Last update - 00:00 05/10/2006
European gypsies bid to join UN Holocaust memorial
By Reuters
Europe's Roma minority appealed to the United Nations on Wednesday to be included in annual Holocaust commemorations as recognized victims of Nazi Germany who still suffer discrimination across the continent.
The German Central Council for Sinti and Roma - the official names for gypsies - unveiled plans for an exhibition at UN headquarters on their Holocaust dead and ongoing discrimination against them.
The exhibition will open on January 25 as part of events to commemorate the UN International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust on January 27
"The objective of this exhibition is to raise public awareness of the Holocaust and the murder of half a million Sinti and Roma, which is not as well known as the murder of six million Jews," the council's Chairman Romani Rose said at a news conference, which was sponsored by Germany's UN mission.
It is estimated that between 200,000 and 800,000 Roma people were killed in Nazi concentration camps.
"Over 60 years after the end of the Second World War, Roma and Sinti continue to face cases of serious violations of their human rights," Rose said. "And there is still insufficient knowledge in the international community of the historical dimension of the Holocaust against the Roma and Sinti."
There are currently about 12 million Roma and Sinti people, making them the largest minority spread across central and eastern Europe.
Rose said Bulgaria and Romania were condemned last year by the European Court of Human Rights for their treatment of crimes and human rights violations against Roma people, but that discrimination is also a problem in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Germany, where his family has had roots for 600 years, he said.
The European Roma Rights Center in Budapest has reported that coercive sterilization of women is encountered in Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania but the Czech Republic and Slovakia seem to have the largest number of cases.
"Many countries have become more sensitive to racism as a whole, but they don't apply this new sensitivity to members of the Roma minority," Rose said.