Skopje, 3 August 2022 (MIA) - Lessons from World War II unfortunately remain unlearned when it comes to Roma people as we are still facing discrimination, anti-Romani sentiment and hate speech, said Elvis Shakjiri of the Romalitico Institute for Research and Policy Analyses addressing an art performance and exhibition titled “Through the Labyrinth of Roma History: Five Rooms”. Prejudice and stereotypes regarding our ethnic origin remain the main obstacles to our efforts for equal treatment to exercise our main rights and obligations, he stated at the event, organized on European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day (August 2) by the Association Roma Business Information Center of Macedonia and the Network for Systematic and Permanent Solutions, under the auspices of the Agency for Community Rights Realization. Our country, Shakjiri said, is facing a real challenge to respond to the rise in discrimination, anti-Romani sentiment and hate speech. "It is necessary to recognize and commemorate the Roma Holocaust to learn about the future all the while remembering the past and we have to act in the present to prevent the past from happening again in the future," he stressed. It is estimated that somewhere between 200,000 and 500,000 Roma had been killed in the Holocaust between 1941 and 1945, according to Muhamet Tochi, state secretary at the Justice Ministry. "The night between August 2 and August 3 alone, over 3,000 Roma people had been killed in a gas chamber at the Auschwitz concentration camp," he mentioned saying that to recognize diversity is both a virtue and a necessity. Under a government decision, August 2 in the country is observed as Roma Genocide Day. This year, the government has adopted the framework of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.