Italy should better respect the human rights of Roma and migrants

Strasbourg, 07/09/11  – “The situation of Roma and Sinti in Italy remains a matter of serious concern – a shift in focus is needed from coercive measures such as forcible evictions and expulsions to social inclusion, anti-discrimination and combating anti-Gypsyism” said the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Thomas Hammarberg, releasing today the report on his visit to Italy carried out on 26-27 May 2011 during which he discussed the situation of the Roma minority as well as of migrants from Northern Africa.

The Commissioner is concerned about racist and xenophobic political discourse against Roma and Sinti. Effective measures to counter this phenomenon are needed, including self-regulatory initiatives by political parties and a vigorous implementation of the criminal law provisions against racist offences. He further stresses the need to promote knowledge of Roma history and culture in order to combat anti-Gypsyism, for instance through the dissemination and use of the Council of Europe’s Fact Sheets on Roma History.

Recent evictions of Roma and Sinti, sometimes in violation of human rights standards, have had a negative impact on the enjoyment not only of the right to housing, but also other human rights, including children’s right to education. “The Italian authorities should act in accordance with international and Council of Europe standards in the field of housing and evictions, and bring the situation fully into line with the revised European Social Charter.”

Cases of anti-Roma violence, sometimes perpetrated by law enforcement officials, point to a continuing need for the Italian authorities to improve their response to racially-motivated violence in general. “It is necessary to improve the handling of racist offences and to combat racially-motivated misconduct by the police. In particular, the system for monitoring racist incidents and offences should be made more flexible and victim-friendly.”

The Commissioner reiterates his recommendation that the Italian authorities address the situation of the many stateless Roma who came to Italy from the former Yugoslavia decades ago and their descendants, whose number is currently estimated at around 15 000. He calls for a national strategy for the social inclusion of Roma and Sinti in Italy which would support the efforts of regional and local actors in this field, and suggests as an interim step the establishment of a task force at national level which would provide such support.

“Increasing arrivals from Northern Africa have also exposed a dire need for Italy and Europe to do more to ensure that the rights of migrants, including asylum seekers, are respected: first and foremost when it comes to their rescue at sea, but also their reception, integration and a number of legal procedures”, the Commissioner stated.

“It is crucial that in all cases where migrants are in distress at sea, their rescue and safety enjoy absolute priority over all other considerations, including any lack of clarity and agreement, notably between Italy and Malta, about responsibilities for rescue”, he stressed. The Commissioner also urges the Italian authorities to avoid any practices which may result in migrants being sent to places where they are at risk of ill treatment or onward refoulement.

Reception conditions and access to asylum should also be improved, notably by extending the capacity of the housing schemes administered by the publicly-funded network of local authorities and non-profit organisations, SPRAR. In all places where they are accommodated, asylum seekers should have adequate access to legal aid and psycho-social assistance. With reference to the repatriation of Tunisian nationals through “simplified procedures”, the Commissioner calls on the Italian authorities to ensure that the relevant human rights safeguards, including access to procedures to challenge removal, and the prohibition of collective expulsions, are fully respected.

Finally, the Commissioner recommends improving the integration in Italian society of refugees and beneficiaries of international protection. “Strengthening local authorities’ capacity to provide accommodation and services is fundamental. It is also necessary to simplify access by refugees to Italian nationality and speed up the procedure to obtain family reunification”.

The response of the Italian authorities is appended to the Commissioner’s report.

 Read the report

Press contact in the Commissioner’s Office:
Stefano Montanari, +33 (0)6 61 14 70 37; stefano.montanari@coe.int

Keep up to date with the Commissioner on Twitter

Link: http://www.coe.int/t/commissioner/news/2011/110907reporti...

grazie

Jeudi dernier, la préfecture de Seine-Saint-Denis a fait savoir officieusement qu’elle comptait expulser les familles Rroms installées sur un terrain jouxtant Epinay. La première inquiétude manifestée par les habitants à été celle du devenir des enfants qui devaient tous être scolarisés à la rentrée prochaine. Tant de rêves, de projets, balayés par une grue !!! Une fois de plus, la France ne donne pas l’exemple en matière de défense des droits fondamentaux du peuple le plus opprimé d’Europe.

