Report on the Condition of the Roma in
Europe
With
special attention to the historical and contemporary situation of refugees and
asy lum-seekers and the causes of
migration
Report commissioned
by the OSCE for presentation October, 2000
UNHCR
Roma-Refugee Camp Macedonia September 2000
This report was commissioned by the
OSCE to be prepared by rapporteur Rudko Kawczynski. Kawczynski has served as an
expert on refugees, immigration, and minority issues for numerous German
organizations and for the German Green Party. He has been elected to European
Parliament as a candidate of this same party. He has published a book entitled
“Roma und Deutschland”: Kawczynski has been a consultant in the past for
the Open Society Network and was a founding board member of the European Roma
Rights Center. He was the designer and worked as director of the Open Society
Institute’s Roma Participation Program. Sins 1986 he is a Board member of the Hamburg based “Foundation for needy Victims of the Nazi
Regime”. At present he is a board member of the Roma National Congress, and
umbrella organization/federation of
Romani NGOs across Europe and world-wide.
Table of contend:
Anti-Gypsim or Economic Problem
Current Problems of the Roma in the OSCE Region
A European Romani Rights Charter
Why a European Charter on Romani Rights?
A European Charter on Romani Rights should include the
following points:
A process of rethinking is required
Introduction
In the 21st-century
Europe, the treatment of Roma will be the most important factor in gauging
human rights conditions and the treatment of minorities. A united, democratic
Europe which respects the rights of minorities inevitably presupposes respect
for Roma and their claim to equal rights. Without the Roma’s inclusion in
democratic process there can be no peaceful, normal relationship between them
and the majority population.
Over 12 million Roma currently live in Europe, the majority in the countries of
the former Eastern bloc. The ongoing break-up of nations into ethnicity-based
states leads irrevocably to the isolation of Roma as outside the ethnic
majority, and often deprives them of their citizenship. Ex-Yugoslavia,
ex-Czechoslovakia and the former USSR are but a few examples of places where
the status of Roma is unstable. Despite constitutions assuring citizenship to
all, these states are created around a ethno-national character and the public
very predictably perceives belonging to these states as being tied to
ethnicity. Being foreign in their own land is a situation Roma experience over
and over again.
Violence
against Roma, marginalisation in all sectors of society, inadequate and unequal
education opportunities, illiteracy, high child mortality rates, discrimination
and unemployment: these do not cause the problems, rather they are the symptoms
of the majority's obsessive antigypsism, or Anti-ciganism; its discriminatory
attitude towards Roma.
Antigypsism and prejudices
Antigypsism is a basic social consensus in European societies: whoever makes a serious effort to explain this phenomenon has to first describe the world-view of the majority population. In regard to so-called Gypsies, this means describing the origins of prejudices and their transmission from generation to generation. This is a difficult undertaking, because prejudices are fundamentally at odds with rational thought. Every attempt to discuss them rationally or objectively brings with it the unavoidable danger that these prejudices will manifest themselves in the very discussion. For example, does "Gypsy" fortune-telling belong to their culture or is it a means by which they can profit financially from the prejudices of the majority? Do Roma migrate because they enjoy it and feel ´free´ when uprooted or because they need safety? There is an ingrained belief among the majority that Roma like to wander, just as there was for many centuries in Europe a stereotype of the ´wandering Jew´ which seems absurd today. Do Roma, then, like to migrate? Any answer to this question will undoubtedly reveal more about the cultural background of the respondent than about "Gypsy" culture. Many "Gypsy" stereotypes may seem absurd but they are nonetheless an indelible feature of European culture. They help explain things and aid our intellectual orientation like a kind of map. People stand by them as if they were an article of faith, an indisputable dogma. That they function as norms and obvious truths goes unquestioned in the same way that other basic social tenants, i.e. the value placed on liberty or a sovereign state's right to defend itself, go unquestioned. Though history is full of examples of absurd assumptions being at the foundations of a society's world-view, many people, especially forward-thinking people, think that such conditions surely can't be dominant in this day and age. If most are prepared to accept that some tribes believe in evil spirits, that Jews were in the Middle Ages held to be servants of the devil, that the Spanish Inquisition burned witches, that German Nazis gassed children, why is it so hard to believe that prejudices and stereotyping manifest themselves in the form of antigypsism?
