Serbian Gypsies seek asylum in Romania

ROMANIA:Just days after dozens of Romanian Gypsies were sent back from the Ballymun roundabout to what they claimed was a life of squalor and discrimination at home, about 100 Serbian Gypsies have fled to Romania seeking protection from violent prejudice.

The Gypsies, from around the Serbian village of Krajisnik, trudged for miles through fields to enter Romania near the hamlet of Otelec, in a border area that is not heavily patrolled because so few illegal immigrants cross it.

"This is a new phenomenon, to have immigrants from Serbia asking for asylum," said Viorel Alexe, spokesman for the border guards.

"It's too early to say if this will turn into an exodus but the police have taken extra security measures to secure the border."

The Roma said they suffered regular abuse and attacks in Serbia, which is home to perhaps 500,000 Gypsies, most of whom do not admit their ethnicity on official forms.

About 100,000 Roma were driven from Kosovo by ethnic-Albanian gangs after the region's 1998-99 conflict. Many of them now live in squalid slums in Belgrade and other towns across Serbia, where there is no running water or electricity and little access to education, employment or healthcare.

Speaking broken Romanian, Sasa Bot (28) said his family had been been attacked with Molotov cocktails at their home in Krajisnik.

"They threw 'fire bottles' into my yard and burned down one of the sheds next to the house," he said after crossing to Otelec, which is about 200km south of Tileagd, the village to which some 100 Roma returned last week from the M50 roundabout at Ballymun.

Some of the Tileagd Gypsies claimed to live on a rubbish dump and suffer violent discrimination, claims that angered Romanian officials who insisted they were gradually improving the lot of their country's Roma, who may number as many as two million.

"The Serbians say they are Gypsies and have come to seek asylum in Romania because of the difficulties they face in their villages," said Catalin Necula, of Romania's national refugee agency, which placed the asylum-seekers in hostel accommodation.

In neighbouring Bulgaria meanwhile, a parliamentary committee accused the capital, Sofia, of discriminating against Gypsies by banning horses and carts from its roads.

Sofia mayor Boyko Borisov was unmoved, and urged the city's Roma to "turn their carts into carriages and attract tourists the way they do in Vienna" .