[Assam] Gypsies in Europe

[Dilip/Dil Deka]

I was under the impression that the gypsies in Europe were being treated better in the last few years. This news report says otherwise.
  Dilip
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  From the NYT
   
  March 11, 2006
  Editorial
  Separate and Unequal for Gypsies     For all the difficulties Muslim immigrants face, Europe's most-abused group is still, by far, the Gypsies. They are compelled to live in slums, shunted off to inferior schools and denied jobs. They are subjected to pogroms, forced sterilization and police abuse.
  The view that Gypsies, also known as Roma, are capable of only playing the violin and picking pockets is widely and deeply held, especially in Eastern Europe. Many there still believe the Communist humbug that says discrimination is found in America and South Africa, not in Europe.
  Sadly, the European Court of Human Rights has just backed one of the worst forms of discrimination: the nearly automatic placement of Gypsy children in dead-end schools for the mentally handicapped. The case was brought by families of 18 Czech Gypsy children, but according to the European Roma Rights Center, based in Budapest, similar discrimination exists throughout Eastern Europe. The Czech government estimates that 75 percent of Gypsy children go to these schools, and that 90 percent of the children in Czech remedial schools are Gypsies.
  The court's majority, made up largely of Eastern Europeans, acknowledged the problem but found no proof that bigotry was the cause. The president of the panel, a Frenchman, voted with the majority but recommended that the case go to the court's appeals body.
  Decades ago, America painfully learned that government policies and social attitudes could keep an underclass down, and that discrimination might exist even though laws seemed fair. Europe has not yet absorbed these ideas. The Court of Human Rights has long been reluctant to prohibit biased practices without proof of intent to discriminate, allowing discrimination to hide behind another name. The court should seize the opportunity to modernize and reverse a decision that has anchored European race relations today well behind where America was in 1954.

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