LIVE BROADCAST: RomanoNet delivers protest manifesto to the Italian Embassy about Italy's racist measures against Roma

Representatives of RomanoNet will deliver a protest manifesto to the Ambassador of Italy to the Czech Republic, Aldo Amati, very shortly. The organizations are protesting against the situation of Romani in Italy, where the Italian Interior Minister and leader of the ultra-right Lega group, Matteo Salvini, is demanding a census of Romani people and the application of racist policies against them.

ROMEA TV will broadcast an interview live from the Italian Embassy with the organizers at 15:30. Today’s event will be followed by a demonstration tomorrow and a march to the Embassy of Ukraine in Prague.

“In recent weeks there have been several pogroms committed against Romani people that have also resulted in fatalities. A kindergarten was burned down that Romani children were attending. This violence can no longer be tolerated and it is necessary to speak up very loudly in support of the Roma in Ukraine,” said Michal Miko, director of RomanoNet, which brings together several important pro-Roma and Roma organizations and is convening tomorrow’s protest in the Czech Republic.

The protest series has been underway in nine European countries – Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Spain – between 28 July and 6 August and is meant to draw attention to current racism against Romani people in Europe. Several of the events will also commemorate the atrocities committed during the Second World War, including an annual gathering in the UK.

Romani people all over Europe mark Roma Holocaust Memorial Day on 2 August. This year marks the sad 74th anniversary of the liquidation of the so-called “Gypsy Family Camp” in Auschwitz when on 2 and 3 August 1944, 2 898 Romani children, men and women were murdered in the gas chambers.