Les arguments évoqués concernent la sécurité. Mais hier, ce terrain était occupé par des agents d’EDF, demain il sera une aire d’accueil pour les Gens du voyage. Des mesures de sécurisation, notamment des barrières, avaient été installées. Les Rroms seraient–ils donc hors normes ou de dangereux irresponsables ? C’est bien contre ce type de préjugés trop présents dans nos sociétés européennes qu’il faut lutter. Par ailleurs, nous insistons sur le fait que cette installation,  même si elle ne se situait pas dans un cadre « idéal », n’est que transitoire avant la phase finale de construction de logements alternatifs conçus par un architecte, sur trois terrains différents, dans l’année à venir. Notre association, comme d’autres citoyens, est particulièrement présente avec les Rroms qui se disent extrêmement “motivés” pour que toutes les règles de sécurité soient respectées et tout danger ou entraves à un fonctionnement de différentes structures soient écartés.

En attendant, les familles se sont donc installées avec le soutien de la mairie sur le terrain jouxtant  Epinay, mais appartenant en très majeure partie à la commune de Saint-Denis.   Elles ont commencé à aménager ce terrain, construisant des cabanes, plantant des fleurs avec des bénévoles d’une association locale. Mais aussitôt Monsieur le Maire d’Epinay a pris un arrêté pour que cessent les constructions et décidé d’envoyer la police municipale  pour intimider les familles. « Pourquoi sommes nous pourchassés, nous avons le même sang que les autres ?», traduisait une petite fille, apeurée.

Monsieur le Préfet de Seine Saint-Denis, qui avait déjà fait procéder à l’expulsion de familles Rroms situées sur le territoire des communes de Paris et Bobigny contre l’avis des municipalités concernées, se fait l’instrument d’une politique d’ Etat xénophobe, visant clairement à pérenniser la situation de précarité où se trouvent ces personnes,  y compris lorsque des solutions sont proposées par les communes. Mr le Préfet recevra lundi 29 août Monsieur le Maire de Saint-Denis et le Président de Plaine Commune.

Le MRAP qui croit fermement que ce type de projet peut contribuer à lutter contre les préjugés subis par les Rroms, pense qu’il serait tout à l’honneur du Département de porter un projet phare en Europe comme celui de Saint-Denis. L’argent pour la lutte contre la discrimination des Rroms existe et n’est pas utilisé, faute de projets crédibles…  Saint Denis propose un projet alternatif : il y a là un gâchis humain et financier inacceptable.

Le MRAP demande solennellement à Monsieur le Préfet d’engager le Département dans un  soutien aux projets d’accueil d’une population européenne privée
d’accès à l’emploi par des mesures discriminatoires et, en particulier, de mettre à disposition un deuxième terrain appartenant à l’Etat pour permettre la finalisation du projet alternatif de Saint-Denis.

Paris, 27 août 2011

The aim is to show support for the 86 beleaguered families, with 100 children between them, who have been living there peacefully for many years. Ranged against them are Tony Ball, Conservative leader of Basildon Council in Essex, communities minister Eric Pickles, the Essex police and notorious bailiffs Constant & Co. In a joint council and police eviction, the Home Office will be paying half the £9.5m bill.

On the other side of the divide are the nearly 400 Gypsies who have the support of the Gypsy Council, human rights campaigners including Liberal peer Lord Avebury, Amnesty International, as well as many other groups and organisations.

The entire area is due to be sealed off while the police-backed bailiffs do their worst. Oak Road, which runs through the Dale Farm site is to be sealed off at both ends except for access to travellers’ homes. Further closures and no-stopping zones are being introduced. Speed restrictions are planned for the adjacent A127 for up to 18 months while the eviction operation takes place.

There are clear signs that Constant & Co, backed by the Essex constabulary and cheered on by local racists and British National Party members, will have their gloves off during the operation. As Gypsy rights activist Grattan Puxon has warned in the Travellers’ Times:

A dirty, neo-fascist wave, a tsunami of social exclusion is to break over the peaceful Dale Farm community, smashing up lives and drowning the hopes of another generation of Traveller children, presently attending local schools… the ugliest yet act of ethnic-cleansing by a British local authority against an outpost of Europe’s nascent Roma nation.

At a time of huge cuts, when Essex county council is axing 450 jobs and 12 youth centres, why has this council chosen to spend an astronomical £18 million to evict the Gypsy families who have lived peacefully on their site for many years?

It’s clear that Conservatives in Essex feel challenged by rising support for the British National Party shown in recent elections. In Basildon alone 4,000 voters backed the BNP in the last election. You only need to read the comments on the local paper’s website to get a feel for the racist hatred for travelling people. There are those who think that the council’s draconian measures are not extreme enough: “Half a dozen large army bulldozers and a platoon of SAS and it will all be over in half hour”, says one reader.

Last-ditch efforts are being made to avoid the rapidly looming confrontation. Jerzerca Tigani from Amnesty International has pleaded that “the authorities must ensure that their actions do not break international law. They should instead talk to the residents at Dale Farm and reach a negotiated solution.”

