REFUGEES NOT WELCOME HERE: EUROPE’S SHAMEFUL RESPONSE TO UKRAINIAN ROMA

Posted on April 28, 2023 by Norwich Radical in April 2023, Inter|national and tagged czechia, discrimination, ERRC, EU, Europe, featured, fortress europe, Hungary, invasion, migration, moldova, Poland, putin, refugee, Roma, Russia, Ukraine.

by Jonathan Lee

CW: War, torture, police violence, racist violence

The full-scale escalation of the war in Ukraine began on 24th February, 2022; a war which has now displaced more than a third of the Ukrainian population and forced some 8 million people to flee as refugees to neighbouring European states. The response from (most) European countries has been nothing short of remarkable. The majority of the continent’s states have responded to the largest displacement of people in Europe since the end of World War II by opening their borders, facilitating access to their social welfare systems, providing work permits, and mobilising tens of thousands of volunteers to aid those in need. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, described the obligation to protect refugees as “a moment of truth for Europe.” In her address to the European Parliament on March 1^st 2022, she said:

“This is a clash between the rule of law and the rule of the gun; between democracies and autocracies; between a rules-based order and a world of naked aggression. How we respond today to what Russia is doing will determine the future of the international system. The destiny of Ukraine is at stake, but our own fate also lies in the balance. We must show the power that lies in our democracies; we must show the power of people that choose their independent paths, freely and democratically. This is our show of force.”

If only this show of force, power of democracy, and freedom to choose one’s own path applied equally to all peoples fleeing war. Refugees from darker-skinned parts of the word can only dream of such noble rhetoric coming from a European leader. The policies of Fortress Europe to repel people from conflict regions in South West Asia and North Africa are well documented. These people have not been greeted with emergency directives to ease their access to European job markets. Rather, like beggars at the door, they have found the gates of Europe firmly shut to them. More often than not, those gates have invariably been reinforced with barbed wire, and kept shut by attack dogs, tear gas, and lethal force. While white Ukrainian refugees have broadly been welcomed with open arms, those from outside the continent remain left behind, beyond the borders of the EU.

NORTH MACEDONIA’S SERIOUS PROBLEM WITH POLICE BRUTALITY AGAINST ROMA

Posted on August 19, 2022 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Perspectives and tagged 1312, Andiras Redjepov, Bekim Demir, court, ERRC, featured, Jusinov Erdal, long read, macedonia, Nevzat Jasharov, police, politics, racism, Roma, sentence, Skopje, Stanislav Tomas, Sutkie Mustafova, torture, Trajan Bekirov, trial.

by Jonathan Lee

CW: violence, police brutality

On Saturday 3^rd July 2021, Romani man Nevzat Jasharov (pictured above) marched through the streets of Skopje, North Macedonia with his fellow Romani citizens against racialised police brutality. The protest was in response to the death of a Czech Romani man, Stanislav Tomas, who died after police intervention in the Czech town of Teplice. Video footage of the incident showed a police officer kneeling on the back of Stanislav’s neck; scenes disturbingly reminiscent of the police killing of Black American George Floyd in June 2020.

THE FAR-RIGHT THREAT IN 2022: A CROSSROADS FOR EUROPE’S ROMA

Posted on January 18, 2022 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Perspectives and tagged antigypsyism, Berlusconi, EU, Europe, extremism, far right, featured, Fidesz, Front National, GRT, Gyöngyöspata, Hungary, Italy, macron, Marine Le Pen, meloni, Orban, Poland, politics, Rassemblement National, righ wing, Roma, Romani, Salvini, sinisi.

by Jonathan Lee

Europe stands at a crucial juncture; as the pandemic enters its third year without an obvious end in sight, the far-right draws ever closer to the centres of power across the continent, and the very existence of the European Union as we know it faces renewed threats from both East and West of the bloc. The Covid-19 pandemic continues to threaten new emergency measures, lockdowns, and school closures in countries across Europe. The impact of these measures would be keenly felt by a vulnerable Romani population, already beleaguered by police violence, illegal quarantines, and distance learning which denies their children an education. The threat from the far-right, however – already steadily growing over the last decade within European politics – will have several opportunities to move even closer to the hallways of power this year, with potentially dire consequences for the continent’s largest and most marginalised ethnic minority group. In the midst of what could prove to be a tumultuous year for European politics, Europe’s 12 million strong population of Romani people stand to lose out more than most if the political pendulum swings the wrong way.

