{"id":98578,"date":"2020-02-03T15:11:29","date_gmt":"2020-02-03T22:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=98578"},"modified":"2020-02-03T15:11:29","modified_gmt":"2020-02-03T22:11:29","slug":"romanian-bakery-embroiled-in-racism-scandal-over-sri-lankan-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/02\/03\/romanian-bakery-embroiled-in-racism-scandal-over-sri-lankan-workers\/","title":{"rendered":"Romanian bakery embroiled in racism scandal over Sri Lankan workers"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>By\u00a0<b>Euronews with UER<\/b><time class=\"c-article-date\" datetime=\"2020-02-03\" data-timestamp=\"1580758592\"><span class=\"c-article-date__bullet\">\u00a0\u00a0\u2022\u00a0<\/span><\/time><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Romanian authorities are investigating a case of incitement to hatred and discrimination after 350 villagers gathered to protest against the employment of two Sri Lankan workers at a local bakery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The two bakers were hired legally through a recruitment agency at a bread factory in Ditrau, in central Romania.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But some of the village&#8217;s 5,000 inhabitants say they are afraid migrants will endanger the community&#8217;s safety and cultural traditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s pretend other entrepreneurs are hiring &#8230; say, six foreign workers in our village,&#8221; a blondwe woman told the crowd on Monday. &#8220;After two years, these six will bring their families and after four or five more years, we will find ourselves surrounded by black people.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She added: &#8220;This is what we are afraid of. We are not afraid of the two Sri Lankan men, but of the consequences.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Working conditions and living standards in question<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Bende Sandor, an MP for the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians living in Romania, claimed the meeting was not about racism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t notice xenophobic tendencies at this gathering,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It looks more like a conflict between the factory owners and the locals.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The owner of the bakery is paying less money to all workers. They are all working too much, sometimes they work 24 hours per day,&#8221; a village resident told local media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Romanian National Council for Combating Discrimination (CNCD) filed a complaint for incitement to hatred and discrimination. Its president, Asztalos Csaba, called for tolerance and condemned discriminatory attitudes in Ditrau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Sri Lankan Embassy in Bucharest contacted the bakery to check on the two workers&#8217; living conditions in the area and to provide them consular assistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Romania&#8217;s Labour Minister Violeta Alexandru also requested checks to be carried out at the bakery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;What surprises me is the attitude of the local community regarding the fact that two people want to work here,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Maybe they forget that many Romanians are working abroad and they could be in danger of being treated in the same way?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tends of thousands of Romanians have left the country in recent years to find work, particularly in western Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The factory said it wouldn&#8217;t give in to local pressure or dismiss its Sri Lankan employees. However, public anger may force the two to move to another village.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By\u00a0Euronews with UER\u00a0\u00a0\u2022\u00a0 Romanian authorities are investigating a case of incitement to hatred and discrimination after 350 villagers gathered to protest against the employment of two Sri Lankan workers at a local bakery. The two bakers were hired legally through a recruitment agency at a bread factory in Ditrau, in central Romania. But some of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}