The US ambassador to the Czech Republic, a former top advisor to President Barack Obama, has made a public all for Czechs to do more for the Roma (“Gypsy”) minority.

“Roma have for a long time faced problems on the margins of society in the Czech Republic and elsewhere in Europe. The unequal access to education and job opportunities have further worsened their situation,” Amb. Norman Eisen wrote in an commentary published in Monday’s issue of the business dailyHospodářské noviny.

“If there is one group of people denied basic rights and opportunities that damages the whole of society,” Eisen continued. “I appeal to the Czech government to take more effective measures regarding the Roma. Success will only come when the public administration at all levels  seeks to bring the Roma from the fringes of society.”

The comments follow a critical assessment of the Czech Republic in the US Department of State’s annual evaluation of human rights worldwide, published last week. “During the year, societal discrimination against the country’s Romani population was a serious problem and human rights observers criticized the government’s efforts to overcome it as inadequate.” The report also attacked prison overcrowding, corruption, judicial shortcomings, human trafficking, and discrimination against labor unions and migrant workers.

The country report highlighted what it called the almost non-existent role of Roma in public life: “Few of the country’s estimated 200,000 Roma were integrated into political life. No Roma were members of parliament, had cabinet portfolios, or sat on the Supreme Court. Some Roma were appointed to national and regional advisory councils dealing with Romani affairs.”

The high level of underlying tension between Roma and the majority population, which led to a wave of anti-Roma protests in deprived parts of northern Bohemia last summer after a series of incidents, were also covered in the report. “Throughout the year, extremists targeted Romani neighborhoods as venues for their protests and occasional violence. Police investigated several incidents of torches or Molotov cocktails being thrown at Romani houses. Extremist groups also marched through Romani areas carrying torches and chanting slogans.”

The overwhelming negative tone of the media towards the Roma community, in some cases printing totally fictitious stories which tarnished the community, or, as recently in the case of a Břeclav boy who blamed Roma for attacking himwhen he injured himself falling over, jumping on an anti-Roma bandwagon, was also highlighted. “The national media gave disproportionate coverage to crime and acts of violence committed by Roma compared with similar behavior on the part of the majority population or other minorities,” the State Department report said.

Local politicians have meanwhile sought to profit from taking extreme anti-Roma stances, it said. “Some mainstream politicians have been outspoken in their criticism of Romani communities. Their statements often vilified the Romani minority, blaming it for community problems and assigning collective guilt for crimes. Some politicians called for municipalities to move Romani residents to the outskirts of town into what is often substandard housing, ban alcohol in areas with high Romani populations, and limit residency options for Roma who commit multiple minor crimes.”

In the meantime, in spite of frequent international demands, including from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for more efforts to harness the abilities of the Roma community, they are often forced to live on social support and state hands outs because of job market discrimination. “An estimated 57 percent of Roma were unemployed. In areas with a high percentage of Romani residents, unemployment among Roma was close to 90 percent according to the Agency for Social Inclusion in Roma Localities,” the report said.

Roma children are still frequently offered the most basic education, often being placed as a matter of course in school’s for children with learning difficulties although Czech authorities maintain that this practice has now stopped. They are almost entirely absent from the upper ranks of education.

“The US has its own bad experience with unfairness in education. Our own successes and failures could be an inspiration for those who seek to deal with the issues in a similar way,” Eisen commented in his opinion piece.

Eisen served for nearly two years in the White House as Special Assistant to the President and as Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform, being given the informal title of Barack Obama’s “ethics czar.” He wasconfirmed as US ambassador in mid-December in the face of moves by Republicans in the Senate to block the move

I was reading articles on ROMEA this morning, trying to figure out what the hell is happening in Europe when I came upon a paragraph that …. really just grabbed me.

From ROMEA:

Discrimination against Romani people and violence committed against them is reportedly deeply rooted in the European population, and great differences do not exist between various countries’ treatment of them. At a recent conference in Brno, representatives of the European Association for the Defense of Human Rights reported that tensions are rising in the context of the economic crisis as a result of a decline in tolerance.

Roma, or Gypsies if you will, have long been the scapegoats of Europe. In times of political upheaval or economic crisis we have been the ones who are traditionally blamed:

We’re sucking up too much governmental aid; we are not contributing to the workforce and therefore the economy; we are leeches; parasites; unwanted.

The recent rise of neo-Nazi and Fascist parties in Europe is as expected as it is alarming. 

