Although Serbia presides the Decade of Roma Inclusion, even the kindest among the critics admit that this political process has not brought anything in particular, the aim of which is to promote the values of that population and their inclusion within the "first-order citizen". But the public is divided between those who believe that the Roma live on the margins of our society and those who believe that they share the same destiny with others in Serbia. In times of economic and financial crisis, the second opinion has prevailed up to the point when the human rights issues are being observed as "minority terror over majority."
Slovakia will be the next to preside the Decade of Roma, but it still does not guarantee the improvement of life conditions for 12 million of Roma all over Europe. According to the report recently published by European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), racism and discrimination have expanded more than it was expected all over EU, and Roma and African immigrants are endangered the most.
In this report it is also concluded that racial crimes and violations happen everyday in each part of the European Union, the number of which is at least few times larger than official police reports reveal, because the victims of that kind of discrimination do not trust authorities. Every second Roma has experienced some kind of discrimination mostly in recently accepted EU member counties during 2008, while four to ten Africans coming from countries southern of Sahara have complained on that as well.
This survey reveals that an extreme discrimination over minority groups have been demonstrated in Italy and Greece, while the valid and reliable statistics on discriminations can be found in 11 out of 27 EU member countries.
Of the total number respondents surveyed, 55 percent feel discrimination based on ethnic origin is widespread in their country and 37 percent say they have personally experienced discrimination in the past year. While 12 percent say they have personally experienced a racist crime in the past 12 months, the vast majority of these (80 percent) did not report the incident to the police.
"The survey reveals how large the `dark figure` of racist crime and discrimination really is in the EU. Official racism figures only show the tip of the iceberg," said FRA Director Morten Kjaerum.
He added that the majority among victims never report their experiences based on racial discrimination, which means that thousands of such cases remain invisible.
"This means that the perpetrators go unpunished, victims do not obtain justice, and policy makers are unable to take the appropriate action that prevents violations from recurring," said Kjaerum.
Part of the reason for not reporting incidents say respondents is the belief that nothing will be done to improve their situation, research says. Simultaneously, a vast majority of those citing discrimination also indicated they knew of no organisation that could offer them support or advice.
Romas are the most jeopardised ethnic group within the EU, exposed to the racially motivated violence and discrimination. A quarter of respondent Roma said that they were seriously beaten, disturbed or threatened in any way in the past few months, while another quarter of respondents said that they avoid visiting potentially dangerous places where they could be exposed to violent situations. One third has admitted that in the last 12 months police has stopped them at least once just because they are Romas, while 25 percent had difficulties on cross borders for the same reason.
According to the researches, the highest discrimination rate has been registered in Czech Republic, for 64 percent of respondents surveyed have admitted that in the past one year they have experienced the discrimination at least once. The discrimination rate in Hungary equals 62 percent, 59 percent in Poland, 55 in Greece, 41 in Slovakia, 26 in Bulgaria and 25 in Romania.
Police officers in Bulgaria have demonstrated the highest tolerance toward the Roma, for only 14 percent of respondents surveyed was controlled, while 54 percent of Roma population in Greece has experienced some kind of police suspicion. Even 84 percent of surveyed Roma in Greece has answered that there exists no law on discrimination based on ethnic origin, 11 percent is not sure and only three percent knew that the law actually exists.
Respondents admit that they`re exposed to the discrimination mainly when searching for job, on working places, when searching to buy a house or flat or simply to rent one, when talking to medical staff, to school employees, in social services, in bars or restaurants, when going for shopping, when they are applying for credits or bank account.
A high level of Sub-Saharan Africans (41 per cent) and North African respondents (36 per cent) also say they were the subject of discrimination. Respondents feel most vulnerable in Italy where 94 per cent of North Africans say discrimination against them to be widespread, while in France, 88 per cent of North Africans and 87 per cent of sub-Saharan Africans questioned said they had experienced discrimination.
Even before this research was published, the examples of discrimination of dark-skinned people were more often, which has eventually led to the diplomatic tension between Italy and Romania, because Italian authorities accused Romanian gastarbeiters for almost every robberies or murders committed in Italy, identifying them with the Roma. But although Romanian officials have underlined that the Roma are equal and free citizen of Europe, the truth is that they did not approve that kind of identification and confusion.
* Nenad Radicevic is a foreign affairs journalist with Politika daily. (Photo: European Communities, 2009) CEV Magazine is an online publication of the Centre for European Values.
