Roma Rights 1, 1999: Forced Migration

03 April 1999

The ERRC, as well as many others, have been reporting racial assaults often resulting in deaths and injuries; invasions into private homes by armed police; looting, burning and evictions, sometimes of whole Romani communities; and constant problems in acquiring or maintaining citizenship and residence. Very few people have expressed sympathy or solidarity with the Roma. Officials at home have announced that they are to blame for their own misfortune. Asylum authorities, backed by politicians in the democratic West, have declared them to be economic migrants. Panicked by several hundred Romani applicants, European countries have tightened their immigration laws to prevent what the British press once called the "Gypsy invasion".

Roma have been, for much of their history, forced migrants, many of them real; and all of them potential. Roma are a persecuted people with no mainstream media to cover their tortured journeys, no safe haven across any border, and no military alliances to interfere in their defence.

• The other refugees (Dimitrina Petrova) 

• Abkhazia * Austria * Bosnia and Herzegovina * Bulgaria * Croatia * Czech Republic * Finland * Germany * Greece * Hungary * Ireland * Italy * Kosovo * Macedonia * Portugal * Romania * Slovakia * Spain * United Kingdom  

• Roma from Central and Eastern Europe continue to seek asylum in the West 

• Roma and the Treaty of Amsterdam: safe European home? (Tanja Koch-Baerman) 

• Roma and propiska in Ukraine (Evgenija Navrotskaja) 

• Canada holds unusual hearing on Romani refugees from Hungary 

• Roma Community and Advocacy Centre protests (Ronald Lee) 

• Roma and forced migration: lessons of recent Canadian cases (Arthur C. Helton) 

• Disparate impact: removing Roma from the Czech Republic (Beata Struhárová) 

• Strasbourg application charges Slovak towns with racial discrimination against Roma (James A. Goldston)  

• ERRC letter to the Chief Prosecutor of Greece concerning the destruction of Romani dwellings 

• UN Committee reviews Italy's compliance with international human rights standards (Veronika Leila Szente) 

• Denial of basic rights: the marginalisation of Romani refugees in France (Alison Pickup) 

• We came from one kind of fear to another: Czech and Slovak Romani refugees speak 

• ERRC hosts family meeting in Ostrava, Czech Republic (Claude Cahn) 

• Love thy neighbour (Deborah Winterbourne)

• ERRC scholarship recipients

• Chronicle