Press Release on Facebook’s anti-Gypsy groups

 ERIO condemns anti-Gypsyism on the web

Brussels, November 13^th, 2008 – ERIO, the European Roma Information Office, strongly condemns the presence on Facebook of various groups spreading hatred against Roma. Fortunately, many of these groups have been shut down today following the strong protests coming from the Socialist group in the European Parliament. But many others are still present on the famous social networking site.

Those groups, used by right-wing extreme groups to wide spread racist propaganda against Roma and to mobilize like-minded people, were named in very wretched ways, such as: “Let’s burn them all”, “Turn gypsies into fuel” and “Useful work for gypsies – testers of gas chambers”.

Ivan Ivanov, ERIO’s Executive Director, stated: “This is one more indication that a strong European action that protects Roma from hatred, tackles prejudices against them and fosters tolerance and mutual comprehension is urgently needed. We believe that the European authorities should recognise that a rising racist aptitude towards Roma is a clear and present risk and we invited to act quickly, implementing the necessary mechanism to protect Roma against hate speech and harassment even throughout the web. We cannot wait anymore.”

For further inquiries, please contact ERIO’s Executive Director: Ivan Ivanov, +32/473/823887