{"id":18062,"date":"2019-06-26T16:55:05","date_gmt":"2019-06-26T13:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/?p=18062"},"modified":"2023-01-18T12:20:56","modified_gmt":"2023-01-18T09:20:56","slug":"smi-o-situaczii-s-romskim-poseleniem-v-chemodanovke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/news\/publications-about-us\/media-about-us\/smi-o-situaczii-s-romskim-poseleniem-v-chemodanovke\/","title":{"rendered":"The Moscow Times: \u2018Like Pre-Revolutionary Pogroms\u2019: Ethnic Conflicts on the Rise in Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the second time in 13 months, Roma have fled a Russian village for fear of attacks.<\/h2>\n
\n

Olga Abramenko, an expert on the Roma with the St. Petersburg-based Memorial Anti-Discrimination Center, said that tensions between Roma people and ethnic Russians are long-standing and flare up occasionally. Last year, the independent Levada Center pollster found<\/a> that xenophobia in Russia was growing, and that the largest portion of it was directed toward the Roma. Of those polled, 43 percent said they wouldn\u2019t let Roma people into the country.<\/p>\n

Since a law was passed in 1956 banning the Roma\u2019s nomadic lifestyle, they have had trouble integrating into Russian society, Abramenko said. While a recent census numbered Roma in Russia at some 200,000, Abramenko said the actual figures range between 400,000-500,000, because many are scared to identify as Roma and because the government didn\u2019t allocate land to all of them after 1956. As a result, Roma people built houses without proper land ownership documents and, as a consequence, many aren\u2019t registered.<\/p>\n

This state of affairs also makes it difficult for Roma to attend school. And even if they are able to, they often face discrimination and drop out early. In 2017, Memorial specifically included the local school for Chemodanovka and Lopatka in a report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. At the time, the school had separate classes for Roma.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have real apartheid with Roma people in Russian schools,\u201d Abramenko said. \u201cBecause of this, parents take kids out of school early, thinking, \u2018What\u2019s the point?\u2019 So the kids are handed the traditional Roma fate \u2014 early pregnancies and poverty. This cycle needs to be broken, but the authorities don\u2019t care and deal with the problem in the language of repression.\u201d<\/p>\n

She highlighted an October 2018 Kremlin round table<\/a> on a government drive to evict dozens of Roma from the Tula region south of Moscow. \u201cYou and I both know well that they professionally deal drugs there and people just don\u2019t want to live near that \u2014 that\u2019s the problem,\u201d Putin told Demeter during the discussion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you hear that from a regular person, you can let it slide,\u201d Abramenko said. \u201cBut from the president?\u201d<\/p>\n

As an example of a commonly propagated scare story, she noted that Russian parents sometimes tell their children that \u201cgypsies\u201d will kidnap them if they misbehave. Dmitry also referenced the folktale as prevalent in Penza.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Days before Putin\u2019s inauguration last year, a similar conflict to the one in Chemodanovka took place in the Ust-Abakan settlement in the remote Siberian Republic of Khakassia. During an argument that turned into a fight between a Roma person and an ethnic Russian, the Russian fell backward and hit his head, resulting in his death.<\/p>\n

Almost immediately, around 500 local Roma fled because of threats from Russians, leaving their homes behind to be ransacked. Sergei Mikheyev, a colleague of Abramenko\u2019s at Memorial, wrote<\/a> after a visit to the settlement last summer that what he saw reminded him of pictures of the Jewish pogroms of the last century.<\/p>\n

By September, some of the families who had left had begun to return, but local officials said 11 of their homes would be razed. The families sued, with the local court ruling in their favor. But after officials appealed, Khakassia\u2019s Supreme Court stood with officials in a decision at the end of May. The families\u2019 lawyer Valery Zaytsev told The Moscow Times that they will have 30 days to vacate their homes once officials announce eviction proceedings in the coming days.<\/p>\n

Read more in The Moscow Times<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the second time in 13 months, Roma have fled a Russian village for fear of attacks. Olga Abramenko, an expert on the Roma with the St. Petersburg-based Memorial Anti-Discrimination Center, said that tensions between Roma people and ethnic Russians…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[636],"tags":[160],"strategy_cases":[],"campaign":[],"archive":[],"filter-content":[],"regions":[],"class_list":["post-18062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-about-us","tag-roma-rights-en"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_urls_v2":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":"","pub-thumb":"","post-thumb":"","wcicon":"","wcsquare":"","wcsmall":"","wcstandard":"","wcbig":"","wcfixedheightsmall":"","wcfixedheightmedium":"","wcfixedheight":"","wccarouselsmall":"","wccarousel":"","wcslider":""},"post_excerpt_stackable_v2":"

For the second time in 13 months, Roma have fled a Russian village for fear of attacks. Olga Abramenko, an expert on the Roma with the St. Petersburg-based Memorial Anti-Discrimination Center, said that tensions between Roma people and ethnic Russians are long-standing and flare up occasionally. Last year, the independent Levada Center pollster found that xenophobia in Russia was growing, and that the largest portion of it was directed toward the Roma. Of those polled, 43 percent said they wouldn\u2019t let Roma people into the country. Since a law was passed in 1956 banning the Roma\u2019s nomadic lifestyle, they have…<\/p>\n","category_list_v2":"Media about us<\/a>","author_info_v2":{"name":"admin3","url":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/author\/admin3\/"},"comments_num_v2":"0 comments","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18062"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18065,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18062\/revisions\/18065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18062"},{"taxonomy":"strategy_cases","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/strategy_cases?post=18062"},{"taxonomy":"campaign","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campaign?post=18062"},{"taxonomy":"archive","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/archive?post=18062"},{"taxonomy":"filter-content","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/filter-content?post=18062"},{"taxonomy":"regions","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regions?post=18062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}