The Civic Alliance of the Roma from Romania (ACRR) and the Press Monitoring Agency (AMP) organized a debate – “The Roma issue – from surgery to make-up” – to discuss journalist ethics aspects in stories about the Roma and the responsibility of politicians in providing stereotypes and bias about the Roma, especially in an electoral context.
The debate resulted in the civil society offering to help the government in drafting a strategy for crisis management, such as the situation of the Roma in Italy.
On this occasion, the preliminary results of a report drafted during the documentation mission conducted in Italy on May 23rd – 30th 2008 by a group of human rights activists (Open Society Institute, Center on Housing Rights and Evictions, the European Roma Rights Center, Romani Criss and the Civic Alliance of the Roma from Romania) were made public.
This mission was intended to collect information on the cases of racism and xenophobic manifestations against the Roma from Italy, given the current political, social and cultural context, including the abuses of the Italian authorities against the Roma from various camps located on its territory. (DIVERS – www.divers.ro)