At the beginning of October Belarusian Delegate in ERTF Kalinin Nicolas sent his request to Minister of Education in order to find out the results of Roma education situation. At the very beginning of exams time, when young people were passing exams, I sent my inquiry to Chairman of Examination Observation board, Mr. Rubinov where I kindly asked him to pay attention on Roma young people who are attempting to receive higher education. So far Mr. Rubinov was keeping silence. Hiding information from society is not going to lead to solution. Hiding current economical situation from population is not going to solution. We need to know what kind of paces Belarusian government is undertaking for Roma. You can say that the answer is obvious- there no step forward to Roma and you are right. Completely rights and that is the problem. The answer is so visible that you are going to get accustomed too. It is a crisis
Nevertheless, Roma people are long to education. The point is how far they are willing to go in searching of equality?! My current observation made from Roma youth in Belarus says me that Roma are tired to seek the truth. Knocking to closed doors, day by day, little by little you have became to release that something wrong with the “door”, not with you. International programs declared for Roma participation are only proclaimed as Roma programs. It’s hard to imagine who are participating in so-called Roma programs. For instance, European Roma rights Center, based in Hungary. How many Roma are there? The right answer that there are no Roma in ERRC and who is benefit from ERRC programs - it’s a mystery…Everyone is but Roma! There are no educated Roma people? Plenty of!!! Plenty of educated, inspired, motivated Roma people… You don’t have to seeking for them; they are next to you if you are really looking. From one hand we have host of so-called “Roma programs without Roma” and from other hand it’s very difficult to participate in others. Because international institutions says, ok, we are agree with you but you have some programs from European Roma Rights Center which are announced as dedicated directly for you, so, go and claim you rights, as far as this programs proclaimed ad “Roma”. And it is your problem that there only one who are benefit from Roma programs is ERRC. Due to “Roma programs without Roma” ERRC have converted into enterprises private company with high budget. Who is leading Roma network? It should be Roma, says you. No, Roma Network is leading by one citizen of Israel, his name is Valery Novoselsky and Roma people can’t recall when and how we asked him to create Roma database?! Why he decided to collect our data’s? Too pity, but I would call it crisis
It’s the same in political situation in Belarus. Dally with Lukashenka instead of crucial measures against Lukashenka shows us lack of interest to Belarus. We can keep dally with Lukashenka; he is never going to change. I’m completely agreed with Russian Prime Minister. Lukashenka is not a dictator, it’s too flattery for Lukashenka. Who Lukashenka really is? Lukashenka is a typical collective farmer. He was born like a collective farmer and Lukashenka is a collective farmer. I’d say that Lukashenka is a collective farmer by nationality. In spite of discrimination, in spite of collective-farmer Lukashenka’s regime, people of Belarus are doing everything too being free but international community do not listen to us. In Belarus crisis have a name and his name is Lukashenka. It is a crisis.
I do not believe in crisis. I do believe in Roma.
Kalinin Nicolas Belarus
