Press Release January 2004
Roma Support Group
46, North Great Charles Street,
Dublin 1. Tel: 8780255.
28th January 2005
Romania ‘safe’ for Roma?
The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform has deemed Romania to be a ‘safe country’ despite the well-documented ongoing situation of racism and human rights abuses committed against the Roma population in Romania.
From Tuesday 25th of January Roma asylum-seekers coming from Romania will have their applications ‘fast-tracked’- this fast tracking will mean that their applications, to the Office of Refugee Applications, will be processed within three weeks with Appeals also being determined in a similar timeframe. This will lead to the majority of Roma being quickly sent back to Romania. On this week commemorating the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp and the murder of 500,000 Roma during the Holocaust, the Roma Support Group calls on the Government to rethink its classification of Romania as a ‘safe country’.
The European Human Rights Centre’s Report “ State of Impunity: Human Rights Abuse of Roma in Romania” states “Actions against Roma – by violent attack, denial of basic rights, or by the blatant or subtle forces of discrimination – as a rule go unpunished or inadequately punished in Romania. Major episodes of community violence against Roma- deadly pogroms featuring mass arson and mob killing- have resulted in travesties of justice, where legal action has been taken at all.”
Roma Support Group Co-ordinator George Dancea says, “The situation for Roma in Romania is desperate but that information does not always get through to the Government here. There is accommodation segregation. Roma children are routinely placed in schools for the ‘mentally disabled’. We are not allowed eat in the same restaurants as Romanians. There is violence against Roma. Roma people are beaten up. And in some situations Roma have been burnt out of their homes and killed.”
George’s statement along with other incidents of violence and pogroms are substantiated in the 2000 OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe) Report on the situation of Roma and Sinti in the OSCE Area. “On 23 September 1993, three Romani men were killed by a mob of ethnic Romanians and Hungarians in Hadareni, a village in Mures County. The immediate provocation was the stabbing to death of an ethnic Romanian by one of the three Romani men earlier that day. This Rom’s crime became the collective crime of the Roma and a pogrom ensued. After clubbing to death the two Romani brothers who had been involved in the fatal stabbing and burning a third Rom in his home, a group of villagers set fourteen Romani houses ablaze and damaged others. That night, 175 Roma, whose families had lived in Hadareni for some seventy years, were chased out of the village.”
For further information contact: George Dancea, The Roma Support Group 01 8780255