Digital – ERGO Network

Are Roma Digital Citizens?

Are Roma Digital Citizens?

In today’s world, digital citizenship is fundamental for education, work, and participation in society. Research by Mustafa Jakupov shows that Roma communities across Europe are still excluded from the digital sphere.

Barriers go beyond internet access and devices. Roma are missing from national digital education strategies, underrepresented in curricula, and rarely involved in policymaking. Antigypsyism online remains widespread, with few protections in place.

Despite these obstacles, Roma youth are using social media to tell their stories and challenge stereotypes. But without investment, support, and visibility, their creativity risks being sidelined.

Mustafa Jakupov calls for urgent action: invest in infrastructure, provide digital literacy in Romani and national languages, recruit Roma educators and creators, combat online hate, and involve Roma in digital decision-making.

Digital belonging is possible but only if Roma are recognised, protected, and empowered as equal citizens online. Read more in Mustafa’s article

Are Roma Digital citizens by mustafa Jakupov

Safer online spaces for Roma: Must be backed up by action!

Safer online spaces for Roma: Must be backed up by action!

Twitter believes that everybody should be empowered every day to speak their mind about issues that matter most to them and to be part of the public conversation.

Unfortunately, not everyone at Twitter has the same positive experience. Historically marginalised and underrepresented groups have important messages and ideas which can inspire everyone around the world and raise awareness about important issues in our societies. Individuals identifying with these groups, however, sometimes face harassment and abuse on the platform, which can jeopardize their freedom of expression.

Given our background and experience with antigypsyist hate speech online, Mustafa Jakupov, policy and project coordinator of ERGO network was invited to take part in the EMEA Safer Internet Day Summit on the 10th of February to make sure the Roma voices are heard.

We believe that everybody needs to feel safe online, to get active, and to speak up in front of a global audience.

The use of “innocent jokes” does not soften the online hate speech against Roma, but it perpetuates stereotypes and prejudices under an umbrella of humour where other aggressive comments and xenophobic spreads are distributed and multiplied. The recent example of the comedian Jimmy Carr in his show Dark Matter on Netflix proves this.

The British comedian has, in a recent Netflix stand-up special, said that:

“When people talk about the Holocaust, they are talking about the tragedy of 6 million Jewish lives lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of Gypsies killed by the Nazis. Nobody ever wants to talk about it because nobody ever wants to talk about the positive aspects.”

The whole statement was dressed up as an edgy and even more – educational – joke, playing the card of “if you don’t laugh, you are just not smart enough to understand it”. However, although in his later performances Jimmy Carr has kept to his image of a brave honest man making fun of serious matters, the hypocrisy lies on the surface. He is not making fun of Holocaust per se, only targeting the two most vulnerable groups of the survivors (Roma and Jehovah’s Witnesses). The comedian is acting as a regular bully attacking only those, who he knows will not fight back – and thus feeding into the general discourse of antigypsyism and hate speech.

Hate speech as a manifestation of antigypsyism needs particular attention because of its multiplier effect:

It influences public opinion, fuels tension, and paves the way for discrimination and hate crimes. Online media plays a particular role in spreading and inciting hate speech. It strengthens stereotypes, uses offensive language, denies, or trivializes antigypsyism.
Through social media hate speech reaches millions of people and allows perpetrators to anonymously incite hatred and violence.

‘Haters’ do not use the term Roma but some hybrid terms that all society acknowledges as Roma. This requires IT companies to have knowledge of these terms, or in other words, the IT companies must keep up with the different forms of online antigypsyism.

Living in the times of Covid-19, online antigypsyism is becoming normalized for the whole society and not just the right-wing supporters. Laws are important, but prevention should be more highlighted. Therefore, creating a space for Roma where they can create content for counter-narratives is important, because finding quality content on Roma is hard. Another weak link in antigypsyism is the data collection as this will show the dimensions of hate speech.

The use of artificial intelligence to detect hate speech before it is posted is being developed, however, this might be tricky as the language is evolving as well and the AI models must adapt. On the other hand, people must be present as they will need to finalize the decision. This brings us to the importance of filing complaints.

Collaboration between CSO and IT platforms is crucial and there should be mutual learning and recommendations input. This also needs to be reflected in a form of cooperation between institutions, media, and CSO’s, where opportunities for spreading counter-narratives are supported, a distinctive law framework is created to criminalize hate speech and effective mechanisms are put in place that would involve CSO’s in the development of AI models and software in order to avoid further discrimination of marginalized groups in online places.

