Amnesty urges Romania to end forced Roma evictions

Amnesty International urged Romania to stop forced evictions of Roma as it documented Thursday how scores of families have been resettled next to garbage dumps and sewage plants with no legal recourse. "The human right to adequate housing is not recognised or adequately protected in Romanian law. This can affect every citizen, especially the most vulnerable and marginalized ones," Barbora Cernusakova, an Amnesty reseracher on Romania, told a press conference. A report titled "Mind the Legal Gap: Roma and the Right to Housing in Romania" documents a dozen cases of forced evictions of Roma communities counting between a hundred and a thousand members, carried out over the last few years. In one such case, 56 Roma families were driven away from the north-western city of Cluj, last December. Forty families were resettled near a garbage dump on the outskirts of the city, while no shelter was provided to the remaining ones. In 2004, a hundred Roma families were evicted from a building in Miercurea Ciuc, in central Romania. Local authorities said they would be "temporarily" resettled near a sewage plant. But seven years later they are still living there. "Widespread intolerance and prejudice against Roma, combined with the lack of adequate housing laws, have given local authorities carte blanche to openly discriminate against them," Cernusakova said. She added that "those whose rights are violated have no access to justice," primarily because they cannot afford to take their case to court. Data collected by right groups show that some 5,000 Roma have been evicted over the last few years and their number is likely to grow, said Marian Mandache of RomaniCRISS. The Roma community in Romania is one of the largest in Europe, counting up to two million people according to unofficial estimates.