Because antigypsism is so deeply rooted in western culture, it is those who are at the receiving end who must set about proving its existence. It becomes clear what magnitude of problems face the person who tries to explain antigypsism or influence social convictions, and they meet with defensive and hostile reactions when "everyday truths" are questioned
According to a survey, every fifth person in Europe has anti-Semitic views; two thirds of the population are hostile to Roma. There are many similarities between anti-Semitism and antigypsism, not the least the interchangeable bias about "thieving Gypsies" and "rapacious Jews" which not only crops up in casual conversations in Budapest or Rostock but have their historical origins in medieval edicts. Martin Luther, a well-known anti-Semite, exhorted Christians to treat Jews "like Gypsies".
Antigypsism has, unlike anti-Semitism, never been questioned and therefore still remains part of the "cultural code" of the majority population.
Prejudices reveal a lot about antigypsism but nothing about so-called "Gypsies". Suggestions for solutions and strategies can tell us a lot about prejudices and antigypsism, or about those who came up with them. Someone who is utterly unsympathetic to Roma, an Antiziganist, will cast the very "Gypsy-ness" of the Roma as responsible for problems; a teacher sympathetic to Roma will blame their "inadequate" education. A basic feature of antigypsism is the manner in which Roma are reduced to their supposed "Gypsy-ness". Roma are not seen as individuals, as personalities or as involved and engaged, but as "Gypsies": this label becomes the deciding characteristic in how they are perceived – instead of perceiving them as compatriots with the same rights, they become "Gypsies" with all the stereotypes and "related characteristics".
The omnipresence of antigypsism extends, unfortunately, even to those well-disposed towards Roma. Well-meaning liberals in the 18th century maintained that the Jews' future lay in their own "political and moral" rebirth, renewal, by which these liberals meant that Jews should make use of the potential offered by education as outlined in their wide-ranging schemes for "improvement". In a similar manner, well-meaning supporters have for centuries trying to "civilize" "the Gypsy".
"If the repression which he
(the Jew) has suffered has made his habits crude, so fair treatment will
improve him" [1]
If we take stock of present situations, certain patterns of explanation become evident, patterns which have so far been overlooked. If we take the problem as a whole, we can begin to analyze it in terms of antigypsism and we come to a new and realistic understanding in our search for a solution.
Roma
as an Indicator of Political Stability; Five waves of
East-West Migration
Modern research suggests that the arrival of the Roma in Europe was connected to the Islamic raids of northern India. It is possible that the first Roma arrived in Europe as captives. Slavery in the Balkans continued until the second half of the 19th century, and may have begun already before the collapse of the Byzantine Empire. It has certainly influenced the destiny of the Roma in Europe, and still provides a key to understanding their current social and political situation in much the same way as understanding slavery is crucial to an understanding of the history and problems of African Americans.
Since the arrival of the Roma in Europe, migration from (south) East to the West was an attempt to escape enslavement and harassment and to attain freedom.
The first migrations westwards in the late 14th century followed the increasing decline of the Byzantine Empire and the Ottoman conquests.
The second wave of migration followed the abolition of slavery in the Rumanian principalities after 1864.
To a large extent, displaced persons and survivors of Nazi occupation and persecution left eastern Europe and settled in the West in the years following World War II, as did many Jewish survivors. Many persons belonging to this third "migration" still lack permanent resident status or citizenship of the countries they have settled in.
Pressure on the Romani populations in the communist countries -to assimilate, to avoid the urban centers, to be excluded from vocational training and decision making processes, as well as overt racism – led to emigration from those few countries which allowed relative freedom of travel: Yugoslavia, and later Poland. In the former, the situation of the Romani population prior to the collapse of the Federative Republic was an indication of the growing ethnic tension leading to overt acts of hostility and aggression. During this fourth wave of migration, the Roma were early victims of events which were later to affect the entire population of the region. Following restrictions on immigration in the West, these migrants had no other choice but to apply for political asylum in their countries of refuge. Their applications having been rejected, they now lack a secure status after living in the West for as long as twenty years, and are threatened by deportation to what has become a conflict region. Beside being equally affected by the threats of civil war, the Roma have lost any formal status they had possessed as one of the many ethnic groups in multinational former Yugoslavia. Romani families whose members were born in various different regions of the country are especially affected by ethnic evacuation measures.
A
fifth migration began after the collapse of communist rule in eastern Europe.
Increasing ethnic tension in Rumania and repeated assaultsagainst Romani
communities led to panic in many areas. Romani refugees from Rumania are often
direct victims of such assaults. Others fear attacks against their own
families, having witnessed that state institutions are not capable of granting
protection and security, often refuse to intervene, or even take active part in
abusing the Romani population.
