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Norway to pay reparations to Roma for racist policies and suffering under Nazis | |
(2 months later) | |
Prime Minister Erna Solberg has apologised for discrimination against Norway’s Roma population before and after the second world war, calling it a dark part of the country’s history, and promised to pay reparations. | |
The Scandinavian country’s small Roma minority, of around 500, have campaigned since the 1990s for compensation for their mistreatment. | |
Solberg’s comments Wednesday followed the release of a government-commissioned report in February that detailed how Norwegian Roma citizens in the 1930s were denied re-entry after travels abroad. It named 62 people who ultimately perished in Nazi death camps following the rejections. | |
Survivors of the death camps were also denied re-entry to Norway after the war for up to 10 years, the report by the Centre for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities showed. | |
The prime minister said the measures taken by the authorities at the time amounted to a “racist exclusion policy“. | |
“It’s time for a moral reckoning with this dark part of our history. The state recognises its responsibility for the errors that were made and the injustice done to Norwegian Roma,” Solberg said in a statement. | |
Data from the mid-1920s shows that between 100 and 150 Roma lived in Norway at that time, according to the Centre for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities. | |
More research was needed to uncover the full extent of what happened to Roma in Norway during German occupation of the country from 1940-1945, the report said. | |
Solberg promised that the right-wing coalition government would pay reparations but said the details would be worked out in cooperation with Roma representatives. | |
Elsewhere in Europe, Greece is seeking 278.7bn euros (US$300bn) from Germany in reparations from second world war. |