To: News and Cultural Editorial Offices

On their meeting in Kassel, the board members of the Central Committee of German Sinti and Roma criticized Rajko Djuric, the "president of the International Roma Union", who lives in Germany since a few years. The "Romani Union" that is described even by Djuric himself as "disorganized", cannot be taken longer for serious. Presidency meetings and Roma conferences with elections according to the rules have not been reported about for 8 years.
This was stated by the chairmen of the regional unions of the Central Committee of Berlin, Schleswig-Holstein, Bremen, Northrhine-Westfalia, Hessen, Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-Württemberg, and Bavaria. They said, that Djuric's political demands were dubious and absurd, and he would use the worst prejudices and racist chlichés of "the gypsies".

President Djuric, a former contributor to the Belgrade party newspaper POLITIKA, had written: "The way of living of the Roma, which is incompatible with that of the Europeans, includes stealing and robbery, their everyday things are fighting, fraud, and insults. Their customs are rooted in their belief in vampires." And further: "One can aquire a wife by purchase, exchange or abduction. For an extra charge one can get more than a dance from a Roma women. In the prehistoric world of the gypsies their to-day's level from the Balkans to the USA is that of the 11th century. Any understanding of the present time, that could give a historic view to life, is missing."

When Djuric founded the "European Roma Centre in Berlin" in April 1997, he accused the Central Committee of "snobbishness and separatism", because in May 1995 they had reached the acceptance of the 70.000 German Sinti and Roma as an "autochthonous national minority". Instead of this, Djuric demanded the acceptance as "an European folk" in an "international Romanestan". However, one year after in April 1998, when Djuric again founded a "European Centre for Sinti and Roma" in Berlin, he demanded due to press reports, that Germany "should officially accept the ethnic group as a national minority as well as confess the committed genocide of them".

Concerning this the charimen of the Central Committee declared to-day, that Djuric does not know, that already in 1982 the Federal Government confessed in public the genocide of 500.000 Sinti and Roma.

ZENTRALRAT
DEUTSCHER SINTI UND ROMA
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