In 2004, Romanian municipal authorities evicted more than one hundred "gypsies" from their homes in the central region of Harghita County and relocated them to isolated, squalid land on the outskirts of nearby towns. Resettled in a series of small metal cabins, Roma families and young children were cramped together in close proximity to the hazardous waste from a sewage plant. As far as lobbyists at the time were concerned, this was just one of a series of human rights violations that had taken place across Europe in recent years, specifically targeting the Roma population in acts of so-called "anti-gypsyism".

One year later, on 2 February 2005, eight European governments—including Romania—gathered in Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia, to sign the Declaration of the Decade of Roma Inclusion. Responding to realities of Roma poverty and segregation—particularly in the Eastern states of Romania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Hungary—prime ministers pledged that the next ten years would be characterised by visible improvements to the social and economic welfare of Europe’s largest and most marginalised ethnic minority. The rhetoric that surrounded the initiative at its launch was of integration and the promise of opportunity that had so far been withheld from the continent’s seven to nine million Roma. Priority areas of education, employment, health, and housing were flagged as the focus for change and 'Nothing About Us Without Us' splashed as the mantra for an empowered Roma voice. The politicians had an agenda - and a convincing sound bite.

In part, what the promisingly-titled initiative was supposedly trying to change, through international collaboration, was the stigma attached to a largely enigmatic ethnic minority. Yet, for some, the programme could only ever be a boon to events organisers and political think tanks faced with the task of reversing a history of persecution and transforming the profile of a group still pejoratively labelled "gypsies" both popularly and politically. Undoubtedly, the "gypsy" figure continues to produce paradoxical stereotypes in the popular imagination. On the one hand, we tend to indulge in the notion of exotic and romantic travellers - women dressed in bright colours and gold jewellery, telling fortunes in archaic painted caravans. On the other, however, it has become the universal brand of threatening "tramps and thieves" who wander Europe begging and stealing. Both have tended to attach themselves to Roma communities and their culture. The image of the rootless vagrant has endured despite the historical fact that for centuries they have been citizens of their countries of nationality.

To bring clarity to the myths: Roma ancestry is commonly traced to India, from where a nomadic culture is believed to have brought them to Europe as travellers over 1000 years ago. Whilst they were initially welcomed as the harbingers of exciting new culture and trade this very quickly succumbed to suspicion and exclusion. The recent history of the Roma is undeniably chequered with discrimination. They were victims of early enslavement, repression under the Soviet Union, and also the Nazi Holocaust, during which 500,000 Roma were killed. In the early 90s Roma women were also disproportionately subjected to a government-sponsored family planning programme in ex-Czechoslovakia. Sterilisation was pushed as a solution to reduce what they saw as a worryingly high gypsy birth rate. Financial incentives encouraged Roma women to sign-up to the scheme, whilst social workers used violence and threats to force reluctant women to undergo the medical procedures that would prevent them from having more children. Although it was swiftly culled as an official policy one year later, after the Human Rights Watch expressed, the practice continued covertly. The police were sent complaints claiming Roma women were now being asked to sign their consent whilst semi-conscious, in the midst of labour. Accusations were also brought against doctors believed to have tied the fallopian tubes of women whilst they were undergoing caesarean section. There were no prosecutions, however, and it is only recently the Czech Republic has officially acknowledged that the illegal sterilisations took place.

Guests on the European Council’s first Human Rights talk show View Point unanimously agreed that the Roma were being used as the European 'punch bag': scapegoats for any social ills. The program launched this month with a discussion of the racial problems close to home and a mixture of panellists exchanging perspectives with remarkable consensus. An 'undeclared apartheid' was going unacknowledged, it was concluded. The refusal at all levels to view Roma as authentic members of a nation state kept them at a permanent social and economic disadvantage: denied the education and employment that would allow them to participate fully in society or even to have a public voice. Instead, the Roma were confined to insular communities in the growing ghettos seen on the outskirts of many European cities. Michael Guet, Head of the Roma and Travellers Division of the Council of Europe, even suggested that local politicians built on the problem by exploiting segregation—evoking negative gypsy stereotypes in the circulation of anti-Roma 'hate speech'—to account for social problems in small municipalities.

