Who are the Gypsies?

Although they have been living in our own continent for over eight centuries,  this is a question still widespread among European people, as an inexplicable enigma. In their  travels - often running away from the hostility of who, not knowing them, fear them and doesn’t  want to be their neighbours - when Gypsies arrive in a city and decide to settle in a district, people  immediately watch them with open hostility. In those eyes full of distrust and fear there is always  the same question: who are you?

Over the centuries Roma people have been defined by many names. Their assumed Egyptian origin is the reason of the name “gypsies”. Historians and linguists now agree on the Indian origin of Roma people. The Romani (or Romanes)  language is a neo-Aryan language related to the ancient Sanskrit, and it is now spoken, in different  dialects, in several Asiatic and European countries. It is undeniable that Roma have been subjected to prejudice and slander, sources of discriminatory  attitudes and violent persecution. Since their arrival in Europe, they have been received with  suspicion and irrational fear. Observing their nomad life, their  ethnic traditions and their religious costumes, they were assumed people with no law and no moral  code. They were supposed worshiping Pagan Gods and devoting themselves to divination and  witchcraft. It was said that, as the  Jews were responsible of Jesus’ death, the Gypsies, excellent smiths, forged the nails used to crucify  him; for this reason they were damned people, doomed to travel forever, without any homeland. Roma, as reported in the ancient chronicles, were greeted by European citizens with initial  suspicion mixed with curiosity, but soon their appearance, their clothes, their mysterious language  and their customs aroused irrational fears, followed by intolerance and rejection, as it still happens today.

In England, in 1530 the first laws  allowing the expulsion of Roma motivated only by their race were introduced. King Henry VIII was  not in a good mood that year, when the Pope forbade him to marry Anne Boleyn and demanded her  expulsion from the court. It was the straw that breaks the camel's back: Henry VIII declared himself  head of the Church of England and married Anna. It was one of those "epochal" changes, and it gave way to the Lutheran Reformation. However, this innovative spirit did not light the king when  he faced the issue of Gypsies. To correct what he considered an emergency, he forbade the  transportation of Roma to the UK, imposing a fine of 40 pounds for the master or the ship-owner  who would have disobeyed the decree. The penalty for Roma immigrants was the hanging. Some  years later, in 1547, Edward VI of England, after the death of his father Henry VIII, listened to his  advisers and changed the laws concerning Roma. The new rules, however, were equally ruthless, but the death penalty was cancelled: Gypsies had to be arrested and branded with a V on their  chest, and then enslaved for a period of two years. If they tried to escape and were caught, they were marked with an S and made slaves for life. On July 25th 1554, the day of  the marriage between Mary Tudor and Philip II of Spain, the terror of the Inquisition materialized  for the gypsies living in England and Ireland. Bloody Mary's commitment to restore Catholicism  also targeted Roma living in the territory of the kingdom. An act was issued which established the  capital punishment not only for Roma but also for anyone serving in their communities. Eight years  later, under the reign of Elizabeth I, a new law was enacted, under which the Gypsies born in  England and Wales had to leave the country, or waive their traditions and dissolve their  communities. All others Roma would have had suffer the confiscation of land and property and the  death sentence. In 1596, during the reign of Elizabeth I 106 travellers were sentenced to death in the city of York, with no indictment out of belonging to a race hated by the authorities and the public. Nine sentences were executed, while the  others managed to prove that they were born in England. Executions on the basis of race continued  until 1650, the year after the execution of Charles I, when the era of Oliver Cromwell began and the  English interregnum, first with the republic called the Commonwealth of England, then with the  Protectorate of England, Scotland and Ireland. Despite the atmosphere of political and social  change, that year a Roma was executed in Suffolk, while others were deported to America.

Scotland,  that in 1540 had allowed Roma to live within the country while maintaining their traditions, had a  sudden afterthought and the following year enacted laws against the Gypsies. In 1573, the Gypsies hiding in Scotland were ordered to get married and develop a  stable working activity, otherwise leave the country.


