Minorities Report Discrimination in E.U. Survey
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/world/europe/23iht-ethnic.html?ref=europe
PARIS — More than half of ethnic and immigrant minorities throughout the European Union say that ethnic discrimination is widespread in their countries, according to a new survey published Wednesday. The findings also showed that the vast majority of those who said they were the victims of racist crimes did not report them to the police because they did not believe it would do any good.
The survey, in which 23,500 people from ethnic and immigrant minorities were interviewed last year, is the first by the European Union to study the experience of minorities in member countries. It was conducted by the Vienna-based European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, an E.U. body set up in 2007 to advise policy makers on safeguarding human rights.
The publication of the findings coincides with the United Nations’s conference on racism in Geneva this week. The details will be made public in a series of 10 reports this year.
The survey showed that 55 percent of minorities considered discrimination based on ethnic origin to be widespread in the country where they were living; 37 percent said they personally had suffered discrimination over the previous year. Twelve percent of respondents said they had experienced a racist crime in the last 12 months, but of those 80 percent said they did not report it.
“The survey reveals how large the ‘dark figure’ of racist crime and discrimination really is in the E.U.,” Morten Kjaerumm, director of Fundament Rights, said in remarks accompanying the survey’s release. “Thousands of cases of racist crime and discrimination remain invisible.”
The highest reported level of discrimination based on ethnic or immigrant origin was reported by North African migrants in Italy, where 94 percent of respondents said it was widespread. Ninety percent of Roma, also called gypsies, in Hungary said discrimination was rife.
Throughout Europe, one out of two Roma interviewed said that he or she had been mistreated on racist grounds in the previous 12 months.
