OPINION | ROMA RIGHTS | WOMEN’S RIGHTS | HUMAN RIGHTS
by Vilma Fiokla Kiurė
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Back in 2017, I tried to acquaint the outside world, in Defending History, with some issues concerning the “Roma Integration Program” that was initiated by the Lithuanian Government and Vilnius Municipality in 2016. I noted that the main goal of the program was to raze the Roma settlement in Kirtimai to the ground and remove the Roma that used to live there, resettling them in scattered different places through Vilnius County.
Several years have passed. We can see how this Program has impacted Roma living conditions.
“Around half of the inmates in Lithuania’s only women’s prison are Roma women—while there are only a bit more than two thousand Roma in Lithuania, less than one percent of Lithuania’s estimated population of 2,795,000 for 2021.”