From nine to twelve million Roma are currently living in Europe. In Romania the estimated Roma  population is between one million and a half to two and a half; in Bulgaria from 700,000 to  800,000; in Spain - where they are called Gypsies or Kale - around 600,000; in France half a  million. In 2006, about 160,000 Roma lived in Italy, then reduced to less than half due to the  indiscriminate evictions and the institutional persecution, which forced them to seek refuge in other  countries, causing in the meantime a high degree of mortality within the settlements. Roma from  Eastern Europe constitute about 85% of the total, Kale - or Gypsies - 10%, Sintis (in France called Manouche) 4% and Romanichal in UK 0.5 %. In Europe Roma are primarily sedentary, although  the persecution often oblige them to a form of forced nomadism. The stereotypes on Roma community during a thousand years are always the same: they are  children rapers, thieves, lawless and dirty people etc. Most European citizens are frightened by misinformation concerning Roma people, and the role the  media play in this case, cannot be considered negligible. For centuries the marginalization and mistrust towards Roma people have not changed and Roma communities are quite always and everywhere discriminated, ghettoized and kept away from  citizens, mass media and often from public administrations also.The decades spent in this situation of neglect have brought communities to a complete isolation  causing distrust and rancor towards the host countries.

The Scapegoats

In several eastern European countries there is a war against the Roma. There are marches against them. Self-proclaimed vigilantes bully and threaten them. Walls are built around the sections of town where they live. Their houses are set on fire. They are forced out of their homes and sometimes brutally murdered. Almost everywhere, the authorities have stood aside.

The Roma are easy scapegoats. They're at the bottom of society, have no lobby and are poorly-organized politically. There is societal racism against them, and it is legitimized by a majority of the ruling elite. In 1993, after three Roma in the Romanian village of Hadareni were lynched with the involvement of the police, the government, in its official explanation, expressed understanding for the "anger of the villagers." And in February 2009, when right-wing extremists in the Hungarian village of Tatárszentgyörgy set the house of a Roma family on fire and shot the father and his young son as they fled from the flames, no member of the Hungarian government called on people to unite to stop the violence.

The lack of prospects for the Roma in eastern Europe has prompted tens of thousands of them, primarily from Romania and Bulgaria, to head west. Roma refugees have come to Italy, Spain, France, England, and recently also to Germany's large cities. In the western European countries they work for a couple of euros an hour doing cleaning, construction, or they beg. Some steal. For many, it is more than they could have ever imagined in their home countries.

From here

the Roma in the Czech republic

Jindich Nestler wouldn't call himself a racist. "The good gypsies can stay," he says. "But most of them are lazy or criminals or even terrorists. They have to disappear."

Nestler is a 36-year-old official of the far-right "Workers' Party for Social Justice," or DSSS, by its Czech initials. DSSS is a successor party to the neo-Nazi group Dlnická Strana (DS), which was banned a year and a half ago by the highest Czech administrative court. One reason the court gave for the ban was that Dlnická Strana organized rallies that led to pogrom-like riots against the Roma.

Around 250,000 Roma live among 10 million Czechs. There are 300 slums around the country. Several can be found in big-city centers. Real-estate companies pay the Roma -- or offer to forgive their debts -- if they abandon potentially lucrative buildings in city centers and move to remote regions near the German border. The companies even bring them to specific abandoned houses, then charge high rents -- or even claim welfare subsidies directly from the state.

Some homeowners "exploit" the Roma, says Martin Šimáek, director of a state agency for social integration. Real-estate speculators charge them unprecedented, sky-high rents and excessive rates for water and power, he says. "This leads to unrest and creates problems for coexistence throughout the entire town," Šimáek told a Czech radio station.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,786495,00.html#ref=nlint

hungary's roma

Mailstrom has posted previously about the Roma. It takes extracts from this recent newspaper report.

Right across the continent, from Bulgaria to Britain, Europe is wrestling with a new outbreak of an ancient dilemma: the gypsies [the Roma], the gajé ( the non-gypsies) and how the two communities are to get along.

Since the arrival of the Roma from India via the Middle East in the 15th century, relations have rarely been smooth. Hitler's attempt to exterminate the community resonated with the deportations they suffered centuries previously in Spain and Henry VIII's England. President Sarkozy's grandstanding expulsion of thousands of Romanies over the past two years was only the latest version. In Britain the number has soared in recent years, because of waves of immigration from Romania and Bulgaria their alleged skilful exploitation of our benefits system has brought down the wrath of the tabloids. In Bulgaria and Romania, too, countries where they have lived in large numbers for centuries, the discrimination they suffer is still acute. Even in Spain, the dropout rate from high school is 80 per cent. And in many countries the image persists of a community of lawless, feckless petty criminals, condemned to eke out a miserable living on the fringes of our civilisation.

