'minority' - tagged features

Repeated shootings over the past few months have raised fears about gun crime in Britain’s black communities. Police and politicians have struggled to explain the surge in violence. Many black community members blame a culture that glamourises guns and gang membership. Deutsche Welle’s Stephen Beard reports from London. 

It's been four years since the fall of Saddam Hussein... but Iraq is still a far cry from the haven of Middle East peace and democracy once promised by the US-led coalition. More than 2 million Iraqis have fled the country in hope of a better life elsewhere. And more than 80 thousand Iraqi refugees have settled in Sweden - thanks to Stockholm's open asylum policy - an exception in Europe. But more and more Swedes says they're stretched to the limit and this welcoming policy needs to change. For Network Europe Radio Netherlands' Perro de Jong has this report from Rosengård, a suburb of Malmö. 

There are between eight and ten million ethnic Roma people in Europe, and about half of them are children, living in conditions you'd sooner expect to find in the developing world. UNICEF has just published two fresh studies on the plight of Roma children and DW's Eric Heath explored the findings. 

With between half a million and six hundred thousand Jews, France is home to Europe’s largest Jewish community. A majority live in Marseille in the South East of the country, in Strasbourg in the North East, and in Paris. For Network Europe, Radio France International’s Nick Champeaux went to several Jewish neighborhoods in the French capital, and filed this report. 

In Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Hercegovina, there is a small but active Jewish community.  Both its history, which dates back to the 16th century and the days of the exodus of the Ladino-speaking Spanish Jews, and its present situation in post-war Bosnia, sets it apart from the Jewish communities of other European capitals. 

The Nazi regime and the atrocities of World War II almost wiped out Jewish life in Germany. But, the number of Jews has been steadily increasing since the early 1990s, mainly a result of many Jews from the former Soviet Union moving to Germany. Comprehensive education for rabbis is once again available in Germany. This year, for the first time since the war, three Rabbis were ordained in Dresden. Germany's Jewish communities are awakening to new life. Kirsten Rulf visited one of them as he settled into his new job. 

The jewish community in Sweden dates back to several hundreds years ago and the Jewish migration has had several huge waves. Gaby Katz from Radio Sweden has visited the Jewish Museum in Stockholm and they special exhibitions portraying Jews. She investigated the place of the Jewish minority in Sweden. 

Romania belatedly acknowledged its role in the Holocaust. It was only in 2004, that a committee for the investigation of the Holocaust crimes published an official report according to which between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews were exterminated by the Romanian army in the war zones of Bassarabia, Bukovina and Transnistria. These are the highest numbers in a country other than Germany. Before 2004, there was very little talk of the scale of Romania’s contribution to the Holocaust. But the last 3 years has seen a lot of campaigning aimed at making Romanians aware of those crimes. 

Europe's Roma community suffer arguably even worse discrimination than immigrants do. Journalism is frequently responsible for blackening the name of this minority, who often live on the fringes of mainstream society. But it can equally be used to inform, as prejudice is often born simply out of ignorance. Radio Sweden reports on a meeting of Romani journalists from accross Europe that took place in Stockhom recently, and found out about the special difficulties faced by reporters from this community.