Eight European countries have recently voted in extremist right-wing parties… For example, barely two years ago the anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, and anti-Roma Jobbik party entered parliament in Hungary. 

With a two-thirds majority in Parliament, Prime Minister Victor Orban and his government rewrote the constitution and pushed through controversial new laws that sharply polarized the country and also drew tough criticism from the European Union and other international bodies.

These included new legislation regulating the media, changing how judges are appointed and reducing the number of officially recognized religious bodies. 

Other new laws cut social benefits, nationalized private pension funds and even outlawed homelessness.

Is it a coincidence that the party in majority power in Hungary at this crucial time in the economic and political sphere in Europe happens to be anti-Roma?

No, because Jobbik and other extremists have capitalized on the economic uncertainly and social and political polarization to push a virulently nationalist message that stigmatizes Jews, Roma, immigrants and other minority groups.

Meanwhile we have shows here in the US, such as My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding which portray us as some exotic and dangerous sub-culture in which the women fist-fight at a moments notice, parents pimp out their teen daughters, and violence is encouraged. Do you think this is coincidental? I see this form of media racism as something of a beginning… something of a path to intolerance. Many people in the US still do not think there are “Gypsies” here—in fact, I have to explain myself on a daily basis.

What these disgusting shows are doing is a deliberate misrepresentation of our culture—a dangerous othering that pushes us even further out. I’ve had people say to me “wow, I thought Mexicans were bad” or “you people are disgusting!” 

If we look at the big picture then—the rise of extremism across Europe and the corresponding rise in religious and racial intolerance in the US (where a black woman is jailed for protecting herself from white men, and where white men are protected by the law for killing black boys). Just last week, for example, 10 members of a White Supremacist group (American Front) were arrested in Florida. A group that had plans to “murder immigrants and Jewish people”.

It’s not just the US. In Canada, Roma Rights activists are fighting changes to the immigration system that is aimed at blocking refugee claims by Roma from Europe. 

Gina Csany-Robah, the executive director of the Roma Community Centre in Toronto — the only one of its kind in Canada — gave an impassioned critique of proposed Conservative changes to the refugee system.

“It is very important to be able to depict what is the Gypsy fiction from the Roma reality,” Csany-Robah told a parliamentary committee while denouncing Conservative efforts to address “bogus” refugee claims.

“The problem is that the fiction here influences peoples’ thought process, even at schools … and when they hear the discourse that’s often in our media, it just compiles the problem.”

She said the nomadic, crime-riddled, crystal-ball gazing Gypsies of lore are a fiction created by societies that have marginalized the Roma since the 13th century — including the death of some two million Roma in the Holocaust.

Bill 31-C will “speed up” refugee processing by allowing the minister of immigration to designate ANY COUNTRY AS SAFE. Immigrants from these safe countries would be quickly deported with no right to appeal. For example,

Some 4,423 Hungarians made refugee claims in Canada last year, up from 2,296 the previous year. It’s believed the vast majority are Roma, and Kenney took the extraordinary step of going to Hungary and having his department distribute flyers telling people they were not eligible for refugee status.

The State of Emergency was first declared in a decree in May 2008 in Lombardy, Campania and Lazio and was later extended to Piedmont and Veneto. The State of Emergency defined the presence of Roma in Italy as a threat to public security and appointed Prefects as Special Commissioners for the Roma Emergency in the regions of Lombardy, Lazio and Campania in 2008 and Veneto and Piedmont in 2009. The State of Emergency was extended annually until December 2011. 

The State of Emergency saw Roma forcibly and relentlessly evicted, excluded from education, fingerprinted, segregated, harassed and expelled. These actions brought about violations of the rights to adequate housing and education. 

On May 9th 2012, Italy’s Council of State accepted the Italian Government’s request to suspend the effects of its decision from last year, which declared the State of Emergency was illegal and unfounded. While the State of Emergency is no longer in effect, the refusal to acknowledge it as illegal is extremely dangerous for Italian Roma. The new decision means that various contracts started under the State of Emergency can go ahead, which may have a negative impact on the housing situation of Roma and Sinti living in formal and semi-formal camps. 

So tell me how the Roma are not threatened, marginalized, or victimized both here in North America and in Europe?? Tell me how we have nothing to worry about and how it’s only a TV show…

The world for us is growing smaller and smaller every day and it’s going to take all of us—dark-skinned, pale-skinned, tall, short, traditional and untraditional to fight this.