Mundi Romani: "Ukraine: School Segregation" (2008)
[19:19 - Hungarian with English Subtitles] This episode of Mundi Romani, a documentary series co-produced by the Romedia Foundation and Duna Television with support from the OSI Roma Decade Matching Fund, provides insight into the life of Roma in Ukraine and into the complex social mechanisms that allow tens of thousands of children across Central and Eastern European to be denied quality education on account of their ethnic origins. In Uzhgorod, an ethnically-mixed town in Transcarpathia, close to Hungary’s border, there is so much of last century’s tempestuous history in the story of the Roma that the place seems like a social scientist’s paradise. Here, the Roma are the minority of minorities and face daunting challenges. Here, Hungarian minority status serves as a basis for the total segregation of Roma children in the region’s schools. With shocking accounts from Roma men, women and children, the local school director, a human rights activist and a representative of the local authorities, this episode offers a complex picture, full of contradictions.