'Our Roma community faces hate and division daily'

The head of a support group for the Roma community says families experience "hate and division" every day.

Simona Lazar, chief executive of the Suffolk charity Union Romani Voice, said anti-immigrant demonstrations in other parts of Britain were having a negative impact on the community.

Speaking at a conference as part of Hate Crime Awareness Week, she said: "It did not start with these demonstrations, it started quite a few years ago, post-Brexit [with people] uncertain about what will go on, what will happen next."

The event, organised with the Suffolk Law Centre, was held in Ipswich on Wednesday, with about 60 participants including police, teachers and Roma families.

Human rights lawyer Julie Baker, from the Suffolk Law Centre, said: "Discrimination is across the board. It's in health, it's in education, it's in public services.

"The problem with hate crime is that it escalates and it can escalate quite rapidly, so we always ask to call it out, report it, respond to it."

Participants joined together to pledge "No Hate in Suffolk", and there were a variety of presentations, including how to report hate crimes, experiences of discrimination when trying to rent housing - and how a high school was tackling the challenges of teaching students of 30 different nationalities.

The centre is an Ipswich-based charity which provides free legal advice and weekly drop-ins - in partnership with Union Romani Voice - to tackle language and cultural barriers to reporting problems.

The law recognises five types of hate crime, on the basis of race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or transgender identity.

Any crime can be prosecuted as a hate crime if the offender has either demonstrated hostility based on one of those categories, or been motivated by them.

Police also record incidents which fall short of being classed as a crime.

Data from Suffolk Police shows the number of hate crimes or hate incidents reported has fallen by almost 30% over the last five years, from 1,233 cases in 2021-22 to 871 in 2025-26.

However, across England and Wales, government data shows the number of hate crimes is increasing by 7%, year-on-year, to nearly 147,000 in the year ending March 2026.

Violeta Dobri is Roma and has been living in Ipswich for 11 years.

She said: "For me it is very important to be a part of this community that fights against hate and discrimination.

"Every human deserves respect, dignity and a chance to live with no fear and without being humiliated."

Glen Chisholm, a trustee of the Ipswich and Suffolk Council for Racial Equality, said "I think it's really good to have an organisation which is stepping up and trying to break down barriers in this day and age where we have prejudice being so open and brutal in our faces.

"Something I did reflect on very much was the talk around housing and the prejudice that the Roma community has faced, the parallels with the Windrush community back in the days... we could have been having this conversation in the Sixties, in the Eighties and so on."

In a statement, Temp Supt Shawn Wakeling, hate crime lead at Suffolk Constabulary, said: "Hate crime hurts and divides communities and we know that, for various reasons, offences can be under-reported.

"The awareness week gives us an opportunity to urge anyone who has experienced or witnessed hate crime to come forward and also to support understanding of what hate crime is.

"No one should feel unsafe or targeted because of who they are or what they believe."

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