Problems
The main feature of the Roma’s history in Europe has always been their continuous expulsion. In Germany, Croatia and Czechoslovakia, this policy of “fighting the gypsy problem” developed into genocide in the National Socialism. This inhuman, horrible escalation by the national-socialist way of “solving the gypsy question” was silently disregarded after the Second World War. The state mostly continued the special treatment of the survivors to solve the supposed “gypsy problem” this way.
Traditionally, the Roma are regarded by Western societies as a social problem, which is to be taken care of by stately repression and education. Roma are not accepted as a minority according to international law. Until now, This discriminating point of view usually led to problem solutions concentrating on treating the Roma as a “social fringe group problem” [2]. But the situation of the Roma in Europe has unambiguously shown that the problems of the Roma originate in the antigypsism of the majority.
A real intention to increase the living conditions of the Roma is not in sight, if not the opposite. Since the former East bloc came down, the situation of the Roma is continuously getting worse. Discrimination, missing education and violence against Roma are put down to their “habits”. Victims are made perpetrators, the behavior of the majority appears to be some kind of self-defense.
In spite of millions of financial aid to states of the former East bloc, violence and expulsion against Roma rise in these countries. There seems to be a direct causality between “aid programs” and migration of Roma. Those states which received the greatest financial aids are, paradoxically, also those from which the most asylum-seeking Roma come from.
In the meantime, systematical exclusion, unemployment, discrimination and terror by the police have become part of the everyday life for Roma in the states of the former East bloc, as well as murder, arson attacks and expulsion.
At this point, a detailed account of single events is abstained from and referred to further reports[3].
The RNC receives news from new incursions on a daily basis. Between 1990 and 1998 alone, the RNC registered 4,500 violent riots against Roma in the states of the former East bloc and 5,800 in the states of the EU. Included were only cases reported to the RNC. The actual number of victims supposedly is much higher. 1,756 Roma were killed and 3,500 injured during these incidents[4]. These numbers do not include those who suffered during the conflicts and wars in former Yugoslavia.
This horrible account should not, though, deceive about the fact that the majority of Roma names the everyday discrimination and the growing expulsion pressure as the main reason for the decision to leave their home[5].
The RNC already pointed at these tendencies as soon
as 1995. In the report on the situation of the Roma in the Czech Republic and
Slovakia, the RNC, together with the Soros Foundation, had ascertained in 1995
that the majority of Roma in these countries[6]:
·
Call their situation unbearable
and very dangerous
·
Have no longer trust in the state
·
Consider themselves excluded
·
Are systematically excluded from
all parts of social life
·
Are in fear of violence
·
See no future perspective for
themselves
Roma women reported that they were regularly victims of violence and rapes by the majority of the population. Alarmingly high was the percentage of women who reported to being raped and ill-treated by policemen.
Many of the questioned persons mentioned, even in 1995, that they were planning their escape to the West.
In the meantime, more than one million Roma in Europe were expelled from their homes. Many have fled from discrimination and violence. Numerous have escaped the Anti-gypsism in Eastern Europe[7]
The situation of the Roma in former Yugoslavia, the Kosovo and in the Czech Republic has proven to be especially dangerous. At the same time, the receiving states react with growing helplessness and aggressions against Roma refugees and refuse them protection.
In place of fighting the causes of refuge has moved the fighting of the victims – the refugee[8]. In place of partnership and participation came neo-colonialism and manipulation.
Specifically in the Czech Republic and Hungary exists the tendency to suppress and manipulate the independent Roma movement. The Roma civil rights movement is systematically persecuted and politically suppressed. Civil rights campaigners are criminalized and their families put under pressure[9].
These
tendencies are even increased by the attitude of some Western countries
(especially Germany, England and Belgium) that on the one hand play down and
hush up the reasons for escape, on the other hand put pressure on the
originating countries to make the escape impossible for the Roma.
Roma as Refugees
Especially terrifying is the fact that even in Western traditional democracies the standards for human and civil rights for Roma refugees are, de facto, put out of commission.
Roma asylum-seekers and refugees are set out to a principal suspect of “criminality”. Although all serious international institutions unanimously confirm the persecution of the Roma, these realizations are ignored by the responsible national authorities.
· Economical escape reasons are imputed to the refugees on principle[10].
