UN asked to name official to protect Roma rights

[struggle4progress]

Representatives of the Roma and Sinti, also known as gypsies, urged the United Nations today to appoint a senior official to promote and protect their rights.

The groups make up Europe's largest minority, with 12 million members spread mainly across central and eastern Europe.

The representatives presented their case two days after the annual international day of commemoration of Holocaust victims on Saturday. An estimated 200,000 to 800,000 Roma people were killed in Nazi concentration camps during World War Two.

Sixty years later, some governments are waging an effective battle against discrimination. But Roma and Sinti remain widely excluded from social, educational and job opportunities in many parts of Europe, representatives from seven nations told a news conference at UN headquarters ...

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10421549

[rman]

1. Suit filed by representatives of Sinti and Roma against IBM

The suit filed by representatives of Sinti and Roma against IBM is rejected
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/59381

For many years, GIRCA has been pressing charges against IBM, but the special interest group representing Sinti and Roma has now suffered a defeat. GIRCA charges that the IBM Group supplied machines and card punchers to the National Socialist régime in Germany from 1933 to 1945 from the production of its subsidiary Hollerith-Maschinen-Gesellschaft (DEHOMAG) for the planning and execution of the Holocaust, thus contributing to the persecution of Sinti and Roma in the concentration camps. The organization thus demanded damages from IBM due to its "involvement in crimes against humanity."

more...


GIRCA
http://www.gypsycompensation.org/

---

for IBM's involvement in the Holocaust see
"The Corporation"
www.thecorporation.com

[struggle4progress]

2. Thanks. I hadn't been aware of this. It sounds like IBM, though:

I do remember how the company helped prop up apartheid in South Africa by providing equipment to enforce the pass system there ...

[Nihil]

3. Why?

The United Nations is intended to get *nations* to cooperate.
It is not intended to work at the tribal level (except where there
are tribal conflicts, civil wars, etc., within the confines of a
member state).

If there were specific problems (e.g., all Roma being hunted down
and imprisoned/expelled from Turkey) then the UN would step in
anyway (albeit as slowly as they did with Rwanda) but in the meantime
it is up to the Roma to conduct themselves within the laws of the
host country rather than try to claim special privileges not granted
to host tribes.