DECADE OF DEATH: OR
NEW ERA OF INCLUSION
By Grattan Puxon

Tomorrow's launch (Feb 2) of the Decade
of Roma Inclusion is already raising unreal expectations.
Much is promised yet the investment announced does
not nearly match the tasks before the participating
governments, some of whose administrations are
riddled by unacceptable levels of corruption.
Already Roma in Bulgaria have criticised
Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg for lack of
political will. Their spokesman in London, Toma
Nikoleaff, vice-chair of TERF, says Saxe-Coburg
has failed to use his authority to lay down a clear
line of positive action.
"The run up to this launch." writes Kalinka
Vassileva, "has turned into re-election fireworks
and propaganda."
Similarly, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair,
while a supporter of this east European initiative,
has chosen to side with anti-Gypsy MPs both on
domestic and immigration issues affecting Roma.
Currently, up to 30,000 Travellers and 10,000
Roma face ethnic-cleansing in the UK through
eviction from their own land and mass
deportations.
In the past ten years thousands of Roma
have died needlessly due to malnutrition, high
infant mortality and and lack of medical care.
Hundreds have been murdered in racially
motivated attacks and pogroms across Europe.
While neo-facist groups continue to target
vulnerable Roma, refugees are refused sanctuary
in western Europe because it is claimed they are
not victims of state-sponsored persecution. Yet
many of the racial killings have been carried out
by on and off-duty policemen, notably in Bulgaria,
Romania, Slovakia and Greece.
The greatest slaughter has occurred in
former Yugoslavia. More than 120,000 Roma
ethnically-cleansed from Kosovo are being prevented
from returning by militia death-threats, despite a
pledge by Blair to all the refugees.
Whether centuries of exclusion will now be
followed by a real decade of inclusion remains to
be seen. Fifty leading Roma activists in Bulgaria are
threatening to boycott the Decade unless Roma are
allowed to implement major projects themselves.
This will towards self-detemination has been
expressed most strongly by Rudolf Kawczynski, chair
of the newly created European Roma Forum. It was
endorsed at the recent World Romani Congress in
Italy. Stanislav Stankiewicz, president of the International
Romani Union, says nothing will be achieved without
full Roma participation.
"Inclusion must begin not with mere consultation
but empowerment," says Nikoleaff, who led a protest
outside the UK Parliament last week. At a personal
meeting with Blair the same day Cliff Codona, chair
of the National Travellers Action Group, told the
Prime Minister, "I will never give up my campaign
until justice is won."
Codona expects shortly to be confronted a
second time by private security firm Constant & Co
hired by Mid-Bedordshire District Council to destroy
his caravan park. A model community once home
to fifty families, most of Woodside has been redused
already to a pile of debris.
"While I've been out helping police over
another murdered Rom," said Codona, "they are
getting ready to assist in my eviction."
So far the ethnic-cleansing in Britain has
seen more than a thousand people "cleared" from their
own land and 8,000 forcibly deported. As Evelina
Gueorgieva writes in the US-based AdvocacyNet
New Bulletin, "On the eve of the launch of a new Decade
a rash of forced evictions are taking place throughout the
continent."