Some are taking heart from a victory by a Gypsy who has just won a planning appeal by Basildon . The government inspector reminded the council that it had a duty to provide 62 new pitches for homeless Travellers by the end of this year. But council leader Ball has already shrugged off the inspector’s recommendations in anticipation of the Coalition’s Localism Bill coming into force.

There can be no doubt that the confrontation at Dale Farm, which has been years in the making, is more than an nasty squabble between a Conservative local council and travelling people. It has the makings of a major, military-style operation backed by local and national state forces against a vulnerable group of people who seek only to live in their traditional way.

We have been here before! Mainstream political leaders of all parties seeking to outflank their rivals on the right in ethnic cleansing will stop at nothing. By doing so, they will open the door to even more sinister forces.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
26 August 2011

Link: http://www.aworldtowin.net/blog/essex-council-set-for-eth...

GRAZIE

23 August 2011

Source: alertnet.

Megan Rowling

A Roma girl looks out of her home window as members and supporters of the Hungarian radical right-wing party Jobbik march to demonstrate against what they call “gypsy crime” in Hejoszalonta, 170 km (106 miles) east of Budapest, April 2, 2011. REUTERS. Laszlo Balogh

This story is part of an AlertNet special  report on statelessness

By Megan Rowling

LONDON (AlertNet) – European governments should grant citizenship to stateless Roma who have resided in their countries for several years or more, beginning with children who were born there, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights said in an interview.

Thomas Hammarberg said Roma who have no nationality, or lack papers to prove it, are even more vulnerable to the social and economic exclusion that affects the wider Roma community, Europe’s largest minority group.

“All Roma in Europe are discriminated against, and the average (Roma) is much behind the average population when it comes to a lot of social indicators – education, employment and housing,” the commissioner told AlertNet. Their life expectancy is 10 years lower than other European Union citizens, he added.

“If they are either not registered at all with the authorities or are stateless, they are disabled further,” said Hammarberg, who is mandated by the Council of Europeto advocate for human rights in its 47 states. The council promotes rights and democracy within Europe.

Without personal identity documents, stateless Roma may be refused hospital treatment, and in some countries, their children cannot gain entry to schools, Hammarberg said.

The break-up of the former Czechoslovakia in 1993 and the former Yugoslavia in 1995 left some Roma without nationality because the successor states regarded them as belonging elsewhere, and introduced legislation that denied them citizenship.

In other cases, Roma did not register in the newly created countries because they missed deadlines or had fled to other parts of the region.

The Kosovo conflict at the end of the 1990s also drove many to leave without official proof of their nationality, making them de facto stateless.

There are no reliable data on the number of stateless Roma, but Hammarberg estimates they could make up at least 70,000-80,000 of a total Roma population of 11.3 million in Europe. Many live in Italy and southeastern Europe, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia and Macedonia.

Roma, a widely dispersed group originally from India, are often denied basic human rights and are made victims of flagrant racism.
CHILDREN’S RIGHTS DENIED

Often when stateless Roma who have migrated to another country have children, they are not registered at birth despite being entitled to citizenship under international rights agreements.

“I think there are real hidden statistics there,” Hammarberg said.

The commissioner said stateless Roma who have settled in a host country for seven to eight years or more should be granted citizenship there, starting with their children.

“I think the new country should recognise them and take responsibility – they have no chance to go back without real problems,” he said.

Many of those who fled upheaval in the former Yugoslavia and Kosovo have been living in their adopted nations for at least 10 years.

For Roma without proof of identity in their states of origin like Kosovo, where some have tried and failed to obtain copies of lost documents from municipalities, the system should be simplified, Hammarberg said.

It should allow them to declare who they are and their situation, corroborated by two or three witnesses, and then to receive official papers, he proposed.

Few states have taken concrete steps to address the issue. In 1999, the Czech Republic amended a citizenship law that had made tens of thousands of Roma stateless, helping alleviate the problem there.

The commissioner also cautioned politicians against whipping up public enmity towards the Roma – sometimes called gypsies – ahead of elections, as in Italy this May, and making them scapegoats in anti-immigration policies, as in France.

In July 2010, French President Nicolas Sarkozy ordered the dismantling of 300 illegal camps of travellers and Roma across France, and the immediate expulsion of Roma from Bulgaria and Romania who had committed public order offences.

Hammarberg urged European politicians to promote deeper understanding of the Roma plight by explaining their troubled history, but acknowledged this was a challenge in tough economic circumstances.

“It is a very bad time now,” he said. “If we could at least ask the politicians not to exploit the latent prejudices against the Roma.”

Link: http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/interview-eu-governmen...

thank's