Campaigns

Elections to the European Parliament will be held in the 27 member states of the European Union between 4 and 7 June 2009. More than 700 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) will be elected by proportional representation to represent some 515,000,000 EU citizens, making these the biggest trans-national elections in history. This election is your chance to put the Roma at the top of the agenda in Parliament.

Italy is home to about 150,000 Roma, who live mainly in squalid conditions on the outskirts of major cities such as Rome, Milan and Naples. They amount to less than 0.3 per cent of the population, one of the lowest proportions in Europe. In general, the ethnic group lives apart and yet is often blamed for petty theft and burglaries. On July 3, 2008 it was announced that Italy had started fingerprinting their Roma populations, despite accusations of racism by human rights advocates and international organizations.

Within the Czech Republic a definite shift has occurred recently on the extreme right, where more political parties espousing blatantly racist views are receiving more support than ever before—and this on the eve of the EU presidency, an event which will expose the country to more international scrutiny than it has seen since the days of the "Velvet Revolution" in 1989.

Dale Farm is the home of some one thousand Travellers, recognized as an ethnic group under UK law. Roma (English Gypsies) began establishing homes in the UK in the l960s and were joined by Travellers in the 1990s, especially after the l994 Criminal Justice Act increased the powers of police under "S62" to “move on”. During this period, land was purchased at Dale Farm, formally a former scrap metal yard. Basildon Council has decided to take direct action to clear one thousand Travellers from the district. Many believe that their policy is a form of ethnic-cleansing.

For generations, millions of Roma and Sinti people - often referred to as gypsies - have been excluded from mainstream schools in Europe. But the European Court of Human Rights ruled last year that this was discrimination, against the continent's largest ethnic minority. Despite this, real change is slow to filter through. The Czechs abolished special schools in 2006 as criticism surrounding the court case grew. Critics say the only change was on the nameplate by the door.

The neighborhood of Sulukule is under threat of demolitions due to the ‘urgent’ urban transformation proposals developed by the Fatih and Greater Istanbul municipalities. The proposals go beyond the specific area of Sulukule affecting the whole historic peninsula of Istanbul due to processes of urban transformation and gentrification driven by private sector and governmental agencies, which is currently threatening Sulukule's centuries-old cultural heritage.

Campaigns on-going but not featured

Sterilisation compensation

Czechoslovakia carried out a policy of sterilisation of Roma women, starting in 1973. The dissidents of the Charter 77 denounced it in 1977-78 as a "genocide", but the practice continued through the Velvet Revolution of 1989. A 2005 report by the Czech government's independent ombudsman, Otakar Motejl, identified dozens of cases of coercive sterilisation between 1979 and 2001, and called for criminal investigations and possible prosecution against several health care workers and administrators.