Press Release on the Remembrance day

Forgetting Roma victims of the Holocaust will make them victims twice

Brussels, January 27th, 2009 – Today the international community celebrates the Remembrance Day in memory of the victims of the Nazi's genocide. It is a very important occasion to remember the atrocities done in the name of racism, intolerance and xenophobia.

Millions of people died during those dark years. Many of them where Jewish, but they were not the only victims of Hitler and his colonels': disabled persons, political opponents, gays and Roma were all condemned to death just because they were not Arians.

The Roma minority in particular proportionally suffered as many murders as the Jewish community.

But in the World and European leaders' words Roma cannot find any mention. Even the United Nations refused to include Roma in the official celebrations planned for tomorrow. That's the reason why ERIO, the European Roma Information Office, wants to call the attention of the public opinion on those forgotten victims of the Holocaust.

“Forgetting Roma victims of the Holocaust means killing them twice” stated Ivan Ivanov, ERIO's Executive Directors. “In those days, 60 years after the beginning of the Holocaust, the Roma are still victims of racial prejudice, intolerance, violence, but the public opinion seems able to accept it. The worst is that in some case the media can stimulate the racial hatred and the witch-hunting against the Roma. This is unacceptable: international bodies, politicians, media professionals and common people do have to bear in mind that intolerance and prejudice can only lead to abuses and violence. Help and mutual respect are the only ways to overcome racism and really prevent any new form of genocide, may it be administrative or mediatic” states Mr Ivanov, who concludes: “While everyone is ready to condemn any form of anti-Semitism or abuses against disabled people, gays, children, elderly people, none raises the voice to defend Roma from the growing waves of anti-Gypsism. All those minority groups, including migrants and asylum seekers are fighting for the same cause: the end of intolerance and prejudices and the real and effective implementation and defence of everyone's fundamental rights”.

For further inquiries, please contact ERIO’s Executive Director: Ivan Ivanov, +32/472/823887