UN HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE EVENT NEGLECTS FATE OF ROMA

This article comes to us via the Roma Virtual Network. It appeared on The Roma Buzz Monitor, located at http://www.romabuzzmonitor.net/2011/12/roma-must-be-included-in-un-holocaust-event/. Yet again, the UN ignores us, making a statement in their silence. We ask, as does Grattan Puxon, that you stand up on April 8 and claim history, claim your rights, and protest the world's indifference.

 

UN HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE EVENT NEGLECTS FATE OF ROMA

11/12/2011 – As announced by the UN it looks like the next international Holocaust Remembrance event will once again neglect to fully recognize the fate of the Romani people at the hands of Europe’s NAZI and fascists rulers.

This is particularly regretable at a time when intolerance against the 10 million Roma in Europe has reached a dangerous level. Roma are once more being beaten and murdered by neo-fascists on a daily basis, while entire camps and settlements suffer official clearances in the name of public order.

Among the most recent outrages occurred in the UK, where Prime Minister David Cameron gave his personal support to the eviction of some one hundred Romani and Traveller families from their own land at Dale Farm and other parts of the Basildon district in Essex.

Over the barricades at Dale Farm, stormed by British riot police firing 50,000 volt Taser stun guns, flew the flag of the United Nations – because the UN was protesting against this act of ethnic-cleansing.

Under Hitler’s New Order in Europe more than 500,000 “Gypsies” were exterminated on racial grounds, a large proportion of them children.

This was surely price enough to pay for a secure and honoured place to be assumed of right in the name of Romani victims and survivors in any Holocaust event

promoted by the world organization.

On Roma Nation Day, 8 April 2012, members of Romani associations around the globe will be holding rallies and demonstrations against the rise of “anti-Gypsy” racism, drawing attention to those who must now pay the price for wide-spread ignorance, prejudice and hatred through their exclusion and marginalisation on the outskirts of cities and town in 60 countries.

We request that the United Nations ensure that Roma representatives are invited to the Holocaust Remembrance on 27 January and that reporting reflect that participation.

We ask, moreover, that all stand up with us on Roma Nation Day 2012 to demonstrate opposition to racism of every kind.

Grattan Puxon

co-author

Gypsies Under the Swastika

former general secretary

International Romani Union.