In Hungary in March, hundreds of uniformed vigilantes suddenly appeared in Gyongyospata. They stayed for three weeks. Wearing black paramilitary uniforms, they streamed into the gypsy ghetto and began ostentatiously to patrol in place of the police. They belonged to an organisation called Szebb Jovoert Polgaror Egyesulet, which means Civil Guard Association for a Better Future. They patrolled the town "day and night". The vigilantes were supported by a far-right political party called Jobbik which is anti-Semitic and anti-Romany. Roma residents are afraid to go to school, to work or even to buy food. The standoff ended only when the Hungarian Red Cross came and evacuated the gypsies with a convoy of buses.

In Hungary the previous "Communist" regime refused to regard the gypsies as a minority, but as a social problem - undisciplined proletarians who needed to be forced into the same mould as the rest. They were accordingly given poor-quality worker housing with very cheap mortgages, and obliged to toil, like everybody else. The regime didn't want them to get more education because they needed cheap unskilled labour. But when that system abruptly collapsed in 1989 the Communists' uneconomic factories and plants closed down. It was the unskilled workers at the bottom – the Romanies in particular – who were left high and dry. Romany unemployment shot up from 15 per cent to 85 per cent in two years. In the absence of work there was now welfare. Milking the system became a survival strategy. a Romany family would live off welfare, which arrives on the fifth of the month. By the money would run out, so they would run up credit at the local shop, and the men of the family would get a few days' casual work, building walls, fixing roofs, in the neighbourhood. But with the financial crisis, credit stopped and people stopped spending money and the work dried up. The Romanies have survived for the past 20 years but the economic crisis has driven them to the wall.

No sanctuary for the Roma in Rome

About 150 Roma gypsies were barred from participating in the Easter vigil of the basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls on Sunday, after temporarily taking shelter there on Good Friday after being forced out of their settlements in the capital.

Amid cries of "shame, shame" from local and foreign pilgrims, the gipsies were blocked from entering St Paul's Outside the Walls. Police had offered the Roma payments of €1,000 (£880)– €500 from Rome city council and €500 from the Roman Catholic charity Caritas – to leave the area in front of the church.

The Roma - Europe's poor of the poor

Further to an earlier blog here , Europe's roughly 10 million Roma remain the poorest of the poor, often migrating abroad in search of work .

The Czech Republic guilty of discriminating against Roma children by placing them in special schools for the mentally handicapped. In Slovakia at least 90% of Roma children attend special schools for the mentally retarded. In Hungary, several local courts have ruled in favour of Roma children who sued the state for discrimination, for placing them in special schools. In Romania and Bulgaria up to one-third of Roma children were not in school, a proportion which reaches 80% in Bosnia-Hercegovina. A report from Amnesty International criticised shortcomings in primary education in Slovenia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Croatia which it said "deprive Romani children of the chance of fulfilling their true potential".

"Although a lot of improvements have been made in the education system, the level of illiteracy in the Roma community is still high and 35-40% of Roma children don't have access to school," Magda Matache, executive director for Romani Criss, a Roma human rights group says

About one million Roma children "remain invisible" in South-East Europe, without documents or adequate healthcare, a Unicef report says. 50,000 Roma children live as refugees in Germany.

The Roma suffer three fold-prejudice in the UK. Firstly because they are Gypsies, secondly because they are often asylum seekers or refugees and thirdly because many are Romanian.

The Romanian author Mircea Cartarescu points out that it was the Romanians who forced the Roma into a life of misery and delinquency - by enslaving them.

"For centuries they could be bought and sold, families were torn apart, children taken from their mothers, women separated from their men. The young women were generally raped by their owners and the 'flock of crows', as they were called, was the target of general contempt and discrimination. One of the voivodes, or provincial governors, used to have them climb trees and then shot them down with arrows. He called it crow-hunting. Tied to one place and kept like animals, the gypsies multiplied more quickly in the Romanian principalities than anywhere else in Europe. Therefore we only have ourselves to blame for creating the gypsy problem. It is our historical guilt. ... We are appalled when other countries perceive us as a nation of criminals, but we see the gypsies in exactly the same way." he said