(Post-)Pandemic Life Together

(Post-)Pandemic Life Together

This spring arrived accompanied by many challenges for our work. Instead of shrinking back, we battened down the hatches and continued supporting people with fewer opportunities.

During March, one of our localities became an epicentre of a special mutation of the corona virus. Many families, Roma and non-Roma, found themselves in the middle of danger of contagion. Together with other local NGOs and volunteers we distributed FFP2 respirators and masks and discussed the situation with adults and children.

Keeping the seriousness of the pandemic situation in mind, we tried hard to preserve the quality and quantity of our services and activities that we offer to local people in need. Instead of cancelling our events and appointments, we equipped our teams with protective aid or searched for alternative ways of helping the community. The arrival of spring allowed us to hold workshops outdoors, other activities took place one-to-one.

Every ten years, a Census is carried out in the Czech Republic to obtain information about the population that is not easily accessible. This May, another nation-wide census took place. As the attendance is obligatory under penalty of a fine, our street workers helped 131 households to fulfill this legal duty.

While maintaining the quality of our street work, counselling and other social services, we are also mindful of human rights aspect of our work. This spring became a milestone for women who suffered – and still suffer – from forced sterilisation. At the beginning of May, after many years of struggle, the Chamber of Deputies passed a bill on compensation for the female victims.

Since Czech schools implemented distance learning, children needed extra support to cope with online lessons. We restored our „outdoor school“ and offered assistance with homework or learning on-spot. For families that were not endowed with digital devices, we arranged computers and laptops as a gift in cooperation with the Česko.digital initiative.

To celebrate the International children’s day, all teams prepared special activities for the children and young people they work with. Almost hundred children from Liscina, a neighbourhood once flooded, gathered for fun outdoor activities and received sweet rewards. Other events related to the International children’s day and the end of the school year will take place all over the localities we work in. Preparations for our traditional summer camp are already under way as well.

Is the internet available and safe for Roma?

Throughout the last years, Safer Internet Day on 9 February has become an important event, addressing the issues of online safety and digital dignity. From cyberbullying to social networking to digital identity, each year Safer Internet Day aims to raise awareness of emerging online issues and current concerns. This year, ERGO Network is highlighting the issues of online safety and digital dignity for Roma.

Online safety for Roma

From an era in which individuals communicated their ideas mostly orally and only to small numbers of other people, we have moved on to an era in which people can make free use of a variety of channels for instant communication to a large audience. More and more people make use of online platforms not only to interact with each other, but also to share news. The detachment created by being enabled to write, without any obligation to reveal oneself directly, means that this new medium of virtual communication allows people to feel greater freedom in the way they express themselves¹. Unfortunately, though, there is also a dark side to this system. Social media has become a fertile ground for antigypsyism, which frequently results in the use of insulting and offensive language towards Roma.

Antigypsyist hate speech has always been present in our societies. With the use of social media, however, the phenomenon has achieved a status of normalized online behavior, where Roma are targeted and become victims of cyberhate, which further develops into practices of hate crimes. Hate speech should not be perceived from the prism of an online insult; hate speech is connected to hate crimes, as it directly influences affecting citizens outside of the internet space. It results into violation of the rights of Roma as citizens, causing direct discrimination and threats, and in some cases result in offline violence or hate crimes.

As an example we can pinpoint the recent events in Bitola, North Macedonia towards the Roma community in September and October 2020. In this period hate speech against the Roma community on social networks was drastically intensified, which resulted in the occurrence of several cases of police brutality.²

Being aware of the issue of online antigypsyism³, ERGO Network through the PECAO project aims to counter antigypsyist hate speech online by working with young people, using a combination of peer education and monitoring in order to obtain two-fold results: Peer education to achieve a direct change in attitudes and actions of a high number of young people, and monitoring to contribute to better understanding and a more systemic change of policies through advocacy based on the results.

Digital dignity for Roma

Much has changed with the pandemic and many of us thought that living in the 21^st century and with the available technologies adapting would be easy. However, the pandemic made the digital divide and social exclusion of vulnerable communities such as Roma even more visible.

