Annual Report 2014 - Discrimination and the Roma community

27 / 131

25
Cases of discrimination in the media
Both papers also include discriminatory and racist comments against the Roma community. Following is an
example:
“Most or all Gypsies want to live on handouts: on the dole with a free house, free health care, free educa-
tion etc. without doing a stitch of work. And I say this because few, very few, are salaried workers like
the rest of us mere mortals and they don’t pay taxes ... because to get all of these “free” benefits they
should first have had to pay taxes and then see if they are entitled to benefits that are not universal,
such as housing. In other words, someone should check whether they are disadvantaged or just lazy
with their hand out and partying all day long. Being Gypsy doesn’t mean that they have more rights
than a payo.”
Another example of the total lack of control over forum news commentaries in the digital editions of newspa-
pers where all sorts of racist comments are permitted.
16. Valencia. The media. Direct discrimination. The Información de Alicante newspaper published a news item
relating that “a shootout between two gypsy families over a family disagreement set off alarms in the José
Antonio de Alicante neighbourhood yesterday”.
Once again we find the mention of ethnicity and terms such as ‘clan’ which tarnish the image of the Roma com-
munity as a whole because of the association drawn between delinquency and the Roma community.
17. National. Internet. Direct discrimination. While following up on a complaint made by an FSG worker in Jaen
about a web page: featuring racist, xenophobic and homophobic
content, we stumbled upon a YouTube channel that goes by the same name, i.e. “Gypsy criminals” with content
inciting hatred towards the Roma community as a whole. One of the particularly offensive links is:
Some of the comments which prompted our complaint was:
“We decided to create a channel showing the already well-known ugly dark side of the Gypsies.”
“Robbery has always been (and still is) their trademark.”
“Is very common to see them singing and dancing and clicking their heels while doing nothing”
“These little pricks still refuse to integrate” “they are still the kings of the picaresque” “they live on han-
douts without doing a lick of work.”
“It is no picnic having to live with such scum”, “these parasites have made their racial pride very clear.”
A complaint was lodged to the Computer Crime Squad in response to all of this. We also reported it to the
Barcelona Hate and Discrimination Prosecutor’s Office which advised us to lodge the complaint at the Computer
Crime Prosecutor’s Office in Galicia because that is where the authors were based. The material was removed
before legal steps were taken, probably because of the complaints concerning the YouTube channel.
18. National. Internet. Direct discrimination. When we looked up the word “gitano” on Frikipedia we found very
racist, prejudiced and discriminatory content. We wrote to the Web page administrator but received no re-
sponse.
We should point out that a complaint was made about this case in 2012 and we repeated our complaint in 2013.
Many of these sites remain open despite repeated complaints made by the FSG’s Equality Department, the main
reason being the difficulty in gaining access to the accounts of the administrators who disseminate this material.