· Often, the Roma refugees are given characteristics which were put on the Eastern Jews during the time of the Nazis[11]:
That they would mainly nourish themselves by small-time criminality, that they would not care much about hygiene, that they would be a potential source for epidemics, that they would make whole quarters uninhabitable, and the like.
· They do not receive any help in bureaucratic application formalities.
· Official letters are not delivered in Romanes, hence many are incapable to behave properly in a judicial procedure.
· Translators in Romanes are generally not made available, whereby communication is made impossible. As a result, Roma refugees are not given the opportunity to explain their fate.
· Families are torn apart by distributional measures.
· Traumatized Roma refugees are not offered help, in fact the opposite is often the case: Due to the steady threat of deportation the people are put out to mental pains which almost resemble psychic torture.
· International reports on the Roma’s situation and escape reasons are ignored.
· Legal representation is not offered.
The
German historian Professor Dr. Klaus J. Bade describes the treatment of Roma
refugees in his newest book “Europe in
motion: Migration from the late 18th century till present time” as follows[12]:
Citation
start:
“ (…) in partly latent, partly openly racist descriptions `the gypsies´ became the asocial counterpart to the orderly common world. Threats of physical violence against the migrants from the East alarmed the security interests.
(…) for the unwanted immigration of `gypsies´ from Eastern Europe the opposite was true [as for the Jews] – exclusion and repatriation. What had been enough for the collective acknowledgement of Jews from the Union of Independent States as contingent refugees in Germany, should not be valid for `gypsies´. It could not even be enforced by political pressure, as powerful support in the West was missing. There were only aid organizations as the “Central committee of Sinti and Roma”, the “Rom & Cinti Union”, the “Society of endangered people”, some supporting initiatives and well-sounding declarations on a European level. This situation already became clear in connection with the German compensation or reparation payments, when the population group which was, besides the Jews, mostly affected by the Holocaust (with about 500,000 victims) was neglected. The memory of National-Socialist violent crimes did not help the `gypsies´ from South-Eastern Europe as refugees or asylum-seekers in Germany, either. (…) They were living in collective tent camps between expulsion, deportation threats and deportation stops. Meanwhile, hectic treaty negotiations with East European origin and transit countries took place. Their first outcome was the German-Rumanian “repatriation settlement” of November 1992. It was followed by similar agreements with other East and South-East European countries, usually connected with millions of subsidies for the “repatriation”. The chain of migrations from East to West, stopped by defensive measures of the “fortress Europe”, was replaced by a chain of deportations from West to East: Roma who were expelled or picked up close to the border got deported to their origin countries, where they again became victims of enraged nationalists now and then. What remained for the Roma from East or South-East Europe heading for the West was the illegal immigration, steadily growing with the increasing closure of the “fortress Europe”. That also hold true recently for the Roma in Kosovo, who were expelled as alleged “collaborators” of the Serbs by the returning Albanians after the war had ended.
The “fortress Europe” shall expand to the East. It will have to prepare itself that in Eastern Europe it is not only about – rather controllable – employment migrations. In the long term, a precarious overlapping of employment-, minority- and escape migrations will also always be a topic, which will not be “manageable” solely by regional economic promotion.”
Citation End
Anti-Gypsim or Economic Problem
It is a short-sighted and dangerous behavior of numerous Western countries to classify the Antigypsist tendencies of the Eastern European states as economical problems and reward them with generous financial programs, at the same time ignoring that Anti-gypsism solid part of these cultures since centuries, a kind of cultural codex, similar only to anti-Semitism[13].
This financial bearing of the European Union has brought a regular contribution to the rehabilitation of the treasury of numerous countries, at the expense of human rights. It certainly did not contribute to the battle against racism and Anti-gypsism in Europe.
· The EU must not be misused by countries as a “substitute social security office” as they like
· The Roma are citizens of the countries they are living in, and it is this fact that obliges these countries to let Roma participate equally in the community
· It must not be tolerated to shirk one’s responsibilities for the Roma as a state
· Not the countries need help, but the Roma need support by the union of states to achieve their rights as citizens – their civil rights
· States who are not capable or even willing to protect their minorities must not be rewarded with generous financial aids for this
Although the EU supports “Roma projects” with millions of EURO, almost non of these aids reaches the affected persons[14].
Projects submitted by Roma organizations are regularly declined, while at the same time projects by Non-Roma are just as regularly financed.
Specifically
the PHARE program plays a quite inglorious role here. Numerous of these
so-called aid programs have become a solid part of the problem and certainly
did not help to solve it. Instead, a paternalistic “Gypsy aid” was created,
which distracts from the original causes.
