For the Gypsies of Eastern Europe, like Agnes Krappai, life never seems to improve. She lives in an impoverished section of Miskolc, Hungary, in a house with no running water. Her neighbor washes a rug in the street, coaxing water out of a hand-pumped well.
"It's a constant crisis, if there is such a thing," Krappai says.
But now, some leaders of the Gypsies, or Roma, are looking to a new model to try to achieve equality: the civil rights struggle of black Americans.
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
More and more, the Roma are going to court to secure their rights, and doing so where they think it will have the best chance for success -- among the new East European members of the EU and those trying to join, which are seeking to impress Western Europe with strict interpretations of their new anti-discrimination laws.
Anti-segregation
The Roma strategy was rewarded last October, when a Bulgarian court for the Sofia district ruled for them in a school segregation case.
"This is Brown v. Board of Education in Europe," said Dimitrina Petrova, executive director of the European Roma Rights Center, recalling the 1954 Supreme Court decision that overturned school segregation.
An appeal is under way, but the Bulgarian government has already begun enacting changes in state education policy, and the Romani Baht Foundation, the Bulgarian rights group that argued the case, said it planned about 50 more school segregation cases in the fall.
Anti-discrimination
In 2002, the foundation filed suit against a coffee shop in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria, for refusing to serve Roma. The foundation won, and has since filed suits against nightclub owners, hospitals and other companies, charging that they refuse to hire or serve Roma. The cases cited anti-discrimination laws enacted to prepare Bulgaria to join the EU.
European law is based on civil law, meaning that a court decision does not automatically become the law of the land -- and that court victories achieved in campaigns of strategic litigation do not necessarily have far-reaching effects.
For the first time, there is now Roma representation in Brussels. After Hungary joined the EU in 2004, it elected two Roma to the union's Parliament.
Still, there is no unified Roma movement and no leader like Martin Luther King Jr to help create one, nor galvanizing figures like Malcolm X or Rosa Parks.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in