Several Romanian NGOs praise the British Channel 4 documentary series "The Romanians are coming", showing that the Romanian officials protests were fueled by ignorance or hypocrisy about the issue of poverty, Mediafax reports.
The letter sent to the station shows that the signatory organizations want to congratulate them for the first two episodes of the story "The Romanians are coming”.
" We decided to make public this endeavor of ours to counterbalance the many critical messages aimed at the same program, messages launched both by members of the Romanian community in the UK and the Romanian state officials - Ambassador of Romania to London, the Foreign Minister, MPs - supported in their initiative by the Prime Minister of Romania, Mr. Victor Ponta.
We got the message of the coverage made by your team as being primarily addressed to those voices in Britain who stigmatize Romanian immigrants in your country as thieves, beggars, social assistance profiteers, "the letter says.
The NGOs point to the fact that there are quotations of citizens and British politicians who talk about “the need to stop the Romanian criminal gangs”, but the coverage brings to the audience attention the destinies of a few Romanians painfully contradictory to the stigmatized perceptions.
"We appreciated in perfect dissonance with the story’s critics, the filmmakers attention given to the main causes of Romanians migration: extreme poverty," the letter says.
The letter’s signatories state that, according to Eurostat, Romania ranks second among EU countries in poverty, being surpassed only by Bulgaria.
"When the 41.7 percent of the country’s population (about eight million people) is at risk of poverty and social exclusion we can no longer talk about unfair clichés about an incorrect or distorted and biased presentation of facts as Mr. Bogdan Aurescu – the Foreign Minister of Romania – angrily addressed his British counterpart, Philip Hammond.
On the contrary, your journalists could be accused only of displaying to much empathy towards the story’s heroes, victims of catastrophic (Romanian) governments. They do not stigmatize the Romanians as thieves, beggars etc., but showcases them as extremely bitter people desperately looking for a survival solution for themselves and their families, "the NGOs say.
The signatories say, therefore, that they consider the protests of Romanian officials as generated either by ignoring the actual contents of the report, or by "a terrible hypocrisy" that makes them accuse the Channel 4 journalists of displaying the Romanians poverty, poverty which the representatives of those who caused this huge problem strive to ignore and hide.
They also consider that the successful Romanian community representatives in Britain protests should have been directed to the authorities in Romania exclusively, the author of the social disaster generating, inter alia, the emigration.
The letter is signed by Active Watch, RomanoButiQ, APADOR CH, Accept, Partnership for Equality Center, Center for Gender Studies curriculum development and Filia and ECPI - Euroregional Center for Public Initiatives.
The documentary "The Romanians are coming" is broadcast on 17 February, on Channel 4, only two episodes were broadcast so far. The narrator is Petru Alexandru Fechete, a young Romani Romanian who tells the story of the 20,000 Romanians who arrived in Britain last year, most of whom contribute to the prosperity of the British economy, The Independent reported in its electronic edition.
The first episode presents a Roma from Baia Mare who fails to find a job because they do not speak English, but also the story of Alex, other than the narrator, who sleeps on cards in the Victoria Station in London, and Ştefan, who managed to find a job cleaning the streets.
The second episode features Mihaela, who is working as a nurse in a nursing home, but also Adi who lives under a bridge, washes cars to support his family left in Romania.
The third and last episode will be broadcast Wednesday evening.