Serbian Court Punishes Discrimination against Roma

20 November 2007

On 19 April 2007, a Serbian court sentenced a security guard at a club in Belgrade to six months in prison, suspended for two years, for repeatedly denying a group of three Romani men entrance to the club solely on the basis of their ethnicity. The plaintiffs were represented by the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), Minority Rights Center (MRC) and the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC). The court's decision stated that the security guards violated the right to equal treatment for all citizens, the provisions of the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, and the Charter of Human and Minority Rights. In order to prove discrimination beyond reasonable doubt, the three organizations staged a situational test in which two groups, one Romani, and one non-Romani, attempted to gain access to the club. The results confirmed that the Romani group was turned away, whilst the non-Romani group was allowed inside, despite the fact that each group dressed and acted in similar fashions; the only tangible variable was ethnicity.

(ERRC)