The Rromani Connection website
Rromani articles, papers & documents
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.
UN's Toxic Shame
(Click picture to watch the report)
Roma have been violently persecuted across Europe throughout history, but now Roma living in UN refugee camps in Kosovo are being persecuted by neglect.
On the 26th April, the popular SBS TV program, Dateline reported on the plight of the refugees in Mitrovica, where many children are sick and have dangerously high lead levels in their bloodstreams.
Roma in Bosnia and Herzegovina and
Bosnian Roma women in West Europe
by
Hedina Sijercic
The situation has not changed at all in 2009
Click on this picture to read the article
(60KB doc file)
Click the picture to download a free copy (475kb)
Click on the Romani flag to listen to an interview by Yvonne and Dave Slee on the Romani Radio Program in Perth WA with an Indian couple about similarities between Romani and Indian culture, religion and language.
Radio program interview
Click on this picture to watch Hedina's documentary on Roma in Bosnia
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 15th 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)
The people we are... by Avinash Singh
A Greek, no matter no matter what religion or nationality, call themselves Greek as a people! So is the case with Arabs, Persians and Slavs.
So what people are the Roma?
Today they live in many countries and follow many different religions. They are the largest minority in Europe. They are living in Asia and in America too. But they have a unique bond with India. Despite all the changes in culture, language and religion they remain Hindu as a people. And I say Hindu, not in terms of religion but as a people (be it of any religion). The Hindus are a diverse people. The variations can range from mongoloid to Caucasoid in features. But it's not contradictory! The Turk and Tatar people too have these variations, and still all of them call themselves 'one people'. So why can't a Hindu; be it in India, Serbia, France or America call himself a Hindu! The Indians that were taken by British to work for the plantations to Fiji and Mauritius and West Indies do still call themselves Hindu, so why shouldn’t 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
France evicts Roma
In France right now they're having a debate over the rights of thousands of Roma. President Nicolas Sarkozy regards them as 'illegals', and is adamant that he, for one, wants them out of France. Already, thousands of Roma people have been sent back to wherever 'home' was, prompting an uproar in Europe, including accusations of ethnic cleansing. Dateline's Victoria Strobl reports. (Click the picture to watch the report)
"O Rajah, I have been taught that we of the Deccan civilization should seek balance in our lives. Surely we have room for the soul as well as the material world. Yet their importance, one to the other, I think is not constant, but changes with the needs of men. In times of peace and prosperity, a certain amount of asceticism and concern with the afterlife may help to temper the corrupting influences of wealth and materialism. But even while our eyes seek the heavens, our feet should remain earthbound. Recall that the Muslim conquests took place at a time when our people were steeped in the supernatural. When the sultan's armies sacked our villages and killed and enslaved our people, little resistance was offered. Instead, the people took refuge in prayer and spiritual consolation, comforting themselves that the next life would be a better one."
"Let us not be alarmists," countered Amul. "We Madrans can not all carry swords and arm ourselves against phantom enemies. Then our neighbors will become suspicious and arm themselves, and a race will begin that can only end in a conflict that no one wanted in the first place."
"There is much in what you both say," mused the rajah. "But have we not had enough reason to be suspicious of the rana, Chandra, in our neighboring state of Madresh? He has placed troops along our common border, though the Madreshian army officers say they are merely engaged in peaceful camping-out exercises. Perhaps, and perhaps not. What is certain is that we lack good military intelligence."
Excerpt from the book 'The Willing Spirit' by Piers Anthony and Alfred Tella.
From Aaron Anderson, NSW, Australia
Thursday, 2nd June, 2011: BELOW IS A COPY OF PART OF A MESSAGE I WROTE TO A HUNGARIAN ROMA STUDENT LAST YEAR .. Her name has been changed to "Rada" to respect her privacy.
Just one more thing Rada. I remember your words saying that you feel that the mainstream Hungarian society will always see Gypsy Folk as lazy, stupid etc., no matter how much they actually accomplish, for example, even if they study hard and become exceptional scholars. I know all that, and I keep experiencing it here in Australia. But the world is changing, and I mean REALLY changing. It's a deep change coming from the Internet and the many tools it's providing for information exchange and working, thinking, finding solutions and inventing together.
In the past, the talents, knowledge and ability of poor and powerless people could be hidden, ignored and suppressed by more powerful people wishing to keep painting a false picture of their own superiority and the false picture of the inferiority of poor and powerless people, like the Gypsies and the poor of their own race. But that will no longer be possible, and we Gypsies must start playing our cards cleverly.
You, Rada, are a very "smart" Gypsy---"smart" in the Gadjo meaning of "smart", and you may very well become an example-setter and leader for other Gypsies. But, I think that many Gypsies will want to show genius in their own ways (not in 'Gadjo' ways). We will show genius in yet un-seeable ways, and the new Internet-related methods will be hugely useful launchpads for their rockets of genius.
European Commission Meeting on Roma
Brussels, March 10th 2010
Keynote Address
Ian Hancock
Click here to read (PDF 267kb)
A Comment from the POLITICS.HU website on the article 'Government official says Roma exclusion not to be treated as an ethnic issue'
Plumcrazy says:
@Olga
Hi there. It's been awhile. Eastern European Roma are uneducated because of a variety of reasons. They need more education, including sex education. Once they get up to par with the rest of Europeans in education they will realize they have more options which would include limiting the number of children.
@Sophia
Ronald Lee, Ivan Vesely, Ian Hancock, Tamara Demetro, Yvonne Slee, Paul Polansky and there are many other Romani activists. They all fight hard and some have devoted their lives to this cause.
Documentary focusing on plight of Roma plays at Heartland
17/10/2011 - A documentary movie that's showing at the Heartland Film Festival, "A People Uncounted," is creating a lot of buzz. Director Aaron Yeger, sat down via Skype with 24-Hour News 8 to talk about the film, which chronicles the genocide of the story of the Roma, commonly referred to as Gypsies, in the Holocaust, and the continued effects of discrimination.
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBR3QXvYbOo
Click on the YouTube window to hear an interview with Prof. Ian Hancock
The Roma
More information on Romanies from our Indian friends.
Namaste!
The Roma in America group is a busy site with lots of discussion going on. Why not join the group and contribute to the comments.
A community within and between communities: multiculturalism, education and the Australian Romani community
Riccardo Armillei
Ph.D. in Social Science
The Swinburne Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology
Australian Romani community (462 kb PDF)
