Informal legal school for Roma people to be arranged in Homel
Homel human
rights activists announced yesterday the opening of a legal school for Roma. The
decision was made based on the results of a roundtable discussion on Roma-related
discrimination. The
event was organized by local activists of the organizing committee of the party
"Belarusian Christian Democracy". The
round table was attended by human rights defenders, representatives of the Roma
people, pastor of the "Living Faith" church, who has been helping Roma
children.
"We
agreed that Roma will gather their people and bring them in for a legal school.
Many of
them do not have any sort of legal knowledge. We
will analyze different situations in the classroom, explaining what their responsibilities
to the state are, and what the state owes them. Roma
often get into trouble not out of malice, but out of ignorance of the
laws", stresses BHC’s human rights activist Ales Yauseyenka.
He
said there were instances when the police stormed into a house at night and
took Roma people to the station to be fingerprinted. All night proceedings
are illegal. "If
Roma knew it, they would have at least written a complaint. Or
their children were taken to the asylum just because their parents had no papers.
Instead
of these radical measures the state should help them make the papers. Some
of the Roma do not even know where to get a passport," said the human
rights activist.
According
to him, the two months of workshops for the Roma ethnic group will feature sessions
in Law – from the Housing Code and the Family Code, to the constitutional and
international law.
