On thursday 25th of March, noborder activists in Helsinki arranged a
demonstration against the deportations of Roma.

Appr. 100 people took part in the demonstration regardless of the rainy
weather. The demonstration took place the same day the first Romani
Slovaks were deported from Finland. Over 250 Roma from Slovakia have
applied for an asylum in Finland this year, none of them has gotten a
positive decision. In the media Roma have been labeled as "asylum
tourists".

The protesters demanded that no Roma should be deported to a country where
police brutality towards Roma is reality. Furthermore, every human being
has the right to flee from poverty, discrimination and institutional
violence.

Protesters paid a visit to Slovak Embassy and the Ministry of Interior, to
condemn both the racist policies of the Slovak government and the
decisions made by the Finnish Directorate of Immigration. Protesters also
visited inside the office of Czech Airlines, which is making the
deportation flights from Finland to Slovakia. The employees of the company
were told that as the flight company is responsible for the realisation of deportations as
well are the Finnish authorities, they won't be given peace until they quit
making deportations.

"Stoppa utvisningarna genast"
Article in Hufvudstadsbladet (in swedish):
 http://195.255.83.67/cgi-bin/mediaweb?Newsp=hbl&Date=040326&Depa=politik&Story=06850527.txt&Model=juttu.html

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The call for the demonstration:

The deportations of Romani Slovaks must be prevented!
- The Directorate of Immigration (UVI) is violating human rights agreements

Approximately 250 Romani Slovaks have arrived to Finland during the year
2004. The Directorate of Immigration (UVI) has processed the asylum
applications quickly and negative decisions have been made like
standardized products. The deportation of Roma has been planned to be
started already on week number 13.

We demand that no Roma should be deported to a country where police
brutality towards Roma is reality. Roma have the right to flee from
poverty, discrimination and the violence perpetrated by the Slovak State.
Recently there have been riots in Slovakia caused by the decision of
Slovak government to cut down social welfare dramatically.
The government has responded to riots by mobilising thousands of police
officers and soldiers to handle the situation - this is the biggest police
mobilisation since 1989.

The riots clearly indicate that the Slovak government has failed in its
policies. Official data indicates that approximately 87.5% of the Slovak
Romani population was unemployed during the period, as compared with an
unemployment rate of 14.2% for the population as a whole. Discrimination
on the labour market is widespread if not total, and in the recent past,
public labour offices have accepted announcements from employers
explicitly stating that Roma will not be considered. Due to this, Roma are
affected very harshly by the cutdowns in social welfare. The schooling of
Romani children in Slovakia has revealed extreme levels of racial
segregation: in some Slovak schools for the mentally disabled, every
single pupil was Romani. Discrimination prevails also in the health care
system and some Romani women have in recent years been coercively
sterilized.

Many Roma live in extremely substandard, ethnically segregated slum
settlements, which are lacking in formal infrastructure such as paved
roads, electricity, heating, sewage removal and the provision of adequate
drinking water. Roma have been evicted away from city centres. In 2001,
the Slovak government amended the Slovak civil code to weaken the rights
of tenants. In the wake of the amendments, there has been a significant
rise in the number of forced evictions of Roma in Slovakia. Today, the
Slovak state is still ready to punish Romani population and to ignore
racism, discrimination and violations of human rights.

The group of 43 Roma who arrived Finland on 18th of March are from
Trebisov, a city in Eastern Slovakia, where hundreds of Roma have clashed
with the police. In Trebisov dozens of Roma have been arrested, both men
and women and even children. Recently appr. 240 police officers raided the
local Romani community for a period of not less than 12 hours, during
which officers violently entered the houses of Roma, without showing any
form of authorization, struck with truncheons and kicked a large number of
Romani individuals, in houses, in the open in the settlement, as well as
in police custody, and subjected them also to electric shocks from cattle
prods. According to a Slovak newspaper, one Romani man has been killed.

Due to this, the Slovak government has announced that they will spend
appr. 1 250 000 Euro on an image campaign to improve Slovakia's reputation
abroad. The recent incidents indicate that the Slovak state cannot
guarantee the human rights of Romani population, and because of this we
demand that the plans to deport Roma from Finland must be ceased
immediately. The deportation of Roma back to Slovakia would mean that
Finland does not recognise the violations of human rights perpetrated
towards Roma, but, in breach of all human rights agreements and western
conceptions of human rights, accepts the oppression of Romani population.

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For further information, see:

Roma Press Agency:
 http://www.rpa.sk/clanok.aspx?l=en

International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) and the Slovak
Helsinki Committee (SHV) expressed their concerns at the failure of the
Slovak government to respect human rights principles and standards before
and in the context of the series of riots recently conducted by members of
the Roma community in Central and Eastern Slovakia:
 http://www.ihf-hr.org/viewbinary/viewhtml.php?doc_id=5367

European Roma Rights Center - Urgent Measures Needed to Address
Deep-Seated Racism Issues in Slovakia:
 http://errc.org/publications/letters/2004/slovakia_feb_26_2004.shtml