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UK Forum Talks
Ustiben report
Talks and Meetings Continue in Europe about Travellers' Rights
By Grattan Puxon
March 31, 2006: On the eve of Roma Nation Day, the UK Forum will tell officials at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister next week that Britain is now out of step with Europe in its treatment of Travellers.
While the European Union wants to put a brake on the eviction of homeless Roma, the UK Government is still allowing local councils in Britain free rein to "clear Gypsies" from their areas.
"We spent a year thrashing out new guidelines in Strasbourg," said Forum chairman Cliff Codona. "So far these are being ignoredin this country. We want the ethnic-cleansing to stop and somepositive results achieved."
Codona said talks and meetings had been taking place with the ODPM for four years without concrete progress to show for it. After forty years of campaiging for basic human rights, the 350,000Gypsies in Britain faced more hatred and racism than ever before.
The headlined message to families whose homes were bulldozed by Basildon council last week was "don't come back". A clear statement of intended ethnic-cleansing, according to Richard Sheridan, a member of the delegation from Dale Farm, the UK's largest Travellers' community
He says private firms hired by councils to destroy hundreds of properties across the country should be vetted. They are breaking many safety regulations, endangering the lives of children and old people, Sheridan will tell the ODPM.
Among companies on the blacklist are Bedfordbased Constant & Co, the self-styled Gypsy eviction specialists; H.E.Services, and Terranova, a crane-hire group. They have been filmed in action at a number of recent eviction operations.
"A small child could be killed," he commented. "If bulldozers are sent into Dale Farm as Basildon intends. The Government has to take responsibility for this worsening crisis."
Kay Beard, a UK representative with the European Roma and Travellers Forum, says the ODPM has failed to include any mention of health and safety regulations in its new guidelines. Meanwhile, when Gypsies apply for planning consent they are almost always rejected because local authority decisions are often tainted by
racism.
"People have scrapped together the money to buy their little piece of land to avoid being forced to keep moving, she comments.”The only crime we've committed is to try and provide for ourselves."
She will be urging the government to encourage land exchanges were planning permission is lacking.
Please add your name to the Save Dale Farm Petition launched by IAI by replying to dale.farm@ntlworld.com
The Petition will be presented during Red Wheels Against Racism, a festival for "8 April", celebrated by Romanies and Travellers around the globe as Roma Nation Day and promoted by the UK Gypsies, Travellers and Roma Forum
LAINDON COMMUNITY CENTRE
Aston Road, Laindon, Essex
close to Laindon railway station and the A127
Starts 2.30 pm on Saturday, April 8.
Main Feature: A Traveller in Progress
A play by Michael Collins, depicting his own childhood and the forty years of the Travellers' campaigning for civil rights, from the stand at Cherry Orchard Camp, in Dublin, to today's siege of Dale Farm....
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