Thread: Rights group urges EU halt to Roma deportations

Rights group urges EU halt to Roma deportations

ISTOK, Kosovo (AP) — Western European countries should stop the deportation of Romas and other minorities to Kosovo where they face discrimination and human rights abuse, a human rights group said Thursday.

Human Rights Watch said the minorities sent back to Kosovo from Western Europe struggle to access "housing, health care, employment, and social welfare services."

The group's warning comes as European leaders meet in Brussels where they will also discuss how to deal with the issue of deportation of Roma, or Gypsies.

The fate of the long-opressed minority has topped the EU agenda since France expelled over 1,000 Roma immigrants and demolished hundreds of illegal Roma camps in recent months.

HRW said that some 50,000 Romas and other minorities have been deported to Kosovo since 1999, with another 12,000 people facing deportation from Germany alone.

Some of those forced to return are unable to obtain Kosovo documents making them stateless, HRW said in its 77-page report on the issue.

Many of Kosovo's Roma, and other minorities, fled to other countries during the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. They now join a cash-strapped economy in a country, whose unemployment rate — estimated at 45% — is the highest in Europe.

In Istok, a western Kosovo town, Tafe Vuqinaj, a 44-year old Albanian-speaking Egyptian — a minority who trace their origin to ancient Egypt — tells a story echoed by hundreds whose lives have been upset by the recent surge in forced return of immigrants from the EU.

Vuqinaj was deported from Germany, where he spent the last ten years working illegaly at a restaurant near Stuttgart.

"They said I had to go back to Kosovo. They gave me 15 minutes," Vuqinaj told The Associated Press. His return has left his extended family anxious about their livelihood.

"Everything we had came from him," said Sebahate Vuqinaj, 21, referring to her father, the sole provider in the family. "Now he is in Kosovo ... There are eight of us in our family with no work."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010 ... ions_N.htm

I recommend all the Gypsies of the EU be allowed to live in Brussels.