Activists Demand EU to End Discrimination against Roma

Published: 22 April 2013

Region: EU

Roma community activists transformed the square at the entrance to the European Parliament in Brussles into a Roma settlement to denounce the discrimination and human rights violations this community faces across Europe.

Amnesty International and Roma activists in the character of local inhabitants, police officers and municipal officials staged a dramatic portrayal of a forced eviction, which is common in several European countries including France, Italy and Romania.

They portrayed the daily reality for Romani people who have suffered unlawful eviction, racial segregation in housing and education, even racially motivated violence and murder for centuries.

“What you saw today is not just theatre. It is something that happens on a daily basis to the Roma across Europe. We suffer abuses; we are discriminated against in all areas of life, at school, at work, on the streets, on the buses. EU institutions should take a stance and hold to account states that violate the rights of Roma,” stays Claudia Greta, a Roma activist from Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Under the slogan ‘Time to do more: EU must end discrimination against Roma’, the Roma Amnesty International, the European Roma Policy Coalition and Roma activists from across Europe, organized this flash mob on International Roma Day, 8 April 2013.

Amnesty International has challenged the European Union to do more to end discrimination against Roma people. “The EU must use all the tools at its disposal to penalise governments that fail to tackle discrimination and violence against Roma people,” says Nicolas Beger, Director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office.

This human rights organisation has also published a report, Human rights here. Roma rights now. A wake-up call for the European Union. It urges the EU to take decisive action and play a central role in ending discrimination against Roma people in Europe.