Target Countries

Canada has just reinstated visa restrictions on Czech citizens. These measures were also taken in 1997, however the situation of Roma in the Czech Republic has considerable deteriorated over the past 12 years. Sign our petition, and send a signal to the Council of Europe, the Canadian government, Canadian opposition parties, the EU presidency, and the Czech government.

An institutionalised crime against the Roma people is taking place in eastern Europe. A report from Human Rights Watch documents an ongoing scandal at Mitrovica, in northern Kosovo, which began 10 years ago in the wake of the looting and burning to the ground of the entire settlement known as the Roma Mahalla.

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.

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.

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.

On February 23rd a Roma man and his five-year-old son were shot dead on Monday in a brutal and premeditated murder in the village of Tatrszentgyrgy, about 40 kilometers south east of Budapest. Attackers threw petrol bombs at the home of a Roma family and the victims were gunned down as they tried to escape the ensuing blaze. The victim's wife and two other children were lucky to survive after being rescued by fire fighters. The mother was not badly hurt, but the children, aged three and six, were taken to hospital with serious injuries.

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.

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.