Germany: Racism against Sinti and Roma increasing – DW – 06/23/2025

DW

6 days ago

A new report about antiziganism in Germany has revealed alarming figures — and criticized the media for feeding clichés. But the community is counting small successes.
Sinti and Roma are especially affected by prejudice, discrimination, racism, according to the Antiziganism Reporting and Information Center in Germany (MIA), which has documented the nature and scale of antiziganism in Germany in its latest annual report.
The report recorded 1,678 antiziganism cases in 2024, ranging from verbal abuse to assaults — a significant increase on the 621 reported in its first edition, published for the year 2022. "The incidents documented in this report clearly show that verbal stigmatization and antiziganism propaganda paves the way for discrimination and for physical attacks up to life-threatening violence," Mehmet Daimagüler, Germany's first ever federal commissioner against antiziganism, wrote in the foreword.
A lawyer by profession, Daimagüler was appointed in 2022, but was replaced by the new German government in June this year with Michael Brand, a member of the Bundestag for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and state secretary at the Family Ministry, which supported the MIA report.
Brand took over the office in difficult times. "It is absolutely clear, in light of the increase in extremism fanned from within and outside Germany, that we must now especially protect minorities such as the Sinti and Roma from the effects of extremism and discrimination," the conservative politician said.
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The significantly higher number of antiziganist incidents can be attributed to the growing awareness of the MIA's work. But beyond the raw figures, the report shows that those affected are reporting a generally hostile atmosphere.
The almost 70-page report includes numerous concrete examples of degrading, sometimes violent discrimination: In one incident caught on camera, a Sinti boy who was bullied in school was held down by several boys after school one day, tied to a bench and beaten.
According to the report, the incident escalated further when the parents of the boy and two of their relatives confronted the parents of the perpetrators: Several people joined the row and attacked the Sinti family, one of whom suffered a broken foot. Another was threatened with a knife and injured.
A study has shown that such excesses are occurring repeatedly in German kindergartens and schools. The root of this development is what the MIA calls an increasingly hostile political debate: "The MIA observes that anti-Roma and Sinti statements, especially by right-wing parties, are poisoning the social climate."
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Romani Rose, who has headed the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma since 1982, draws a pessimistic conclusion in the MIA report. "Unfortunately, we must acknowledge that despite our almost 50 years of political work in this country, a change in consciousness has only just begun," he said.
Rose also recalled the systematic extermination of his ethnic group by the National Socialists. By the end of the Second World War, more than half a million Sinti and Roma throughout Europe had been persecuted or murdered. Today, an estimated 80,000 – 140,000 live in Germany. Europe-wide, their population numbers between 10 and 12 million.
The MIA also blamed the media for shaping the clichéd image of Sinti and Roma. Distorted or false portrayals are found in commercial media outlets and public service broadcasters alike, the report found, and there have been more frequent complaints about stigmatizing or false depictions.
One documented case concerned the supposed large-scale misuse of public funds by Roma allegedly posing as Ukrainian refugees: "More than 5,000 cases of social fraud via fake Ukrainians," read a March 2024 article published by the Ippen media group, which appeared on numerous German news outlets.
The background to the text was stories circulating shortly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine about people said to have posed as refugees. According to the MIA report, this was a typical case of media failure, as the story was specifically directed against Roma, who were accused either of travelling to Germany with forged Ukrainian passports or concealing possible Ukrainian-Hungarian dual citizenship. In fact, Ukrainian Romani people have suffered discrimination in Germany.
The publishing of the report in the newspaper was the trigger for a successful complaint to the German Press Council, the self-regulating body for Germany's print media and their online channels.
According to the council, the reports violated fundamental journalistic principles: Instead of scrutinizing the numbers, other media outlets were simply taken as a source. The council went on to condemn the story on three counts: Violating journalistic due diligence, the non-discrimination rule, and disregarding the presumption of innocence.
Due to limited resources, the MIA is still unable to carry out its own systematic media monitoring: "Nevertheless, we closely follow the discourse and developments in media coverage," the organization's annual report said.
The MIA welcomed the fact that the post of an antiziganism federal commissioner had been retained after all — something that had been in doubt because there was no commitment to the post in the coalition agreement of Germany's new federal government. Now the MIA team can breathe a sigh of relief and appeal to policymakers to strengthen the office with the appropriate resources and personnel.
The initial statements by the new antiziganism commissioner are likely to raise hopes in the Sinti and Roma community: "Where discrimination occurs, it must be clearly and decisively confronted – by the state and society alike," emphasized Brand, adding: "It is important to me to also highlight the many positive examples of cooperation between the majority society and minorities."
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