On May 8, 2015, the day marking the end of World War II, ADC “Memorial” presented English version of its report “Roma and War in Eastern Ukraine: refugees, displaced persons, victims of violence” with the support of the International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR) in Brussels. It is our duty to study and report about the victims of WWII, about the sufferings of people, who had become victims of aggression and crimes against humanity – Jews and Romani people exterminated by Nazis, but we should also report the sufferings of people nowadays, including the long-suffering Roma. 70 years after the end of a terrible world war, which raged in Eastern Ukraine in 1941-1943, we see renewed bloodshed, sufferings of civil population, pogroms and persecution of Roma people in this region.
Experts of ADC “Memorial” reported about their experience of talking to Roma refugees and displaced persons from the zone of military conflict in Eastern Ukraine, the troubles Roma families encountered in the conflict zone or the places where they had fled to, the possibilities, which civil society in Russia and Ukraine have to help these people. It was with great regret that we had to report that the measures adopted by the authorities of the two countries in order to help displaced people are not enough to deal with their problems, that the rights of Roma people are infringed upon, and while they had regularly suffered from discrimination in times of peace, their situation has catastrophically deteriorated after the beginning of military conflict in Donbass.