Latest news with #anti-Roma
Scoop
20-07-2025
- Politics
- Scoop
UNHRC Publishes Findings On Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Kazakhstan, Latvia, North Macedonia, Spain, And Viet Nam
GENEVA (18 July 2025) – The UN Human Rights Committee today issued its findings on Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Kazakhstan, Latvia, North Macedonia, Spain and Viet Nam, following its review of these States parties during its 144th session. The findings highlight positive developments and outline key concerns and recommendations regarding each country's implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Key issues include: Guinea-Bissau The Committee noted with concern that despite constitutional guarantees, the judiciary remains vulnerable to political interference and pressure from criminal networks. It urged the State party to strengthen the independence and functioning of the judiciary by, among others, providing increased resources to the judicial system. The Committee also raised concerns about restrictions of peaceful assembly, intimidation of human rights defenders, and interference with trade unions, urging the authorities to respect and protect civic space. Haiti The Committee expressed concern about the impact of ongoing large-scale gang violence on the Haitian population and the inability of the police to stop it. It called on the State party to take steps to fully comply with its obligations to protect the right to life, including by implementing a public policy to dismantle the gangs and 'self-defence brigades', and to redouble efforts to prevent and eliminate corruption in state institutions, one of the root causes of insecurity and human rights violations. Kazakhstan The Committee expressed concern that counter-terrorism efforts may be unduly restricting civic space and about reports of the use of force and acts of torture by law enforcement officials against members of civil society. It urged the State party to bring its counter-terrorism efforts in line with its international human rights law obligations and ensure that all allegations of excessive use of force are properly investigated and that victims are provided with remedies. Latvia The Committee raised concerns about border protection measures restricting asylum access, which it said expose refugees to the risk of non-refoulement and ill-treatment. It called on the authorities to ensure all individuals in need of international protection are assessed fairly and efficiently and to investigate allegations of pushbacks and ill-treatment of refugees at border points. North Macedonia The Committee was concerned that despite progress achieved in some areas, including the adoption of a strategy for the inclusion of Roma 2022-2030, discrimination and marginalization against the Roma community remained significant, with its members experiencing high levels of poverty and exclusion, and subjected to ethnic profiling. It called on the authorities to embrace poverty reduction efforts and improve advocacy and awareness to address anti-Roma discrimination. Spain The Committee welcomed progress made in areas of memory, truth and reparation for past human rights violations, including the adoption of the 2022 Democratic Memory Law and the establishment of a Prosecutor for Human Rights and Democratic Memory, but expressed regrets that the 1977 Amnesty Law remains active and that proceedings initiated in 2010 for violations committed during the Spanish Civil War and the Franco Dictatorship have not resulted in any effective actions. It also expressed concern about violent incidents of pushbacks of refugees and the alleged excessive use of force by border agents in Ceuta in 2014 and Melilla in 2022, resulting in serious injuries and deaths. It called on the authorities to implement fair asylum procedures that respect the principle of non-refoulement and to investigate the incidents of excessive use of force in Ceuta and Melilla. Viet Nam The Committee welcomed the recent removal of the death penalty for eight crimes in Viet Nam. However, it remained concerned that the death penalty remains for ten crimes, including non-violent crimes. The Committee called on the State party to refrain from carrying out executions by maintaining a de facto moratorium. The Committee also raised concerns about reports of torture and ill treatment of detainees. The full Concluding Observations are available on the session page.
Euronews
08-07-2025
- Euronews
What's happening online as the Commission cracks down on hate speech?
The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance has called on Sweden, Portugal, Croatia and Latvia to take stronger action against hate speech, predominantly targeting migrants, Roma, LGBTQ+ and Black people. This call comes as an average medium level of online toxicity has been recorded since the beginning of 2025, according to the European Observatory of Online Hate (EOOH). Online toxicity encompasses rude, aggressive, and degrading attitudes and behaviour exhibited on online platforms. It can range from an excessive use of profanity to outright hate speech. The EOOH scores toxicity in four different categories from safe (score of 0) to high (score between 0.8 and 1). The toxicity score is determined by lists of hateful and other problematic words and phrases. These lists were compiled from social media, and each entry was assigned a toxicity level along with specific categories of toxicity, such as sexism, racism, and others. In April 2025, the observatory recorded the highest level of toxicity seen so far this year, with a score of 0.22 out of 1. This score falls into the medium category, in which messages are found to be toxic without being extreme. In May this year, antisemitism maintained the highest average toxicity score at 0.34, with 88% of the posts originating from X (formerly Twitter). The European Observatory of Online Hate analysed more than 2.5 million messages in 11 languages, across six social media platforms in May. After antisemitic comments, anti-Roma content was the second-most common kind of online hate speech. A score of 0.30 highlights this community continues to be targeted by online users. Most posts originated from X (82%), with Reddit (7%) and TikTok (4%) also contributing significantly. Anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-Muslim narratives both registered significant toxicity levels at 0.29 and 0.28, respectively, while anti-refugee content scored 0.23. This toxic content was mainly shared on X, at 81% and 87%, respectively. Although sexist content recorded the lowest average toxicity score at 0.19, these insults still represented the highest volume of toxic posts, with the observatory noting almost 3 million examples. Misogynistic language dominated the most harmful discourse. This figure is over three times the number of anti-Roma posts and more than double that of posts targeting LGBTQ+ individuals.
