Roma granted asylum
10 April 2001
It has been widely reported that the French refugee office in Strasbourg notified two Hungarian Romani families on March 7, 2001, of the decision to grant them asylum in France. The families are from the village of Zámoly, in central Hungary, and include eight individuals. As of March 30, 2001, fifteen individuals from the group had been granted refugee status in France. The group fled Hungary in July 2000, claiming persecution by the Hungarian authorities, after being subjected to forced homelessness, physical attack, and repeated threats - including threats by public officials - for over a year previously.
Similarly, on November 7, 2000, an Immigration Appeal Tribunal in the United Kingdom found in favour of Mr Josef Hinar, a Romani citizen of the Czech Republic and granted him and his family asylum in Britain in accordance with the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Mr Hinar and his family fled to the UK following violent attacks and harassment in their hometown of Most, northern Bohemia, claiming asylum upon their arrival on July 13, 1999. Mr Hinar stated to asylum adjudicators that he had suffered a violent assault at the hands of skinheads at a disco in Most in December 1998, and that following his persistent efforts to gain both justice and protection, he became the victim of threats and harassment by known neo-Nazi sympathisers. In their decision, the Appeal Tribunal accepted that Mr Hinar had "suffered two violent attacks," and found, "It is clear that those who attacked him were not arrested or subjected to due process. They were not punished by sentences commensurate with the gravity of their crimes. It does not appear that the police would have had any difficulty finding or identifying them. [...] The appellant tried very hard to obtain the protection of the law. It is likely that he failed because he is a Roma." The Tribunal additionally ruled that: "Not all the police treated the appellant badly. However, any sympathy he might have received from some of them, was far outweighed by the indifference, hostility and racial antipathy of the majority [...] some of the police are skinheads and many are sympathetic to and likely to help the skinheads."
In recent years, the issue of Romani flight, primarily from Central and Eastern Europe, has driven Romani issueshigh up the political agenda of many countries. Although the facts in individual cases of Romani flight often suggest that the individuals at issue should be provided with asylum, Western European authorities are frequently loath to provide refugee status to Roma, fearing that cases may be factually similar to hundreds of thousands of similar claims (in some countries outside Europe, for example Canada, rates of recognition of Romani refugees are much higher than in Europe). As a result, cases which come to public attention are frequently refused, and in extreme cases, such as that of Finland, the arrival of several hundred Romani refugees has caused the government to amend laws pertaining to asylum. ERRC concerns with respect to Roma and refugee protection can be found at: www.errc.org. The recent French and UK decisions indicate that, despite strong political pressures, many Roma may still be able to show that they have a well-founded fear of persecution in their country-of-origin.
(ERRC, Magyar Hirlap, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Roma Press Center)
