“When it comes to the Roma community, foreign donors and the non-governmental sector are always the first to help, not the state. That must change, “said Elvis Shakjiri of Romalitiko and the AVAJA initiative at a panel discussion on” Social Justice and Discrimination: Too Many People on the Margins of Society and Politics’ Until When? “Organized by CIVIL on December 11th.
“In the past period, during the pandemic, we managed to give hundreds of electronic devices to Roma children to be able to participate in the educational process, but we also face another problem, and that is that families do not have electricity. In our society, there is always talk about how to include the margins, and not what kind of benefit can be had,” said Shakjiri.
According to him, the state does not create conditions in general, regardless of the category of people.
“Unfortunately, we can not reach all the families, the problems are systemic, you will solve one problem, then another appears. We asked for meetings with state institutions, but our society always has other priorities, to solve those problems of the elites, it is rare to solve a problem without going to a systemic solution. Through PR they say that they have solved a bigger problem, but most often it is not like that, it is a general problem in our country, those problems should be solved systematically,” said Shakjiri.
He adds that children who do not have the conditions for online teaching must physically attend school, which increases the risk of COVID-19.
“We have two types of discrimination, one is in everyday life between individuals, but we also have more complex discrimination from the state, it does not take any steps. In this case, the state, in some way, given that it does not take systemic solutions, encourages individuals to behave in such a way towards certain groups,” he added.
Shakjiri says that in Bitola there was a case where for three days the police did not want to make a report on a certain case, because the complainant was from the Roma ethnic community.
“After three days, we had to go to Bitola from Skopje with a lawyer and solve the problem, which is systemic. It is devastating for a society that has to react with a lawyer to something that should be a normal police procedure. And it is not only the police, but it is the same in other institutions.
Today it can be seen that Roma have been employed in jobs where this was not the case before. There is an example of Roma at the cash register in a supermarket, in a cafe, but that is not because now the Roma have some special qualifications, but because there is no staff. The Ombudsman’s report constantly states that if the head of a certain institution is Macedonian, only Macedonians are employed, while if the head is Albanian, that institution has employees only from the Albanian ethnic community,” said Shakjiri.
Shakjiri presented some of the data from the research they conducted through Romalitico, noting that many employers answered that they would not employ Roma even though they meet all the criteria.
D.M.
camera: Atanas Petrovski
editing: Arian Mehmeti