Euractiv
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Euractiv
Trial begins over shooting of Slovak PM
BRATISLAVA – Juraj Cintula, a 72-year-old man accused of shooting Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico last year, will stand trial today. Cintula is facing upgraded terrorism charges after initially being charged with attempted murder. The trial will center around the shooting, which took place last year in May. Fico was shot multiple times in the abdomen while greeting supporters after a government meeting in Handlová in central Slovakia. Known for his aggressive rhetoric towards political opponents, Fico claimed that the assassination attempt was the result of opposition campaigns, highlighting the country's polarised political landscape. But the shooter's profile has so far resisted neat classification. While a video published shortly after the shooting shows him criticizing Fico's governance, he also attended pro-Russian rallies and wrote a racist anti-Roma treatise. Cintula faces possible life imprisonment, and another hearing is scheduled for tomorrow. No immediate result is expected in the trial, which includes over 6,000 pages of evidence. On the one-year anniversary of the attack, Fico returned to the scene of the shooting and issued ominous warnings of further attacks on government politicians.
Novaya Gazeta Europe
02-07-2025
- Novaya Gazeta Europe
Roma teenager sentenced to almost 10 years for murder that led to race riots in Russian town — Novaya Gazeta Europe
A court in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, in the Urals, has sentenced a physically disabled Roma teenager to nine years and 10 months in prison for the murder of a taxi driver that sparked anti-Roma protests in the town last October, regional news website reported on Tuesday. Yegor Yurchenko, a 17-year-old man from the town of Korkino in the Chelyabinsk region, was found guilty of the murder of Yelena Manzhosova and of car theft. Yurchenko, who has been unable to speak or hear since birth, was also ordered to pay 164,000 rubles (€1,800) to the family of the murdered woman and another 2 million rubles (€22,300) to her mother, according to regional website Ura News. According to the prosecution, Yurchenko had taken Manzhosova's taxi on 23 October. During the ride, a conflict arose, in the course of which Yurchenko stabbed Manzhosova and stole her car, the investigation said. Yurchenko had his sentence conveyed to him via a sign language interpreter. He pleaded not guilty, according to Ura News. Yurchenko's father said after the verdict was announced that his son was 'completely lost and disoriented', adding that he had 'the mental age of … someone aged 11-13', which the prosecutors and the investigators 'chose to ignore'. When news that members of the Roma community may have been implicated in Manzhosova's murder emerged in Korkino on 24 October, race riots began, with angry locals heading to a village where a high number of Roma lived and setting several houses on fire. Police in Korkino also conducted 'preventive' raids against members of the Roma community, which Nadezhda Demeter, a representative of the Russian Roma community, called 'punitive'.
Novaya Gazeta Europe
02-07-2025
- Novaya Gazeta Europe
Anti-Roma unrest erupts in Russian Volga region village after death of local teenager — Novaya Gazeta Europe
Roughly 200 people gathered to demand the eviction of local Roma families from a village in Russia's Saratov region in a spontaneous protest on Tuesday, following a fatal traffic accident involving a 15-year-old boy and a Roma driver, local media has reported. The fatal collision occurred in the village of Podlesnoye at about 9:30am local time on Tuesday when a Lada vehicle being driven by a member of the local Roma community struck a teenager, who was driving a moped, killing him. According to Vzglyad-info, a local media outlet which first reported the incident, the driver was detained at the scene and later placed under criminal investigation. In the hours following the announcement of the boy's death, demonstrators converged outside the village administration building, accusing the local Roma community of long-standing disorder and criminality, including the sale of drugs, driving without driver's licences, and evading military service. Thereafter, Vzglyad-info reports, district head Dmitry Romanov arrived at the protest and attempted to calm the crowd, along with the district's chief prosecutor. Romanov promised to investigate the community for alleged violations of migration law and pledged to provide a list of Roma men from the village who had participated in Russia's military campaign in Ukraine, while asking locals to avoid turning the incident into 'something interethnic'. Following the unrest, most of the Roma community fled Podlesnoye, according to Vzglyad-info. Elsewhere in Russia, a physically disabled Roma teenager was sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison at the end of May for the fatal stabbing of a fellow teenager — a case that sparked wider anti-Roma riots and mass detentions in the town of Korkino, in the Urals, last October.