Millions of EURO disappear year after year in the pockets of “gypsy helpers” and so-called “good practices” programs. Instead of fighting discrimination and violence of the minority population and support Roma civil rights movements, programs are financed that degrade the victims to objects of a care-taking industry, which fights the Roma as a problem, and not the problems faced by the Roma.
A new version of the missionary strategy has evolved. These are.strategies which already failed decades ago in the so-called “Third World”, and which led to corruption and dictatorships, but not to the stabilization of civil and human rights.
· Instead of talking with the Roma, there is talk about Roma.
· Instead of viewing the accepted representatives of the Roma as partners, they are fought as rivals.
· Instead of taking the demands of independent Roma NGOs seriously, an aiding industry was created that does not care about the Roma’s right of self-determination.
· Undemocratic and corrupt structures among the Roma are systematically supported and financed, Roma leaders are appointed and courted just the way the state likes.
· The independent civil rights movement of the Roma is regarded as a threat and fought against.
A primitive “Share and Rule” policy dominates the events more and more.
That the present “aid programs” of the EU have failed is no small part to be blamed on this “gypsy policy”.
·
In spite of all these “aids”, new ethnically clean ghettos
are continually created, in which Roma are forced to live.
- Hundreds of thousands must subsist
on the cities’ garbage dumps.
·
Meanwhile, violence and expulsion are part of Roma’s
everyday life in Europe.
·
Roma are expelled by the likes of the countries, or displaced
by force, as for example in Greece.
· In spite of the stability pact for the Balkan, some hundreds of thousands Roma from Kosovo are unable to return to their homes, since their houses are either destroyed or confiscated by the UCK.
Unnoticed by the majority of
Europeans, the greatest genocide in recent history is taking place.
The key positions of this “social policy” are maintained by self-declared “gypsy experts”. They are discussing the problems in endless seminars and workshops on an “expert level” and make careers at the expense of the Roma’s suffering. By “describing the Roma problem” and creating statistics and “kilometers” of reports, they are monopolizing the discussion. The results of their “research and experiences” are always the same:
They need more money for their further research to examine the “gypsy problem” even “more carefully”.
An unutterable vicious circle of arrogance, prejudices and unprofessionalism is leading to a continuously new generation of well-loved programs and research assignments, which again and again are missing the needs of the people. These projects are part of the problem and certainly not part of the solution.
More and more Roma are made uncertain by this policy and lose trust in the state and the majority. The hopelessness, the persecution of their elected civil rights organizations, the power of the stately appointed Roma leaders, violence and exclusion have become daily routine for many.
That numerous people are no
longer able to stand firm against this pressure of expulsion leads thousands to
leave their homes.
Current Problems of the Roma in the OSCE Region
Centuries of discrimination have deprived the Roma of the educational and vocational opportunities and so of the social and economic benefits of modern societies.
The most urgent problem facing the Roma today is, however, mere survival in a society which has always felt free to treat them as scapegoats, to marginalize them by preventing access to jobs, housing, and other necessities, to incite and to use violence against them.
Anti-gypsism
and human rights violations against Roma are generally not sanctioned in
Europe. This concerns especially the newly established political systems in
eastern Europe. But also western governments have failed to guarantee the Roma
the special protection against Antigypsism and discrimination which their
situation demands. A full catalogue of human rights violations against Roma
cannot be provided here; a number of reports by human rights agencies have
dealt with specific measures and incident.
Government-directed
human rights violation acts range from active measures such as:
·
“ethnic cleansing”, as in the Kosovo, and the new states of
the former Yugoslavia,
·
enforced sterilization, as in the former CSFR,
·
enforced resettlement, as in Hungary, Greece, Spain and
Germany,
·
systematic police surveillance, as in Germany and France,
·
withdrawal of citizen and resident rights, as in the new
Republics of former Yugoslavia, the Baltic states and the Czech Republic,
·
segregation of Roma children in public schools, as in the
Czech Republic, Hungary and Bulgaria
·
Mass deportations of Romani refugees as in Germany and
England,
and on to passive measures, such as:
·
Refusal to grant protection against Antigypsism and violent
attacks on the part of racist groups.
·
Refusal to prosecute persons and groups responsible for such
attacks or to take measures against Antigypsy incitement in press, publications
or political propaganda, which is the case all over Europe.
·
Refusal to acknowledge the Romani population as an national
minority entitled to recognized political representation.
· Refusal