Untitled

Abstract

The European Court of Human Rights has issued judgements that condemn negative stereotypes and protect vulnerable groups from discrimination. Paradoxically, in cases where the victims' bodily integrity is violated in a racist context, the Court has a particularly dubious record of fully engaging with the discrimination aspect of the complaints. This article analyses five illustrative cases where evidentiary materials indicate the authorities held strong prejudices against Romani victims of police violence. Through the lens of vulnerability and anti-stereotyping, the article examines how the Court responds to the presence of negative stereotypes in anti-Romani police violence cases. It shows that the Court's engagement with stereotypes in these cases is inconsistent. The article suggests that a more conscious engagement with the wider societal context of anti-Romani police violence could strengthen the Court's stance against harmful Romaphobic stereotyping.'Purely Gypsy Behaviour': Interpreting Negative Stereotypes in Racist Police Violence Cases at the European Court of Human Rights abuse. [9] To paint a picture with the Court's own judgements, over 10 incidents resulted in the death of Romani people at the hands of police, [10] a further 7 cases concerned life-threatening situations, [11] and over 20 complaints arose from the abuse of Romani men, [12] women, [13] even children, [14] and sometimes whole families. [15] In the majority of the case law the impression of a hostile, anti-Romani climate is clear; however, hard evidence of it, which the Court tends to look for, hardly exists. [16] This is why the Court rarely found a state explicitly responsible for anti-Romani [17] police misconduct. [18] This article submits that negative stereotypes often play a key role in anti-Romani violence, and their presence in a case file therefore could prompt the Court to pay particular attention to these in its assessments.