This was certainly the case in 2008, when the world was shown pictures drawn by Italian school children, as young as nine years old, of illegal Roma settlements being razed to the ground. The camp they depicted—mostly home to Roma refugees from Eastern bloc countries—had recently been firebombed in an alleged xenophobic attack. The children had produced essays that said: "Burning the houses of the Roma is justified", and one child had written: "They steal babies and use them for begging or sell their organs for transplants." The incident took place not long after the national election of the centre-right coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi, which included the anti-immigration Northern League and the neo-fascist Alleanza Nazionale. It was commonly held the party had gained its victory on a pledge to tackle illegal immigration. Interior minister, Roberto Maroni, had said Italy would crack down on the issue of unauthorised Roma camps "by the end of the year". He also said city officials and police would be granted new powers to deal with the problem. This pledge has finally reached fruition as, this week, one of the largest makeshift Roma camps in Europe has been cleared and its 600 residents relocated to legal tenaments in the north of Rome. Rome’s mayor, Gianni Alemanno, has heralded the transfer a success and an important step in the direction of eradicating the illegal camps where Roma live often without running water. Yet, although the camps were basic, some of the families had lived there for 40 years and didn’t want to leave.

However, this is not the only story highlighting continued tension between Europeans and their Roma constituents to hit the headlines in the first month of 2010. Five years on, in the year that marks the halfway point of the Decade of Roma Inclusion, and with more than a touch of grim irony, it was revealed the Czech Republic is ostensibly forcing thousands of healthy Roma children into special schools designed for the mentally impaired. Amnesty International have released a report claiming Roma comprise 80 percent of the children attending the remedial facilities, which provide sub-standard education and cover only part of the national curriculum. It is leaving Roma children at a severe disadvantage, the human rights body have said. Fotis Filippou, the author of the report, told the media: "Segregation in education is unlawful. But, unfortunately, it is still practiced in the 21st century in the European Union."

Last week, Amnesty performed another public naming and shaming, this time directed at the Romanian government for failing to reform the discriminatory housing legislation which allowed 100 Roma to be dumped in unhealthy ghettos in 2004. Halya Gowan, programme director for Europe and Central Asia, was quoted criticising the patterns of forced evictions that have continued to target Roma communities across the country, claiming it "perpetuates racial segregation and violates Romania's international obligations".

Incidents of violence and miscarriages of justice, directed against the Roma, have been continually recorded across Europe in recent years by organisations such as the European Roma Rights Centre. Yet, it is in Hungary that campaigners observe the most dangerous social climate of ‘Roma-phobia’. On 23 February 2009, the home of a family of four on the outskirts of Tatárszentgyörgy in Hungary, was set ablaze. A Roma man and his four-year-old son were shot dead as they fled the building, which had been set alight in a drive-by attack. Since then, cases of violence against Roma communities have increased rapidly. The most isolated homes on the outskirts of towns have been targeted in a spate of shootings and murders. Upcoming elections are expected to see support bolstered  for the ultra-right-wing Jobbik Party, which has close links with an outlawed neo-Nazi militia, the Hungarian Guard. The group, who wear fascist-style uniforms and are armed, have been convicted of many of the recent killings. Members of the Jobbik Party have also made explicit statements against Roma, Jews and other minorities, and in last year's European Parliamentary elections they won 15 percent of the Hungarian vote. 

The growth of right-wing sentiment has produced a surge in refugee applications from Hungarian Roma families visiting Canada. After the murders in Hungary began, the number of applicants for asylum increased almost fivefold—to 1,353—and the figure is now expected to be even higher. According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Hungary is now Canada's third-largest source of refugee claimants. Despite evidence of persecution, however, all of the 2009 asylum applications have been rejected. Canadian officials argue that Hungarian citizens are not considered legitimate asylum claimants. Their EU status means they are free to live in any of the other 26 member countries. The influx of Roma has so alarmed the Canadian government that immigration minister, Jason Kenney, personally visited Budapest last summer to lobby the Hungarian government to respond to anti-Roma crimes.

Despite this international pressure, there is little reason to hope that discrimination against Roma communities is nearing its end. In Life on the Edge, a recent documentary commissioned as part of the Decade of Roma Inclusion, Roma film director Arpad Bogdan concludes, that prejudice against the Roma on account of criminality, although wildly disproportionate, was not entirely unfounded. The social segregation of ghettos, he claims, trap the Roma in cycles of poverty that force some into lifestyles of begging and thieving. A recent survey showed 85 percent of Hungarians feel negatively about Roma "due to personal experience". The threat of a pogrom hangs over those Roma communities living in the 650 ghettos across the country, and this vicious cycle is only suggestive of more violence and discrimination to come.