The European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) released a report on 9 September about the human rights violations that were committed against Romani people in 12 European countries during the spring wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report, entitled “Roma Rights in the Time of COVID”, demonstrates the degeree to which Romani people were affected by discrimination and institutional racism during the first half of 2020. “From February to June 2020, when the attention of the world was focused on the COVID-19 illness, Romani people were being attacked and harassed by racist police officers, were being forcibly evicted, scapegoated by ultra-right political parties and denied access to health care,” the ERRC says in the report, which describes the situation in Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Moldavia, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Turkey and Ukraine. The report describes in detail how Romani children were denied access to education, how the quarantining of Romani people was undertaken in some countries, and how some media outlets used deceptive, exaggerated allegations that led to the demonization of Romani communities.
via romea.cz: European Roma Rights Centre reports on human rights violations against Romani people during the pandemic this spring