OUR LAND, OUR STREETS: NORWICH’S KILL THE BILL PROTEST

Posted on April 7, 2021 by Norwich Radical in Community, Inter|national and tagged civil disobedience, civil liberties, dissent, featured, GRT, gypsy, human rights, killthebill, norwich, occupy, police, police violence, right to protest, Robert Kett, Roma, traveller, trespass.

by Yali Banton-Heath

While Archant published clickbait headlines in the EDP and Norwich Evening News that chose to spotlight the pink chalk ‘vandalism’ of a war memorial, Saturday’s Kill the Bill protest in Norwich city centre was in fact a peaceful display of solidarity, and an empowering antidote to the violence that protesters elsewhere in the country have been subjected to. In Bristol, boards reading ‘People Over Property‘ now surround the former plinth of the Edward Colston statue, and act as a visual reminder of both the police and the media establishment’s skewed priorities when it comes to covering protests. Chalk gets washed away with a spell of wet weather. Authoritarian bills don’t.

BLIGHTED LIVES: ROMANI CHILDREN IN STATE CARE

Posted on March 5, 2021 by Norwich Radical in Perspectives and tagged antigypsyism, blighted lives, cenral europe, children, czech republic, dainius puras, ERRC, Europe, featured, Hungary, kidnapping, lumos, masha gessen, Nazi, racism, Roma, Romani, social services, state care, state terror.

by Bernard Rorke

CW: child mistreatment, state violence, abuse

Back in May 2018, both Vladimir Putin and former US Attorney General Jeff Sessions hit the headlines in the same week by threatening to take children away from their families. In the New Yorker, Masha Gessen called this a form of state terror: “Hostage-taking is an instrument of terror. Capturing family members, especially children, is a tried-and-true instrument of totalitarian terror.”

This form of ‘state terror’ is all too familiar to Europe’s Roma. While for centuries, racist folktales warned children not to wander into the woods lest they get ‘snatched by Gypsies’, the historical reality is quite the reverse. It is Romani children who have been kidnapped by the authorities and separated from their parents; kidnapped by authorities bent on forced assimilation, or in the case of the Nazis and their allies, gruesome experimentation and annihilation. In the democratic 21^st Century, where anti-Roma racism has been routinized, disproportionate numbers of Romani children are removed from their biological families and placed in institutional state care.

THE NORWICH RADICAL IN 2020

Posted on December 31, 2020 by Norwich Radical in Arts, Community, Inter|national, Perspectives, Student and tagged arts, asexuality, black lives matter, black rebellion, covid, defund, dictionary, Donald Trump, education, featured, future, glinner, highlights, hope, iraq, LGBTQIA+, mr ripley, mutual aid, Norwich Radical, noughts and crosses, Orban, pandemic, Poland, police, retrospective, review, Roma, transphobia, Yangon, year in review, yir, ZAD du Carnet.

by The Norwich Radical team

At year’s end, many of us feel the pull to try and put a positive spin on the preceding 12 month period – to celebrate its joys, while recognising its difficulties in order to put them behind us as we look to the new year with a hopeful eye. At the end of 2020, it is particularly difficult to find a positive angle from which to look back, or forward. The slow-motion explosion that is Brexit has rolled on, the UK government that came to power just over a year ago has taken every opportunity to demonstrate its incompetence and corruption, and the mainstream media has continued to side with the powerful over the marginalised. And then there’s the elephant in every room – the Covid-19 pandemic, which has pushed many of the institutions we rely on to breaking point, revealing just how little many governments care about the lives of their more vulnerable citizens.

ROMA ARE BEING EXCLUDED AS SCHOOLS IN TURKEY SWITCH TO DISTANCE LEARNING

Posted on December 16, 2020 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Perspectives and tagged children, coronavirus, covid, deep poverty network, distance learning, education, Europe, exclusion, featured, Hacer Foggo, pandemic, Recep Erdogan, Roma, roma education fund, Romani, school, teaching, turkey, Ziya Selçuk.

by Jonathan Lee

In a small apartment in the Sancaktepe-Emek neighbourhood of Istanbul, 12-year-old Miray sits at home, trying to get her 9-month-old brother to sleep. Her other younger brother, only 3-years-old, plays on the floor. It is just past midday on a Tuesday – a school day – but Miray is at home, looking after her siblings while her mother is at work; unable to attend classes because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and unable to join her classmates remotely because of her family’s precarious financial situation.

Miray and her family belong to Europe’s largest and most discriminated ethnic minority group – the Roma – who because of centuries of persecution and exclusion often exist on the margins of society, where they are subjected to racism and poverty.

