The President of the Republic will receive associations next week to prepare ways in the biennium 2025-2026 on the occasion of the fifth centenary of the persecution of Portuguese Gypsies.
This will be done out of “duty of remembrance,” wrote Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa in the message with which he celebrates National Gypsy Day today.
“This is an opportunity to commemorate the suffering and injustice suffered by Portuguese Gypsy men and women during these five centuries, but also to recognize more than half a millennium of Portuguese Gypsy life and its respective contribution to national culture and identity. celebrate,” the president said in a statement.
Marcelo concluded the message by saying that “National Gypsy Day is also, and in that sense, a day of alertness and awareness for a diverse, fairer and socially more inclusive Portugal”.
A report of European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights said that in October last year The at-risk-of-poverty rate in Portugal’s Roma community reached 96 percent last year, while that of the general population was 16 percent.
In 2021, more than 60 percent of Roma in Portugal said they had experienced discrimination in the past year, the highest percentage of the 12 countries that took part in a survey by the European Agency for Fundamental Rights, the results of which were released this Tuesday. released.
The study involved ten European Union countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovakia, Spain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, the Czech Republic and Romania) and two countries not yet part of the European bloc (North Macedonia and Serbia ). of Roma last year compared to 2016 (when the survey did not include Italy).
In Portugal, 62 percent of respondents said they felt discriminated against in 2021 (up from 47 percent in 2016). The other countries also scoring high were Greece and the Czech Republic, with 53 and 48 percent respectively, with the average for European Union (EU) countries being 25 percent (26 in 2016).
The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) report also indicates that 28 percent of 2021 respondents in Portugal had been the target of at least one form of harassment (abusive or threatening remarks, threats of violence, abusive gestures, sending offensive or threatening messages or emails, and posting offensive comments on the Internet).
Source: DN
