According to the materials that our organization has, the administration of the Kaliningrad region motivated by several decisions of the

According to our data there are cases of drug circulation in the village, but the absolute majority of the Roma population has nothing to do with it.

Practically all the people living in Dorozhny were registered in their houses. More, these houses and land were given to them by the Soviet authorities at the end of 1960s, after the well-known Decree of the USSR Supreme Council that abolished wandering and transfer to the settled way of life. In 2001 the local region court allowed Roma to register the documents for the land, which was annulled after the new governor of the Kaliningrad region, Georgy Boos spoke on TV. He stated that he disapproved the criminal record of the village and said he will “eliminate it with fire”. We believe that the real reason for driving the Roma out of their houses is the fact that the land has commercial potential and can later be sold at good price.

To prepare local citizens for the houses demolition the local mass media opened the campaign: several reports were made on TV and in the newspapers about the drug circulation in the Roma village. The next step was taken by the court: the decision was passed to demolish the houses. Now local authorities prepare the land for the auction sales, which will take place soon.

After 40 houses were demolished more than 150 people, including small children, were thrown into the streets. They are all the citizens of Russian Federation and all of them had proper registration in Dorozhny. After some of their passports were “legally” exchanged, young people got passports at the age of 14 and some new born children got their papers, all of those people lost their registration in the village. Some of the people kept photocopies of their old passports with the registration in Dorozhny. We think the eviction of Roma from their houses as a punitive measure in it`s pure form – no compensation was offered to the families. Forced to live under the open sky people have built for themselves tents that are regularly put down by the local militia. Authorities try to make Roma go to the distant villages of the Kaliningrad region, but in every such place an anti-gypsy campaign in mass media took place, explaining that Roma will sell drugs in order to form negative reaction of local people. As it turns out the Roma have no place to go now. At any moment militia can force them to go to theses remote places (200 –300 km from Kaliningrad, whereas Dorozhny was only 2 km away).

If this is not deportation in its pure form, what is it? The main principle of the Constitution of the Russian Federation that guarantees every Russian citizen the right to have a place to live is violated. The unprofessional taping of the events shows the cruelty of the local authorities demolishing peoples’ houses in their presence – militia and the military with guns, burning remnants of the gipsy houses, disoriented and upset people (there are old people among them), crying children. To us these photos and films look like the documentaries of the Nazi Germany measures taken in the World War 2.

We are sure that the drug circulation and crime issues have to be resolved within legal space. Lawbreakers should be punished, but not the people of any particular ethnic group.

At the same time similar acts take place in Archangelsk, Volgograd (where recently 2 Roms were murdered), in the town of Iskitim in Novosibirsk region (where several Roms houses were burnt down and several people died there. Among them was the 8-year-old girl).

The same happens in Ulianovsk and Yaroslval. Deputes, mayors of cities and towns, governors, prosecutors – the authorities representatives, that are supposed to guarantee the legal procedures in the country, call to deportations, pogrom, massacre and fires. The expulsion of the Roma is shown on all the TV channels without any comment on the legal basis for such desperate measures. We would like to think that all the cases mentioned above are coincidental and not a part of a planned campaign against our ethnic group. Urgent measures are needed to stop this and we do hope that such measures will be taken soon.

Contact information:

Nadejda Demeter

Federal Ethnic-Cultural Russian Roma Authonomy

109428, RYAZANSKIJ Prospekt, 39, build 1.

Moscow. Russian Federation.

Tel.: +7-095-171-87-18

       +7-095-735-40-10

Fax: +7-095- 171-87-18

E-mail:

demetera@mtu-net.ru