From 2010 to 2014, Viviane Reading served as Vice-President of the European Commission for Justice, Human Rights, and Citizenship. She gave a speech at the Second European Roma Summit in Córdoba on 8 April 2010, saying:
“We set our sights high, but the goal is simple: let us ensure that Roma enjoy the same rights and opportunities as anyone else. Roma are no different from anyone else. Give them a chance to study and they will learn. Give them a chance to find a job and they will work. Enable Roma to be a positive part of our societies and play an active role in our policy processes.”
But 10 years later, the Romani people of Europe continue to live in fear and trepidation of facing racial discrimination in all walks of life including housing, education, employment, health care which has resulted in their absolute abandonment. Pervasive racial prejudice towards this community shows absolutely no signs of fading away but has only risen significantly in the past few years making them the most persecuted minority and marginalized group in the continent of Europe.
The term ‘marginality’ implies the circumstances of being isolated or segregated from other communities and their complete elimination from the political, social, economic, and cultural facets of society. Marginality is exhibited in several different ways such as rejection of human rights, lack of political representation, limitations on housing, denial of access to education, refusal from being employed in public or/and private services, etc. A very crucial question emerges here — What are the factors that lead to the marginalization of any group? Important factors such as race and culture, ethnic origin and language, peculiar appearance, immigration history are some varied causes leading up to any group’s marginal condition. The dominant group’s behaviour, laws, and legislation can further deteriorate the state of the marginalized group. Government policies may prohibit discriminatory practices of any form, but they may persist throughout because of the beliefs and customs acknowledged by the dominant population and may still be perpetuated due to inadequate protection provided to the marginalized group. The precarious marginal condition of Roma people is the outcome of the discriminatory mechanism that they’ve undergone over the past decades.
I. Origin And Population Of The Romani Community
The Romani people, also known as the Roma, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group of predominantly itinerant people who originated in the northern Indian subcontinent, notably from regions of the present-day Indian Haryana, Rajasthan, and Punjab. Genetic studies have indicated that the Romanis come from a single group that left the North-West region of India roughly in 512 CE. The Roma reached Midwest Asia and Europe approximately in 1007. By the end of the 14th century, they were traveling across Western Europe in groups of hundreds and reached Zurich, Hamburg, Augsburg, and Brussels. Today, Roma are spread all over Europe and the Americas, however, their population is highly clustered in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe. Most of the Roma speak a certain variant of Romany, a language closely linked to the modern Indo-Aryan languages of northern India (Sanskrit, Hindi, Punjabi, Marwari, and Bengali), as well as the main language of the country in which they live today.
Romanis began to migrate to the Americas in the 19th century. The Eastern European Romani people are the ancestors of the American Romani community. It is recorded that 1 million Roma live in the United States, followed by 800,000 in Brazil as of today. Due to the internalized and systemic discrimination they had to endure as being of Romani descent, their exact population statistics are not available as Roma often concealed their identity to escape the persecution.
The Roma are often called ‘Gypsies’ or Zigenuner, has been labeled as derogatory by many Roma people as it carries negative connotations rooted in European culture. The Europeans used the term ‘Gypsy’ for Romani when they came to Europe, assuming that they had arrived from Egypt because of their dark features.
II. The History of Oppression
Since their arrival in the Middle Ages, the Roma community is one of the oldest migrants in Europe and since then, they have been subjected to persecution by the dominant population of the region solely for being Romani. These migrants included blacksmiths, artists, farm laborers, entertainers, also fortune-tellers, and other small workers. The Roma spoke their language, continued to follow their distinct culture and traditions without any significant barrier. The Church was strictly against fortune-tellers; their dark and tanned skin complexion triggered racism; and the guilds that considered them to be a mistrustful backward community of people. And slowly, anti-Romani propaganda was spread throughout Europe as punitive legislations were enforced targeting Gypsies, ultimately labeling them as outcasts. Considering their small population, their presence in the society created hatred and fear, and they were ejected from almost every European territory.
The Council of Europe presents a history of severe oppression involving expulsion, slavery, forced sterilization, child separation, and the massacre of the Romani population in the continent that many people are not aware of today.
Middle ages and early modern Europe saw the imposition of some of the harshest measures, which were taken to oppress and marginalize the Roma in Europe. In the 1490s, the Holy Roman Empire issued its first law to oust the Romani people from the empire, and soon afterward countries in Western and Central Europe passed similar laws. During the 13th-14th century, the principalities of Wallachia and Moldova enslaved the Roma in huge numbers. Roma slaves were also owned by Christian Orthodox monasteries, the Danubian Boyars, and the State. In 1449, the Roma population was driven out of Frankfurt-am-Main. The Roma population was expelled from Milan, Italy under threat of execution in 1493 on orders of the Duke. The Egyptians Act 1530 passed in England under Henry VIII expelled the Gypsies and declared it to be a capital offense to be a Roma. The year 1541 witnessed the first anti-Gipsy law in Scotland. Next was the Act of Stringency 1571 which legalized the hanging and drowning of Gypsies. These legislations and regulations are only a few examples of how the state, the church, and the dominant population of the country discriminated against the Romani community in middle age Europe.
