Highlighting Roma Plight

The call came just days after the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, the day the UN chose to commemorate the six million Jewish victims and others killed by the Nazi regime in Germany and occupied Europe during World War II.

Among these 'others' were some 200,000 to 800,000 Roma and Sinti people who died in Nazi concentration camps.

Today they make up Europe's largest minority, with 12 million members concentrated in central and eastern Europe.

Ghettoized

By and large, they are excluded from social, educational and job opportunities in many parts of Europe, representatives from seven nations told a news conference at UN headquarters.

"We are isolated in a ghetto and denied the same rights to education, work and medical care as other Europeans," they said.

"We direct a joint appeal to the new secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, who intends to make human rights a central plank of his policy, to stand up more strongly for the rights and social emancipation of the largest minority in Europe," said Romani Rose, chairman of the German Central Council for Sinti.

A UN Special Representative for Roma and Sinti Questions would "point out abuses and develop practical measures" to ensure their recognition as citizens with equal rights in their respective countries, Rose said.

Writing in the UN Chronicle paper, Rose said "(They) frequently have inadequate water supply, electricity, heating or sewage system and have to live on demarcated housing estates."

"The discriminatory practice of sending Roma children to special schools for the mentally handicapped or concentrating them in special Roma classes is a scandal that has deprived the largest minority in Europe of its long-term future," he added.

Exhibition on Holocaust against Sinti and Roma

Monday also saw the UN headquarters in New York open an exhibition in its General Assembly visitors' lobby called ''The Holocaust against the Roma and Sinti and present day racism in Europe,'' organized by the Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma, sister organization of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma.

The exhibition examines the Holocaust against the Roma and Sinti and the extent to which Europe as a whole was involved. It also focuses on present-day racist discrimination against the Sinti and Roma with reference to paintings and sculptures by four Holocaust survivors.

"The international political system is extremely sensitive to the various forms of anti-Semitism, whose rise we have observed with great concern in recent year," wrote Rose. "In contrast to this, there is neither an awareness of the historical dimension of the crimes of genocide committed against our minority nor of the present-day racism that Roma and Sinti are subjected to in many countries."

A statement by the Central Council of German Senti and Roma and the other national organizations said the ethnic minorities are
marginalized and discriminated against in several European countries.

"This is a scandal, which is unworthy of the European states,
which are founded on the protection of human rights," the statement said