A CNN report says Roma refugees fleeing war in Ukraine face discrimination and prejudice in Romania

Ukrainian-Roma refugees are discriminated against in Romania and other parts of Europe, says a new CNN report.

Most of the refugees who have left Ukraine have been welcomed by Romania and the rest of Europe and made to feel more or less at home, but those belonging to the Roma community have had a different experience entirely, struggling to find adequate living conditions and facing hostile attitudes.

To shed light on what’s going wrong, CNN journalists conducted a report, featuring cases from Bucharest, Chisinau, and Prague, which they learned of by visiting shelters and speaking to Roma refugees, social workers, and activists from these cities.

"In all three countries," says the report, "the problems Roma refugees face are uncannily similar."

Additional accounts from Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary suggest such discrimination is common across eastern Europe.

"Roma refugees from Ukraine are routinely accused of not being Ukrainian; they are segregated in low-quality accommodation. According to several NGOs, many are given misleading information about their rights; and issues that are easily solved when faced by others who've fled Ukraine -- such as missing passport stamps -- are often used as a reason for them to be turned away," it continues.

One of the activists that CNN spoke to is Romanian Roma rights campaigner Nicu Dumitru, who works for Aresel, a Bucharest-based Roma civic education initiative that began helping the refugees fleeing Ukraine earlier this year after receiving multiple reports of discrimination.

Dumitru told the news outlet that the refugee crisis has shone a light on the kind of hostility Roma people are still facing in present-day Europe.

"Being discriminatory against Black people or gay people is becoming less acceptable in Europe, or at least people restrain themselves from doing it in public. That's not the case with the Roma, which are probably the last group of people it’s socially acceptable to discriminate against in Europe," he said.

He told CNN about a specific event in April when a large group of Roma refugees was denied meals at a humanitarian help point in Bucharest and was kicked out of the establishment for being 'loud' and for 'eating too much'.

According to Dumitru, the people working at the center turned them away saying "You're not Ukrainian, you're Roma, go away!".

Across the border in Moldova, CNN spoke to Roma mediator and journalist Elena Sirbu, who shared her own stories of the horrifying way Roma are being treated at the refugee centers in the Moldovan capital, Chisinau.