As unemployment rises and austerity measures bite, the
scapegoating of minorities is growing across Europe .
High up in the firing line are, as always, members of Europe ’s
12 million-strong gypsy and Roma communities.
Small surprise then that a new report commissioned by Oxfam outlines
the scale of discrimination levelled against the Roma community in Glasgow .
Having left their native countries in eastern Europe where
they face rising levels of violence, sometimes aided and abetted by local
politicians, Roma and gypsies from eastern Slovakia, the Czech Republic and
Romania have settled legally in Scotland, many of them in Glasgow’s Southside.
But Scotland ’s
Roma have discovered their reception is sometimes worse than the conditions
they left behind. A whistleblower at the Laurieston Jobcentre Plus (JCP), who has chosen to remain anonymous, was
shocked at the levels of prejudice that prevailed.
Staff routinely referred to Roma people as “gypos, scum,
beggars, suicide bombers and paedos”, she told the report’s author. They were
blatantly discriminated against and not provided with benefits to which they
were legally entitled.
Using evidence provided by more than 60 families about the
treatment by the job centre staff, the authors say that HM Revenue and Customs
(HMRC) often treated claims by Roma as fraudulent. Sometimes it held on to
passports and birth certificates for several years. The authors found that more
than half of all Roma-related benefits decisions were subject to unreasonable
delays. The result was that some one in five claimants faced homelessness.
The Govanhill report’s findings bears out the harsh truth
about the treatment of Roma throughout western Europe which are detailed in a
major new survey
carried out by the European Union and the United Nations. The researchers found
that:
- only 15% of young Roma adults surveyed had completed upper-secondary general or vocational education, compared with more than 70% of the majority population living nearby
- on average, less than 30% of Roma surveyed were in paid employment
- about 45% of the Roma surveyed lived in households lacking at least one of the following: an indoor kitchen, toilet, shower or bath, or electricity on average
- about 40% of Roma surveyed lived in households where somebody went to bed hungry at least once in the last month because they could not afford to buy food.
And their situation is worse than that of their neighbours
regarding jobs, education, housing and health. All in all, "the results
present a grim picture of the situation of the Roma surveyed," the report
said.
Disadvantages for Roma were apparent across all 11 countries
included in the surveys, which polled more than 22,000 households. "That
is precisely what we find most shocking. We would have expected to find
significant differences, but from the responses of the Roma people themselves
and their neighbours, we see few differences,” Ioannis Dimitrakopoulos of the
EU Agency on Fundamental Rights said.
Earlier this month, Roma were forced out of a Belgrade settlement by masked attackers who shouted:
"Serbia
for Serbs! Roma out of Serbia !".
Blatant persecution against travelling people has seen the French government
defy European law by forcibly deporting Roma back to Bulgaria
and Romania .
In Italy ,
leaders of the Northern League have encouraged attacks while city authorities
bulldozed a gypsy camp outside Rome .
Meanwhile, in Essex, Basildon council is
defying the EU’s commissioner for Human Rights with a new round of evictions.
History is full of ugly examples of how in times of economic
crisis, high unemployment and political bankruptcy, racism is the name of the
game. We urgently need to develop alternative economic and political solutions to
dislodge the 1% who exploit society as a whole and target those at the bottom
of the scale seeking safe havens from racism and discrimination.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
