Amnesty International released a report this week highlighting the plight of Roma across Europe particularly in Romania, entitled ‘Treated like waste: Roma homes destroyed, and health at risk, in Romania’. The report focuses on an incident in 2004 where over one hundred Roma were evicted from their homes in central Miercurea Ciuc and forced by local authorities to relocate into ‘temporary’ settlements next to a sewage plant.

‘The houses fill up with that smell,’ explained Ilana, a resident at the settlement, ‘at night the children cover their faces with their pillows’. Defying Romanian law, the municipal authorities have placed the Roma within a 300 metre protection zone around the sewage plant, a law designed to protect public health. Moreover, there is desperate overcrowding, offending the human dignity of Roma. Erszebet, another resident complained that, ‘it is tight, when the whole family goes to sleep we don’t fit in. We cannot take a bath; we cannot clean ourselves. It is too small. We don’t want the older girls to take a bath in front of their father.’

Miercurea Ciuc is not an isolated case, but an example of widespread discrimination against Roma across the Balkans. As Halya Gowan of Amnesty International said that ‘this pattern of forced evictions, without adequate consultation, adequate notice or adequate alternative housing, perpetuates racial segregation and violates Romania’s international obligations.’

Although official census figures place Romania’s Roma population at 535,000 or 2.4% of the population, Amnesty International believes that there are 2.2million Roma in Romania constituting 10% of the population. Whereas 24% of Romanians live in property, the proportion of Roma living in poverty is believed to be 75%. The report adds to the growing evidence of segregation and discrimination against Roma.

Europe’s Roma population live on the fringes of society and often struggle to be integrated into mainstream society. Some live as legal tenants but the vast majority live on land that is not protected by the law, consolidating their vulnerability. Violence against Roma has accelerated recently as the far-right’s appeal becomes stronger against a bleak economic backdrop. An unexpected effect of this was a surge in asylum applications in Canada from Roma in the Czech Republic who are fleeing discrimination.