Zed asks Europe to drop prejudice against Roma children

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Correspondent

28 September, 2010

Eminent Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada, United States of America, said that Europe, which boasted of its human rights record and was an affluent continent, should bend its head in shame over this Roma maltreatment.

EMINENT HINDU statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada, United States of America, said that Europe, which boasts of its human rights record and is an affluent continent, should bend its head in shame over this Roma maltreatment.

The report indicates that in one of the European countries, rate of completion of secondary school for Roma children was 1.2 per cent; while in another, Roma children’s attendance at preschool was 0.2 per cent. “Roma children may not have the medical certificate required for registration in a kindergarten”, it adds.

Quoting a UN report, Zed, who is president of Universal Society of Hinduism, listed barriers to Roma education as: appalling poverty, persistent racism, discrimination and far?reaching social exclusion, stereotypes and prejudice dating back several centuries, disabilities, chronic ill-health, poor housing, life in marginalised settlements, homelessness, absence of funds to dress children appropriately for school, segregation, mainstream prejudice and xenophobia, being bullied and felt unwelcome at school, abusive school?entry testing of Roma children (culturally biased tests looking for weaknesses and not strengths), etc.

Rajan Zed stressed that something needed to be done urgently and now for this about 15-million Roma community, whose traces in Europe went as far back as ninth century CE, but who still appeared in 2010 as Europe’s most unwanted and faced apartheid day after day. European political parties and religious groups and their leaders should strongly come out against xenophobia.