According to the FRA study from 2016⁴, over 40 % of Roma in the EU Member State Bulgaria cannot afford a private computer, smartphone or internet access. With the Covid-19 pandemic, many of these long-standing issues around discrimination, educational exclusion and limited access to new technologies have been brought forward.

Beside all the direct health risks, Covid-19 deepened the existing inequalities and made the questions of poverty and lack of access to proper educational services for Roma children more visible than ever. It made clear that care, respect and human dignity in the digital age for Roma have been forgotten or pushed aside. Digital literacy and access to utilities or technologies cause Roma to be left behind; as Roma with no access to electricity or the internet cannot connect, benefit from online education or online services.

The way forward

When it comes to creating a safer internet space for Roma and ensure digital dignity, ERGO Network believes that we need to work on:

- Higher awareness of journalists’ ethic commissions on the prevalence and impact of antigypsyist hate speech online, leading to improved self-regulation guidelines.

- Higher awareness of national equality bodies and other relevant state institutions on the prevalence and impact of antigypsyist hate speech online, leading to better programmes targeting antigypsyism.

- Stronger adherence by IT companies to the Code of Conduct on countering online hate speech.

- Better data collection on hate crime and hate speech disaggregated by ethnicity and gender to allow analysis of trends by member states.

- Stronger condemnation of antigypsyist hate speech in the public discourse.

- More positive narratives promoted by young people online to counter antigypsyist hate speech.

- Reducing the digital divide by investing in access to utilities and technologies, thus preventing the exclusion of Roma from the internet space, as well as by creating digital support and literacy programs.

1 Thirty years of research into hate speech: topics of interest and their evolution: Alice Tontodimamma, Eugenia Nissi, Annalina Sarra & Lara Fontanella

2 Hate speech in social media and the impact on the Roma community: Romalitico, Marija Sulejmanova

3 https://ergonetwork.org/pecao/

4 https://minorityrights.org/trends2020/bulgaria/

Romaversitas response to the Covid-19 pandemic

Romaversitas response to the Covid-19 pandemic

On March 13, 2020, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced through Facebook that as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, just a few short weeks before the term-end exams and high school graduation tests, schools and dormitories were to be closed nationwide and education was to be completely transferred to the online space. The measures forced a fair share of our students to move back to their childhood homes, where they were cut off from the infrastructures of their educational institutions and they had to prepare for the approaching exams in overcrowded houses, without personal space, quality IT equipment or broadband internet.

The pandemic made an already bad situation worse for the Roma in Hungary. According to data released by the Roma Education Fund, a significant share of Romani high school students and their families who reside in rural areas or settlements had no access to internet or to IT equipment which data is especially appalling from the perspective that the transfer of education to the online space and dormitory closures were carried out instantly and without any plans to ensure the participation of students belonging to marginalized communities in educational activities.

In this context, we contacted all of our students and we saw that in many cases, if we can’t provide them with additional scholarships, they wouldn’t be able to finish their school years or university terms. We set the goal of not allowing the effects of the crisis to take a toll on our students’ ability to finish the academic year. As providing additional scholarships exceeded the financial possibilities of our organization, we launched a crowdfunding campaign titled “Finish Line – Crisis Fund for Romani Students” to collect the necessary funds for providing additional scholarships to students in need.

The short-term impact of the activity was that we could provide cca. 150 EUR monthly scholarships for 12 students in April, 12 students in May, 14 students in June and 6 students in July. In personal interviews following the campaign, we saw that many of the recipients spent this amount directly related to the mitigation of the impact of the crisis on their ability to finish the academic year, like purchasing a good internet connection to the place where they were forced to move because of the closure of the dormitories.

As dormitories closed in mid-March, many of our students had to move back to overcrowded family homes. “When I need some space to attend online classes, I sit outside of our home in my family’s car,” wrote one of our students when sending this photo. We love this picture because it exemplifies the resilience of our student body.

A long-term impact on our students and Romaversitas was that our crowdfunding campaign received national attention via the press, and by reaching new donors, our coalition to carry out our mission broadened. During our crowdfunding campaign we collected cca. 8K EUR which is more than four times the average of the previous 3 crowdfunding campaigns of the organization. We also reached 70 percent more donors than in previous campaigns and the value of average donations more than doubled.

We managed to detach the messaging of the campaign from the usual socio-narrative which mostly dominates Romani issues in the media. Our campaign was centered around education and positive achievements which resonated well with our audience.