Rromani Articles

"When wingless, even the most beautiful butterfly is a worm" (rromani proverb)

The drawing is deemed at symbolising the situation of Rromani vocabulary in present time Europe.
The body of the butterfly stands for the inherited vocabulary, but some parts have been lost in various countries, and vernacularists do not allow their reintroduction in local varieties of Rromani (symbolised by light sectors on the abdomen of the butterfly with NA! NE! and NEM!).
The left side of the butterfly represents the internal resources:
- front wing: all the vocabulary of Rromani wisdom, tradition, customary law etc. charged with eloquent phraseology, a lot of which has been lost in modern life. What to do? Recognise and respect this heritage, circulate it in publications and media.
- back wing: words from Rromani history (local terms of past everyday life, institutions, food, dresses, Asian cultural vocabulary etc.). Almost all has been lost. What to do? Teach Rromani history and culture in schools, with the help of this vocabulary.
In both cases it is necessary to accept the presence of these words in Rromani.
The right side of the butterfly represents external resources:
- front wing: modern technical vocabulary dealing with policy, technocracy (also needed), Human rights, active citizenship, institutions, advocacy etc… This vocabulary exists partly but it is not very widely known, just like the notions it expresses are still unfamiliar to most Rroms. Education is needed to inform about these notions and disseminate the vocabulary related to these notions. One can include here also universal and European phraseology, often based on the Bible and classical European literature. What to do? Use Rromani as widely as possible in all these spheres of activity, with international terminology and ad hoc neologisms, but stressing mainly the Rromani way of reasoning with Rromani lexical resources.
- back wing: notions and terminology related to the European period of Rromani history, in intercourses with ga?ikane societies, in terms of persecution and peaceful coexistence. Due to the lack of Rromani historical institutions, this vocabulary is quite unknown to most Rroms. What to do? Incorporate this vocabulary into Rromani books, conferences, exhibitions and movies devoted to European history.
Restoring lost and forgotten segments of the language, enriching its resources in the above mentioned domains and urging speakers to introduce and incorporate these items as a part of our common heritage are the three most crucial tasks for the affirmation of Rromani as a regular European language. This can lead to a production which will be sufficient for to enhance its prestige and motivate people to use it wider among them in everyday life, especially in families and close fellowship. If this can be achieved, its affirmation as a European language of culture and communication will be granted and there will not be any more reason to write articles about Rromani in journals devoted to endangered languages. As Rajko Djuric - a poet and journalist from Serbia, said: "It is a matter of pativ (honour, respect, righteousness, justice) to save our language from fragmentation and give it back the status it should never have lost".

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Message on International Roma Day 2009

International Roma Day is an opportunity call attention to the history, experience, and human rights of Europe’s largest ethnic minority.

Promoting and protecting the rights of Roma has long been of personal interest to me. I saw firsthand the plight of the Roma – particularly Romani women and children – when I visited Roma communities in Central and Eastern Europe as First Lady. As a member of the Helsinki Commission, I urged governments to do more to protect and promote the 10 million Roma who live in Europe.

Despite important progress that has been made in the past decade, many Roma still live on the margins of society. They continue to experience racial profiling, violence, discrimination and other human rights abuses. Too often they lack identity documents or citizenship papers, which excludes them from voting, social services, education, and employment opportunities that would enable them to participate more fully in the countries in which they live.

The United States is committed to protecting and promoting the human rights of Roma through our bilateral relations and through our involvement in organizations such as the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Governments have a special responsibility to ensure that minority communities have the tools of opportunity they need to succeed as productive and responsible members of society. I urge governments throughout Europe to continue their efforts to address the plight of Roma, end discrimination and ensure equality of opportunity in education and employment so that Roma can fulfill their greater promise of success and achievement.

Roma have a rich artistic and cultural heritage, which has left an indelible mark across Europe and the world. It is in the interests of the larger European and global community to create conditions that maximize success for all people within our borders and beyond. I hope that events taking place at our embassies and missions around the world on International Roma Day will be one more step on the path to helping Roma reach a better, brighter future.

Banjaras: the cousins of Roma in India by Avinash Singh

The term Banjaras bring up some images in our minds. Known in India as a wandering people, their mention is colloquial to music, dance, colorful life and constant travel. Every one in India knows about them. They have the same image as the Roma in Europe. Colorful traveling people, who love to dance, sing and make merry. They are famous for their colorful dresses and their love for travel. They are mentioned often in the literature and have been romanticized in the tales. Although partly true, this image doesn’t always hold true, especially in the modern times.
It has been human habit to generalize and form stereotype things. Like a Russian is supposed to be drink a lot, the Jew has a long nose, India is full of elephants and snakes or as in our case the Banjaras are still ‘gypsy’. Most of these are not true but still people like to mention them because they are catchy! Like the mention about the nose of Jews was a Nazi propaganda. In India too, now a day elephants are rare! And most of the Banjaras have today taken to settled life. All there stereotypes are utterly wrong but they have continued… (Read more)

The mother and the son by Avinash Singh

It’s a story of a mother and a son that got separated long ago. Fate split them apart but now is the time for them to reunite.