In the 18th century, the Roma identity and Romani language became the target of attack and brutal measures were taken to eradicate the community. The higher authorities such as emperors and popes issued inhumane edicts to drive out and also eradicate the Roma. In 1701, an edict was issued by Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor to exterminate the Roma population by hanging the males without any trial and banishing the women and children forever. The results of these edicts led to the mass slaughter of the Roma people across the empire.
“I am no racist,” he said. “But some Gypsies you would have to shoot.”
- Jozef Pacai, Mayor of the Slovak village of Medzev.
III. Roma Genocide In Nazi Era
The persecution of Roma and discrimination against them culminated in the 19th century when the community faced the new obstacle of rising Nazism in the continent of Europe. The Romani community was labeled as the carrier of “degenerate” blood and the people with “criminal” characteristics. Heinous discriminatory statements became the justification for torturing and persecuting the Roma by the state and the stigmatization around the community grew. Child psychologist Dr. Robert Ritter (University of Tuebingen) described Roma as “dangerous” and recommended they be forcibly sterilized.
Before Dr. Ritter, some criminologists claimed that crime was a part of ‘Gypsy culture’. Richard Liebich in 1863 described Gypsies as an inferior and morally backward group of people that were “thieves” and “frauds”. Cesare Lombroso was an Italian physician, and in the 19th century, he was considered the founder of criminal biology. In his book Der Verbrecher (Homo Delinquens), he refers to the Gypsies as “born criminal” groups, his book reflects the acceptance of the criminalization of the European minority and how these claims legitimized the maltreatment of minorities in Nazi Germany.
The persecution of Roma in Nazi Germany between 1935 and 1945 resulted in what has been referred to as “Porajmos” (meaning “devouring”) in Romani. On 26 November 1935, an edict was issued under the rule of Adolf Hitler which classified Romani as “traitors of the ethnostate” in the Nuremberg Laws. Considering Roma to be an ignoble inferior group, they were placed at the bottom of the Nazi racial scale by the state. The Nazis murdered an estimated 220,000–500,000 Roma in Auschwitz and Treblinka concentration camps, and also in their home countries. The massacres led to the elimination of almost 90% of the Roma population across several countries and the deportation displaced many. The Nazi regime’s ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Roma were done to exterminate the “enemy group” to form a race-based state free of “degenerate blood” and “plague carriers”.
The advancement of Social Darwinism and biological racism in the Nazi state and other European societies intensified the racial and social discrimination against the Roma community in the late 19th century. The strong progression of racial hierarchy supported by the racial pseudo-science played a major role in Nazi Germany’s anti-Romani interventions including the ethnic cleansing and genocide of not only Roma but Jews as well.
Life for the Roma community did not ease after the second world war. As nationalism reached heights in European countries, anti-Gypsy slogans such as, “Death to Gypsys”, “Gas the Gypsies” increased and xenophobia spread like wildfire. The Roma genocide often called “The Forgotten Holocaust” has never been given much importance in history books. The survivors and the families of the victims didn’t receive any acknowledgment for the survival and the preservation of their identity throughout this struggle and no reparations were provided for the losses they had suffered.
III. The Roma Community Today
In 2018, a Roma camp was attacked by armed masked men in Ukraine which left 1 dead, and 4 others were severely injured. There had been a series of attacks on Ukraine’s Roma community following that year.
In March 2019, Roma leaders called for police protection as 20 people were arrested in Northeast of Paris for attacking Roma people because of false viral abduction messages on social media apps. Between March and April, a total of 25 attacks were reported on Roma people which took place in poorer and underprivileged areas around Paris.
Kosovo has seen a rise in crimes committed against the Romani. In May 2019, a transgender Roma woman was beaten in Lipljan by a mob of high school students due to rumours of child trafficking on social media which were later proved false.
The 21st century has been full of new and different obstacles for the community as the most marginalized group in Europe. The Roma are still very much the targets of discrimination, abuse, xenophobia, and living with century-old stereotypes which toughened their existence in today’s modern European society. As per the European Union Agency for Fundamental Human Rights, today one out of three Roma are unemployed in Europe and 90% live below the poverty line in unfit circumstances.
As stated earlier, denial of basic human rights like securing housing, education, and employment has played a major role in the deteriorating state of the community as they still struggle to achieve a healthy lifestyle. Most live in either caravan in the outskirts of cities and towns in abject poverty or choose camps.
In recent years, ethnic Roma leaders and non-governmental organizations have stood up and raised their voices for the voiceless. The “Gypsy Issue” has now made a place for itself in national and international tables both to introduce solutions to the anti-Gypsy sentiments in the European system and population. Rapid growth in the emergence of these organizations has paved a way for studies and researches focused on the Romani community to document their experiences and advocate for Roma's rights while also unveiling the persecution they’ve been facing for centuries to improve their present condition.
The shadowed reality of the struggle of the Roma community today seeks the sun. The history of dehumanization, expulsion, and persecution that the Romani people have endured is responsible for their current state. Victims of widespread hatred, their community has been viewed by the lens of ancient myths and stereotypes for far too long. The European nations owe it to the Romas, to give them the freedom, justice, and hospitality they have been robbed of since they arrived on the continent.
