Romani asylum seekers protest in Belgium

05 December 2000

On September 24, 2000, around one thousand Romani asylum seekers from several countries in Central and Eastern Europe held a protest march in Brussels, starting at the General Commissioner's Office for Refugees and Stateless Persons, and stopping briefly at the government-run national center for asylum seekers, Klein Kasteeltje. The march ended a few hours later on the ringroad with speeches by activists from the Romani Federacia and Opré Roma, local Romani rights non-governmental organisations. The date was carefully chosen: on September 24 Belgium held memorial services commemorating the deportation of Jews and Roma during the Second World War. Also, September 24 marked approximately one year since Belgium collectively expelled 74 Slovak Romani asylum seekers, many with still pending asylum claims, disregarding a request by the European Court of Human Rights to stay deportation for eight days to permit consideration of whether such a deportation would violate the European Convention of Human Rights (see "Snapshots from around Europe," Roma Rights 4/1999). The demonstrators protested against the ongoing so-called "voluntary" returns of Romani refugees to their countries of origin and demanded a "special status" for all Romani refugees at this moment present in Belgium.

(ERRC)