The annals of European history have recorded the coming of some strange people.
They came to the borders of Europe somewhere in the 15^th century.
They were different in looks, customs and manners form the rest of Europeans.
From the first day itself, they have been subject to suspicion. The people thought that they were coming from Egypt and hence they were given the name ‘gypsies’… A derogatory term that has stuck to their heads ever since. They were made subjects of legends and folklores. In time they became larger than life characters but remained little understood. These dancing, singing and ‘happy go lucky’ people were different form the normal settled people but society hates deference (as it has always done!). Soon they were prejudiced against and even enslaved. Many misconceptions about them soon spread around. They were accused of black magic, cheating and fooling people (even stealing babies). Life was made difficult for them.
All sorts of propaganda were used against them. In spite of the highly unmaterialistic and truthful lives they lead, they were dubbed as thieves and burglars. However, they survived it all. They are the Romani people or the Roma... (Read more)

At-glance: Who are the Roma?

20 August 2010. Source: Szilvia Malik Game, SBS Radio

There are no official numbers, but it is estimated that 10 million Roma live in Europe and they represent the poorest people group on the continent. There are estimated to be about 25,000 Roma living in Australia. The President of the Sinti-Romani Organisation in Queensland, Yvonne Slee, explains their origins.
"We originate from India. In the 11th century groups of Indians were taken out by Mahmud of Ghazni the conqueror, and he took the people out, he took the gold, he took jewels, he burned down temples and he did that over 30 years.
Many of us were taken out of there and ended up in Afghanistan for a while because that is where he went and then after the army was defeated by the Seljuks we ended up in Anatolia where we stayed for 200 years and that is where we crystalised into our own culture.
The words that we use now, our language still has a lot of Indian words, Hindi mixed with Greek words.
And then we went on further westwards into Europe, because the Ottoman Empire encroached on Anatolia and so we were pushed out again and we had to go further, into Europe".
Ever since the Roma arrived in Europe they have suffered discrimination and everywhere they have settled, they have ended up with inferior social status, education, employment, wealth and political power.
During the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of them were burnt in the gas chambers by the Nazi Germans.
David Diaz-Jogeix is Europe's Deputy Program Director for the human rights group, Amnesty International. He believes European states are not seriously trying to break the Romas' cycle of discrimination and poverty.
"The Roma people are the largest minority in Europe, but it is not just a matter of numbers.
It is a matter of severe and entrenched discrimination that the Roma people have been subjected to in Europe," says Mr Diaz-Jogeix.
Mr Diaz-Jogeix believes that a tendency of many Romas to live in caravans has given rise to negative impressions about their lifestyle, and has contributed to their marginalisation.
"The great vast majority of the Roma people are not nomads.
The people live in towns, but the prejudice against them has resulted in no access to jobs, no access to education," he says. Mr Diaz-Jogeix says in many European countries, Roma children have been forced to attend segregated special schools or segregated classes where they study according to an inferior curriculum.
He says in some cases, they are even treated as "stupid" and "disabled".
"For example in Slovakia, the administration are treating the Roma different from the mainstream population and placing the children in school that are meant for people with mental disabilities," he says.
Angela Kocze is a former president of the Hungarian-based European Roma Rights Centre, which lobbies for Roma rights across the continent. From a Roma background herself, she currently researches Roma issues for the Institute for National and Ethnic Minorities at the Hungarian Science Academy.
Ms Kocze says the Romas' poor access to education has a ripple effect, resulting in bad employment possibilities.
"There are several human rights reports which pointed out that Romani children are facing serious obstacles in the educational system.
They are not able to get into high school, especially those who are coming from a segregated area, and they were attending segregated schools. And if we can see the statistics that approximately half million Roma are living in Hungary now and only five percent of the Romani schools' pupils were able to get to high school. I mean compared with the non-Roma students, which 70 percent of them were able to go to high school, so there is a huge discrepancy," she says.
The often unemployed Roma tend to live in segregated, substandard housing, and face much lower life expectancy than that of non-Roma. Forced evictions have left thousands of Roma without homes Europe-wide.
Romas are also often perceived as criminals. But according to the United Nations Development Program, many of the crimes committed by Roma can be linked directly to poverty - like stealing of crops. Recently, the Second European Roma Summit took place in the Spanish city of Cordoba.
Mr Diaz-Jogeix from Amnesty International, who was present at the event, says he was disappointed with the absence of European government representatives promising political action. "The agenda of this year's conference looks at the exchange of best practice among member states of the European Union.
However Amnesty International would have liked to have a far more political leadership from the European Union, reminding the obligations of the member states not to put specific categories of people subject to discrimination for example in the areas of health, in the areas of education and subject to force evictions in many countries in Europe," he says.
The Roma in Australia face different hardships to their kin in Europe. Here they are not discriminated against, and in fact are barely even recognized. That's a situation that Yvonne Slee, from the Sinti-Romani Organisation in Queensland, is trying to change this, through running education courses about the culture of her people.
"It is misunderstood, sort of stereotyped, you know not understood as a culture, they sort of see us as a Hollywood gypsy and we do not seem to get the right acknowledgment for our culture here and it is very hard to get it across.
People do not understand, so we have to do, like I do, cultural exhibits to educate or to do talks at schools to make them understand what culture we are, otherwise we get overlooked often and it is, well quite, we get left out again, our kids get left out again that way as well," she told SBS.

Read more at SBS World News