Violence against Roma women in the EU: Italy and Slovakia

Together, the Roma and Sinti make up the largest minority in Europe. Prejudice against them is widespread and dates back centuries. The "European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey” found in 2009 that on average every second Roma respondent was discriminated against at least once in the previous 12 months. Roma who were discriminated against experienced on average eleven incidents of discrimination over a 12-month period. As for the forms of discrimination, a shocking one in four Roma respondents were victims of personal crime including assaults, threats and serious harassment. 81% of the respondents perceived the crimes committed against them as being racially motivated. The Society for Threatened Peoples is deeply concerned about the dire situation of the Roma and Sinti groups in most EU countries.

Roma women tend to be victims of discrimination because of their ethnicity and their gender, and the plight of Roma and Sinti women in Italy and Slovakia is especially serious. In the summer of 2008, the photographs of two dead Roma girls at a beach near Naples shocked the citizens of Italy. People at the beach continued sun-bathing at distances not far from the bodies of the 12 and 13 year olds, whose bodies were barely covered with towels. "They let our children die like dogs, we have to live like dogs in the garbage of Italian towns!” was one comment of a relative of one of these girls. Since this scandalous incident the situation has not improved in the least. On May 21, 2008 the Italian Government adopted an Emergency Decree ("Nomad Emergency Decree) proclaiming a state of emergency and enacting a series of measures targeting Roma and Sinti individuals. These measures were accompanied by racist political statements which suggested that Roma were criminals or should be expelled from Italy and that all Roma camps were to be closed down. Using presidential decrees and implementing orders, the Government conducted a census of all Roma in the concerned regions. At the same time there have been widespread physical attacks on the Roma by civilians, which the government has failed to prevent or condemn. The aim of the adopted measures is the collection of personal data, fingerprints and photographs of Roma living in unofficial settlements, in order to create a "Roma database.” Most of the Roma were forced to submit their data. Fingerprints and pictures were even taken of children and babies, often without their parents’ consent. This database was subsequently used to expel certain categories of Roma from Italy, where between 150.000 and 160.000 Roma live.

These emergency measures and their implementation are in direct breach of the EC Racial Equality Directive and fundamental rights law. The Roma and Sinti population, a vulnerable minority group, has been singled out for particularly hateful treatment. The group`s mere presence has been designated a state of emergency. In this way, the Roma and Sinti are being subjected to discriminatory treatment.

In 1978, then Charta 77 spokesmen Vaclav Havel and Ladislav Hejdanek issued a document on the "situation of Gypsies in Czechoslovakia.” This document gave particular attention to the state policy designed to reduce the birthrate of Roma: "The question of sterilization is very important. [. . .] In some areas the sterilization is carried out as a planned administrative program and the success of employees is judged by the number of Gypsy women an employee has been able to talk into sterilization. [. . .] In this way, sterilization is becoming one of the instruments used by the majority in order to prevent childbirth in a particular ethnic minority.”

While coercive sterilization of Romani women was state policy in communist Czechoslovakia, the practice was continued after the fall of communism. The most recent cases occured in 2004. Germany, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland all have histories of coercive sterilization of minorities and other groups. In light of this and the holocaust against the Roma and Sinti the continuation of coercive sterilization after the fall of communism and the reaction of the Slovak government to these cases is scandalous.

After pressure from human rights groups and EU governments, the Slovak Government agreed to investigate the sterilizations, but it chose to investigate only the cases in the period beginning in 1993. Presumably, this date was chosen because it marks the separation of Czechoslovakia into two independent states. (In general, Slovakia has been more reluctant than some of its neighboring countries to examine crimes of the communist period.)

Slovak Government statements have been inconsistent and at times vague in their description of the scope of the 2003 investigations. It appears, however, that the investigations of the sterilization allegations were limited to an examination of whether the crime of genocide had occurred. In short, the Slovak Government has failed to thoroughly investigate the situation and up until today fails to demonstrate any compassion for women and girls who were sterilized without consent and consequently deprived of the opportunity to bear children again. By unilaterally treating their claims as lies, the government has failed to give these women the equal respect they are entitled, therefore compounding their original injury with this indignity. If the Slovak Government is to counter the endemic prejudice faced by its most marginalized minority, it must acknowledge the fact – and state it publicly – that wrongful sterilizations of Romani women did occur.

Society for Threatened Peoples calls on the Human Rights Council to: