anti-caste

EUROPE’S OUTCASTES

The Gypsy in Me by Cristiana Grigore(New York Times)

“I am Roma, but for many years I denied my origins for fear of being called a Gypsy. I grew up in Romania, where one meaning of tigan — tzigane, Zigeuner, cigány, cigan, ‘Gypsy’ in other European languages — is ‘a person who engages in harmful or illegal activities.’ The name comes from a medieval Greek word that means ‘untouchable,’ and derivatives — like ‘gypped’ or ‘gypsy cab’ — refer to stealing and cheating.

“My parents and grandparents were well aware of the negative stereotypes of the Gypsies as rootless thieves and beggars, and they took pains to protect me. As a little girl, my mother dressed me in pale colors and cut my hair short so I would not look like a Gypsy. My father warned me never to steal, and to always associate with smart people. I can understand why my grandfather, a blacksmith, was so proud of buying a ‘corner of the village’ and building houses for his children. My grandmother was a healer — not through magical powers but by volunteering to take people to the best doctors in the capital.

“Still, all these efforts couldn’t stop my classmates’ parents from reproaching my first-grade teacher for giving the highest award to me, a Gypsy. That confirmed my grandfather’s belief that there is no use acting ‘as if I were an official from the Ministry,’ as he would put it, since there was ‘no such thing as a Gypsy teacher, priest or lawyer.’ He too wanted to be like ‘the others,’ but he was also aware of the invisible limits that kept Gypsies separate. [...]

“About 700 years ago, when the Roma first entered Europe, the locals assumed the dark-skinned people were from Egypt — hence the English ‘Gypsies.’ In fact, they originally came from northern India, and ‘Roma’ is what they called themselves. [...]

“My family didn’t speak Romani or follow the nomadic lifestyle. However, my grandfather was a blacksmith, a common Romani occupation. My mother’s light skin allowed me to conceal my roots, but my father, whose darker skin would have drawn attention, avoided coming around my school.

“Today, most Roma are settled, like my family, but they have not yet found their place in the world. A majority of the Roma cannot find jobs, decent housing or decent medical care. Many Romani children do not attend school; according to a 2011 Unicef report, only about a fifth of Romani children in Europe attend primary school. And many of those who do are bullied and do not dream of becoming professionals or earning awards.

“Many Roma continue to roam. Some do so, because settling down would mean losing their source of livelihood; others because they have no place to go. As the poorest and most stigmatized people in Europe, they have no choice but to remain on the fringes. Whatever the advantages of permanent settlement, they are dwarfed by immediate needs.”

anti-caste posts on the Roma

REPORT: CASTE OPPRESSION OF THE ROMA FOUND ALL ACROSS EUROPE–EAST AND WEST

‘Widespread’ Roma exclusion persists (The Parliament)

“A new report says that many Roma people ‘continue to face discrimination and social exclusion’ across the EU.

“The situation of Roma is on average worse than the situation of non-Roma living in close proximity, it says. [...]

“The report shows that in the member states surveyed, where the overwhelming majority of Roma EU citizens live, their situation in the areas of employment, education, housing and health is on average worse than the situation of non-Roma living close by.

“Roma continue to experience discrimination and are not sufficiently aware of their rights guaranteed by EU law, it says.

“It also found that only 15 per cent of young Roma adults surveyed have completed upper-secondary general or vocational education, compared with more than 70 per cent of the majority population living nearby.

“On average, less than 30 per cent of Roma surveyed are in paid employment, while around 45 per cent of the Roma surveyed live in households lacking either an indoor kitchen, toilet, shower or bath, or electricity.

“About 40 per cent of Roma surveyed live in households where somebody went to bed hungry at least once in the last month because they could not afford to buy food.”

See also:

Roma ‘face same inequalities in west Europe as in east’ (BBC News, May 23, 2012):

“Ioannis Dimitrakopoulos, from the EU Agency on Fundamental Rights (FRA), which co-authored the report, says that Roma in countries like France, Italy and Spain share a common characteristic with Roma communities in Hungary, Romania and Slovakia - in that they were worse off than the majority non-Roma.

“‘That is precisely what we find most shocking. We would have expected to find significant differences, but from the responses of the Roma people themselves and their neighbours, we see few differences.

“‘One would have expected to see that their situation is far better in countries that have better conditions of life for their general population.’”

And see:

The Veiled Plight of the European Roma: New Report Calls for End to Discrimination (International Business Times, May 23, 2012):

“The cultural identity of the Roma people is understood only hazily by outsiders. The so-called gypsies are widely considered shiftless, unmoored and mysterious. But a single stereotype is incapable of characterizing the Roma people all across Europe; in fact, they are as diverse as the myriad countries they inhabit.

“The Roma originated in India, but it seems the bulk of their exodus took place centuries ago. In his 2002 book East European Gypsies, author Zoltan Barany, a professor of world politics at the University of Texas, wrote that ‘linguistic evidence suggests that Gypsies originated in the Punjab. They left perhaps as early as the sixth century and probably due to repeated incursions by Islamic warriors.’ Since then, the Roma have assimilated, to varying degrees, into several European countries.

“Contrary to popular belief, many Roma do not roam. Barany writes that the majority of the 'Gypsies' in Eastern Europe are settled. Except for the necessary shifts that went hand-in-hand with poverty and homelessness, large numbers of Roma established a homestead wherever they were able.

“Today there are at least 12 million Roma living in Europe, with the bulk residing in Eastern Europe. In Bulgaria and Romania, they account for at least 10 percent of the population.

“After centuries of sprawl, separate Roma groups have adapted to their home countries so that they no longer constitute a homogenous group. Some have dark features; others have light skin and blond hair. Some speak Romani, while others speak the lingua franca of their home country. Some are Catholic, some are Muslim, and some are Orthodox Christians.

“But the Roma are still collectively identifiable as outsiders, unified by their shared marginalization. For centuries, widespread discrimination was a constant barrier to their gainful integration into society.”

And see also previous anti-caste posts on the Roma

FRENCH GOVT IS ROUNDING UP AND DEPORTING MEMBERS OF EUROPE’S LARGEST OPPRESSED CASTE

[See also: France: Down With Racist Anti-Roma Campaign! No Deportations! For Full Citizenship Rights!,
Workers Vanguard (September 24, 2010)]

Stop this state persecution of Roma by Ethel Brooks (Guardian (UK))

“Last week, the French government began the roundup of more than 700 Romany immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania, and ordered special flights chartered to send them back to their home countries. The deportations will begin on Thursday. Over the past month, the French government began dismantling Romany camps; at present, more than 50 camps all over France have been destroyed by the state.

“At the same time, France has announced two other policies directed at Roma, Travellers and other immigrants: the criminalisation of entire families rather than just individuals and the stripping of citizenship from immigrants with criminal convictions.

“These measures are part of a wider law-and-order push by President Nicolas Sarkozy following a weekend of rioting in two cities in July. In a poor suburb of Grenoble, southeast France, young people torched cars and fired on police following an incident in which a suspect in a casino robbery was shot dead. In Saint-Aignan, in central France, police shot dead a 22-year-old Romany man for failing to stop at a roadblock. Roma armed with hatchets and iron bars felled trees and traffic lights, torched cars and attacked a bakery and a police station.

“This is the first time France has seen protests by Roma youth taking the form of violent disturbances; the current rioting was similar in substance, though smaller in scale, to the immigrant-led 2005 riots that broke out across France’s suburbs. Rather than sympathy for the families who lost their sons, or an apology for the police killings, the protests and riots were met with immediate state violence, expulsion and criminalisation.

“The Sarkozy government's attacks on Roma are nothing more than cynical politics, state-sponsored racism and xenophobia aimed primarily at Roma citizens and, by extension, all immigrants. They have arisen as window-dressing on the unfolding corruption scandal surrounding Sarkozy.

“This happened despite the fact that the young Romany killed was French and those expelled were citizens of EU member states, who have a right to enter France without passports, staying if they find employment within three months. One wonders how closely paperwork was checked with regard to residency and employment as the camps were being dismantled and EU citizens expelled on chartered flights.

“France is not alone in its attack against its own Romany citizens and those of other EU member states. Leaders all over Europe have found it expedient to attack Roma as recessions have hit, political scandals have loomed or other kinds of threats to state power have emerged. Indeed, Sarkozy seems to have been taking lessons from his conservative counterpart in Italy, Silvio Berlusconi whose government has increasingly focused on Roma as targets of state violence and everyday xenophobia. Similar things are happening in places ranging from Slovakia to Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey.”

See also:

As France Expels Gypsies, a Q&A on a Mysterious People (AOL News, August 19, 2010):

AOL News spoke to Yaron Matras, an expert on the Roma and a linguistics professor at the University of Manchester in England, where he coordinates the Romani Project.

Where are the Roma from?

From what we’ve been able to find out, the Roma probably came from central India and moved to northern India around the fifth century. The Romani language is one of the Indo-Aryan languages, like Hindi or ancient Sanskrit. We think the Roma people moved westward around the 10th century and into what is now Turkey. From the late 14th century on, they moved into Europe.

Why is everyone so vague about the origins of the Roma and why they left India?

First of all, there are absolutely no historical records. Nobody really knows. People have come up with all sorts of theories and wild speculation. There's no evidence of a catastrophic event causing them to leave. They were part of an economically specialized caste; some of them, for example, were metal workers and continued that trade for centuries.

Do you mean they were part of a lower caste in India?

Well, there’s a generation of [Roma] activists that don’t want to talk about that now, as if that’s an insult to their ancestors. There’s a fashion among activists to say the Roma were upper-caste, proud warriors who were taken as slaves and forced to come to Europe. There’s no evidence to support that. There’s no written attestation.

Many people think the word “Roma” means Romanian, especially as the French are expelling many Roma back to Romania.

“Rom” comes from the caste name “Dom” in the Indian languages. The country of Romania has nothing to do with the Roma or the word “Romani,” which is an adjective for them. It’s a complete coincidence. There is a large population of Roma who live in Romania, but they are all over the Balkans, in Bulgaria and Slovakia and Turkey as well.

Roma are said to have been persecuted for centuries; they also have a reputation for being petty criminals and con artists. Did one lead to the other?

The Roma have a long history of persecution, of living in poverty, being marginalized, and have a high rate of illiteracy. There’s been a lot of social prejudice and isolation. It’s a vicious cycle than can lead to self-despair and a boycotting of mainstream culture. But you’re seeing the Roma who are out there begging; you aren't seeing the ones working in offices and other good jobs. There are thousands of those too.

How does the persecution of the Roma compare to that of the Jews?

To an extent, they’ve been persecuted more than the Jews. Jews had more urban integration. The Roma never had a cohesive body. They’ve never had a territory or a tradition of literacy, which is what the Jews had. Often they were allowed to work in Europe only in certain trades and on the condition they not mix with the local population. The Roma in Romania and Bulgaria were the first to lose their jobs after the fall of communism.

And see: Outsiders: The trouble with the Roma by Peter Popham (The Independent (UK), October 4, 2010)