Komsomolskaya Pravda reader against anti-Gypsy propaganda

On October 4, 2005, Komsomolskaya Pravda published the remark "Be afraid of a gypsy with a child behind your back", which, unfortunately, is a sample of hate speech that has already become familiar in this newspaper.

Among the responses to this article, published (mostly, as expected, also anti-Gypsies), on October 8, 2005, "KP" also published a letter from the chairman of the Democratic Union of Roma / Gypsies of Moldova, Nicolae Arapu, in which the author expresses bewilderment at the indiscriminate accusations of gypsies in criminality.

The author emphasizes that articles such as the one that caused the responses not only support negative philistine stereotypes, but also "heat up relations between society and the Roma" , complicating the already difficult process of Roma socialization.

The author notes that anti-Gypsy propaganda in the Russian press has intensified recently, although he does not put forward his own version of this activity.

The letter emphasizes that statements about the criminality of an entire nation are akin to statements "the wind blows because the trees sway" .

The problem of anti-Gypsy propaganda is aggravated by the fact that it practically remains unanswered. "Unfortunately, we ourselves cannot defend ourselves in the press - we have practically no intelligentsia, we are hated by a lot of officials who, on duty, could change something in our lives," N. Arapu notes at the end of his letter .

I'm a gypsy, but I've never even stolen a pencil! // TVNZ. 2005. October 8.