evictions

Thursday, March 25, 2010, 07:40

A SHAKE-UP in planning rules will cut the time it takes to evict Gypsies and travellers from unauthorised developments.
Last autumn three Gypsy families were given six months to quit after Plymouth City Council planning committee turned down two retrospective applications to stay on plots on Ridge Road, Plympton.

The council admitted later that appeals against the decision could take up to 12 months.

John Denham, the Communities Secretary, yesterday welcomed new planning rules which will speed up the enforcement process so that quicker action can be taken against developments without planning permission such as unauthorised Gypsy and Traveller sites.

The new rules will take effect next month, slashing the time that must elapse before local authorities can take action against unauthorised camps, and other developments lacking planning permission.

From April 6, the time allowed to lodge an appeal will be reduced from six months to 28 days.

Read More: http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/news/Shake-lead-faster-Gypsy-evictions/article-1943236-detail/article.html

Boris wants to cut targets for London Gypsy sites by half

24 March 2010

By Mike Brooke

BORIS Johnson wants to cut by half the target for the number of Gypsy and Traveller sites London must provide.

The original target of 538 included in the Mayor’s draft London Plan highlighted doubts that the target could be met, following public consultations which ended in January.

So he is now suggesting 238 sites instead, a “more sustainable and deliverable target” which was published yesterday.

Read More: http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/content/towerhamlets/advertiser/news/story.aspx?brand=ELAOnline&category=news&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=newsela&itemid=WeED24%20Mar%202010%2019%3A45%3A43%3A980

11 Years Later: NATO Powers Prepare Final Solution In Kosovo

Friday, 19 March 2010 12:57

Written by Rick Rozoff

March 17 marked the sixth anniversary of a concerted assault against Serbs and other ethnic minorities in Kosovo that resulted in 800 Serbian homes and thirty five Orthodox churches and monasteries being destroyed, 4,000 Serbs and Roma (Gypsies) forced to flee their homes, 900 hundred people injured and 19 killed.

The attacks followed the accidental drowning of three ethnic Albanian youth which local separatist politicians and media attributed to the actions of Serbs and used to incite an orgy of intolerance, ethnic hostility and violence.

They marked the worst, and deadliest, violence in the Balkans since NATO's 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and the war in Macedonia two years later launched by an offshoot of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) operating out of NATO-occupied Kosovo. Clashes occurred between ethnic Albanians and Serbs and between both and NATO Kosovo Force (KFOR) troops. The dead and wounded included members of all three groups.

Read More: http://australia.to/2010/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1604:11-years-later-nato-powers-prepare-final-solution-in-kosovo&catid=95:rick-rozoff&Itemid=127

£2.5m for Pembrokeshire County Council’s learning and future employment project

9:10am Sunday 21st March 2010

Education minister Leighton Andrews has announced a new £4.6million initiative aimed at helping young people from gypsy traveller communities into employment.

Pembrokeshire County Council’s learning and future employment project will receive £2.5m from the Convergence European Social Fund (ESF) through the Welsh Assembly.

Read More: http://www.westerntelegraph.co.uk/news/5073282.Funding_helps_gypsy_travellers_into_work/

Do travelers visit Queen Cleo's grave?

Radio host to stake out cemetery to prove myth

By JESSICA CUFFMAN • The Marion Star • March 20, 2010

MARION - A local radio host will stake out a local cemetery to determine whether legends surrounding a part of Marion history are true.

Scott Spears, WMRN 1490 personality, has been interested in the story of the "Gypsy Queen" since hearing former WMRN host Madge Guthery talk about it at a Capture the Moment dinner a few years ago.

Now, on the 105th anniversary of the death of the queen, he plans to stake out St. Mary's Cemetery to see if the legends that gypsies still visit her grave are true.

The Gypsy Queen was a woman named Ann Judge, called Queen Cleo by her people, who she was traveling with through Marion in 1905 when she died in childbirth, Spears said.

Read More: http://www.marionstar.com/article/20100320/NEWS01/3200307

Cash to improve campsites

Scottish councils to share £2m to upgrade amenities for gypsy travellers

By Ross Davidson

Published: 22/03/2010

Millions of pounds have been given to Scottish councils to upgrade campsites for travellers.

Local authorities have shared £2million in the last two years to improve sites set aside for gypsy travellers.

Upgrades to come from the Scottish Government grants include the installation of CCTV cameras at pitches and insulation to help cut travellers’ energy bills.

Official figures released by Housing Minister Alex Neil show 12 local authorities have received funding from the government.

The policy of issuing grants to councils was introduced to make local authorities responsible for providing authorised campsites to draw travellers away from illegal sites.

Read more: http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1656501/?UserKey=#ixzz0iul47oNJ

Harassment claim by trio of councillors accused of bullying Read more: http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1656574?UserKey=#ixzz0iujmkT15

Council Officials reported over treatment of members

By Iain Ramage

Published: 22/03/2010

 

THREE Highland councillors accused of bullying senior staff, while trying to get the authority to deal with unlawful gypsy encampments, have lodged a counter-complaint.

The councillors allege they have been harassed by the senior officials involved.

Inverness area members John Holden, Bob Wynd and Glynis Sinclair are the subject of an internal inquiry and an investigation is being made by the Standards Commission for Scotland.

The Press and Journal has learned they have registered their own complaint with council chiefs about the way they have been treated by officials who complained about them.

Labour’s Mr Holden, Mr Wynd of the SNP and Ms Sinclair, a Liberal Democrat, allegedly bullied three senior council staff over the time taken to deal with two illegal encampments in Inverness.

The GMB union intends taking the council and the three councillors to an industrial tribunal on behalf of two of the staff involved.

Read more: http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1656574?UserKey=#ixzz0iuk0Q7te

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.
# # #

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.

(MORE)

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.

(MORE)

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.

(MORE)

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.