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15
Cases of discrimination. Conclusions and recommendations
A sample of the reality that the
Roma community faces every day:
194 cases of discrimination
Here we are, back again to get a closer look at the
everyday discrimination faced by the Roma commu-
nity. In the
194 registered cases of discrimination, 382
Roma
were affected. We should point out that this re-
port is not intended to be a survey nor could it ever
aspire to recount all cases of discrimination. It is simply
a sample that our services have detected. Unfortunate-
ly these cases are representative of a much broader
reality.
The most important areas where we have detected in-
cidents are the media and Internet (49% of the cases
recorded), employment (13%), access to goods and
services (9%) and police services (9%).
We would like to begin with the following observations:
1. Discrimination in the media
and internet
It is important to note that in this area, media and in-
ternet, it is easier to identify cases thanks to the
press-tracking service available to the FSG and Internet
monitoring efforts by the Foundation’s staff. It is easier
to identify cases since we do not depend on an indi-
vidual victim who decides to come forward to report
the incident, has the necessary information to do so
and trusts the response mechanisms. However, solving
these discriminatory incidents in the media and Internet
is a whole different story. It is very difficult to even get
a response from media that engage in the practice of
identifying the ethnic group of the person in the news
story and employ stereotypical and discriminatory lan-
guage (“reyerta, patriarca...” [brawl, patriarch], i.e. terms
in Spanish that put the idea in readers’ minds that the
people involved are Roma). On the other hand, as re-
gards the Internet, when we report on the existence of
discriminatory content and publications some of those
responsible for monitoring social networks respond in
a positive way and delete that content. However, in
some serious cases such as websites that publish con-
tent that could constitute hate crime against the Roma
community, we find that legal response mechanisms
are both sluggish and ineffective. In this respect, we
are confident that the reform of Article 510(3) of the
criminal code will boost the persecution and removal
of such content. We believe there is a need to estab-
lish precautionary measures, or rather “extreme precau-
tionary measures” to keep this sort of content that in-
cites hatred towards the Roma community from being
broadcast on the Internet in Spain. .
We sincerely hope that the current criminal code reform, and enhanced coordination be-
tween the police, hate crime and discrimination prosecution services and organisations like
ourselves that identify cases, will lead to a more effective response.