European leaders are focusing too much attention on the Roma policy of French President Nicolas Sarkozy while ignoring "blatant anti-Roma discrimination" in Eastern Europe, a Jewish group warned after an EU official recently compared France’s Roma to Jews deported in WWII.
"Though the French policy of deporting so-called Roma offenders and dismantling their camps is problematic and restrictive, it pales in comparison to the tactics of segregation, assault and anti-Roma incitement found in Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary,” reads a statement issued by by CEJI - a Brussels-based interfaith dialogue body founded in 1991.
This statement was the first reaction by a Jewish European body to the controversy surrounding the deportation of Roma from France.
Last month European Union Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding compared France’s Roma expulsion policy to the deportation of Jews to death camps – a view shared and expressed by several Roma leaders.
In response, French Secretary of State for European Affairs, Pierre Lellouche rejected the comparison and said the EU is "placing a disproportionate burden on France for Roma integration."
Major European Jewish organizations have so far remained silent on the Roma situation in France. Last month, the leadership of Jewish communities in Sweden condemned the construction of separation walls in Slovakia which keep Roma out of Slovak towns.
CEJI called the EU’s stance vis-à-vis France an example of “an unequal pattern of upholding human rights” which “sends out a wrong message that maltreatment of minorities can be tolerated in certain areas.”
Valery Novoselsky, a Ukraine-born campaigner for Roma rights and editor of the online publication Roma Virtual Network, rejected CEJI’s view. "European leaders have devoted attention to the situation of Roma in East and Central Europe and are now turning some attention to the West," he said.
Since August, French authorities have reportedly stepped up efforts t uproot Roma camps, which French President Nicolas Sarkozy described that month as “sources of crime, prostitution, trafficking and child exploitation.”
According to the AFP, French authorities returned about 10,000 Roma from Romania and Bulgaria to those countries last year.
CEJI called on European leaders and opinion-shapers to investigate “ongoing building of separation fences meant to keep Roma communities out of non-Roma towns in eastern Slovakia,” whose population of 450,000 Roma exceeds France’s Roma minority.
Other examples of Roma-hatred mentioned by CEJI included the "hate inciting rhetoric used by Hungary’s third largest party, the openly-racist Jobbik movement," whose leaders on October 6 proposed incarcerating Hungarian Roma individuals – numbering 600,000 – in concentration camps.
The Roma issue resurfaced in France in July, after approximately 50 Roma men rioted at a police checkpoint in the village of Saint Aignan in Western France.
They did so in protest of the July 17 killing of a 27-year-old Romani suspect by police. According to French authorities, “the rioters were armed with hatchets and iron bars, attacked the local police station and burned cars.”
In its statement, CEJI also called on Roma leaders to "respect the laws of EU countries."