RESISTANCE IN BUDAPEST: STUDENTS DEFY LATEST MOVE IN VIKTOR ORBÁN’S CULTURE WAR

Posted on September 13, 2020 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Perspectives and tagged agnes heller, antisemitism, Attila Vidnyánszky, central european university, eva s balogh, fascism, featured, freeSzFE, George Soros, György Karsai, hungarian, Hungary, index, jobbik, László Upor, mafia state, movemente, national curriculum, Nazi, occupation, Orban, populism, protest, Roma, Romani, rroma, student, szfe, theatre, university.

by Bernard Rorke

On the Wednesday evening of the 2nd of September, in a narrow street in Budapest’s eighth district, a large crowd gathered in solidarity with the students who have staged an occupation of Hungary’s University of Theatre and Film Arts (SZFE). The students had sealed the entrances to the building with red and white tape in protest against the latest power grab by the far-right government of Victor Orbán.

From the first-floor balconies, students stood silently in yellow face masks with clenched fists, while below, leading figures from Hungary’s cultural and literary scene recited apposite verses from the country’s rich reserve of defiant, liberty-loving poetry. The students closed the event with a folk song and the crowd joined in defiant chants of ‘Szabad Ország, Szabad Egyetem! (Free Country, Free University!)’.

CRIMINALISING TRESPASS, PART ONE: SEDENTARIST IDEOLOGIES AND THE OUTLAWING OF TRAVELLING LIVES

Posted on September 10, 2020 by Norwich Radical in Community, Inter|national and tagged Bristol, commons, criminalising trespass, featured, gypsy, new age travellers, nomads, Priti Patel, private property, privatisation, rambling, right to roam, Roma, travellers, trespass, van dwellers.

by Tesni Clare

Something strange is happening. Certain ways of life are slowly, quietly being enclosed, along with the land on which those lives depend.

Last year Priti Patel opened a consultation on ‘Strengthening police powers to tackle unauthorised encampments’ ; in short, the government hopes to criminalise the act of trespassing when setting up an unauthorised encampment in England and Wales. The consultation is now closed and responses are being reviewed. The decision came as no surprise, considering Patel’s draconian desire for control over minority ways of life, along with the Conservative Party’s 2019 manifesto commitment to ‘make intentional trespass a criminal offence’.

WILL IRAQ’S NEW PRIME MINISTER RECOGNISE ROMA RIGHTS?

Posted on June 1, 2020 by Norwich Radical in Perspectives and tagged Al-Monitor, ba'ath, Baghdad, displacement, featured, GRT, gypsy, idp, iraq, iraq inquiry, Iraq occupation, Iraq War, KRI, media, middle east, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Roma, Saddam, saddam hussein, shia.

by Sarah Edgcumbe

In early May 2020, Mustafa al-Kadhimi was appointed as Iraq’s new Prime Minister against the context of ongoing protests and popular discontent resulting from widespread government corruption. This corruption has contributed massively towards increasing poverty, reduction in public services and rising unemployment. Since the 2003 U.S. led invasion of Iraq, social cohesion has fractured perhaps (but hopefully not) irrevocably, with politics and society becoming increasingly sectarian.

The effects of the sectarian conflict in Iraq have been widely reported on, but the media has remained largely silent on the dire situation of the Iraqi Roma. This lack of attention by the media is reflective of the neglect of the Roma of Iraq by the government, humanitarian and human rights organizations and largely speaking, civic society in general. The complete lack of information produced by the Iraqi government on the Iraqi Roma is symptomatic of the de facto policies of ostracization and othering which have persisted since the formation of the Iraqi state in the 1920s. The number of Roma residents in Iraq, including the Kurdish Region of Iraq (KRI), is unknown, but best estimates place the figure at nearly 200,000 – translating to roughly 0.5% of the Iraqi population. Continue Reading

Roma

REFUGEES NOT WELCOME HERE: EUROPE’S SHAMEFUL RESPONSE TO UKRAINIAN ROMA

by Jonathan Lee

NORTH MACEDONIA’S SERIOUS PROBLEM WITH POLICE BRUTALITY AGAINST ROMA

by Jonathan Lee

THE FAR-RIGHT THREAT IN 2022: A CROSSROADS FOR EUROPE’S ROMA

by Jonathan Lee

OUR LAND, OUR STREETS: NORWICH’S KILL THE BILL PROTEST

THE NORWICH RADICAL IN 2020

by The Norwich Radical team

ROMA ARE BEING EXCLUDED AS SCHOOLS IN TURKEY SWITCH TO DISTANCE LEARNING

by Jonathan Lee

RESISTANCE IN BUDAPEST: STUDENTS DEFY LATEST MOVE IN VIKTOR ORBÁN’S CULTURE WAR

by Bernard Rorke

CRIMINALISING TRESPASS, PART ONE: SEDENTARIST IDEOLOGIES AND THE OUTLAWING OF TRAVELLING LIVES

WILL IRAQ’S NEW PRIME MINISTER RECOGNISE ROMA RIGHTS?

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