The images in this article were taken from www.kollarfoto.com
In Europe, nationalist ideologies began to take hold in the 18th century, as a reaction to the conflict between the church and dynastic monarchy, a fact that brought the middle classes, including different ethnic communities, into the arena of political life. For the first time, languages and cultures, majorities and minorities, became the subject of public debate.
Nationalism in Romania was born in the late 19th century, fuelled by the war of independence (1877). In a process of decolonisation, the Romanian nation-state began to define itself after its emergence from the rubble of the Ottoman Empire by adopting the western European political and economic system.
While the 1848 reform generation sought a speedy integration into the European pattern, one that was ill-adapted to local realities, the new Romanian elite of 1877 tried to establish a Romanian pattern, meant to soften social change and to make people from lower levels of society feel closer to the newly-created national cause. They wanted to provide them with a common perception of the world, and a shared sense of identity. The Romanian elite chose to offer its people the simplest and most conventional model of nationalism, whose mantra was: our system of reference is good, the other epitomised by the stranger is bad. If you do as we do, you develop culture: if not, you belong to a subculture.
Without any alternative strategy of cohesion, the Romanian peasant model, universally acclaimed by intellectuals of the time with little grasp of its real implications, soon became a self-delusion. The majority collective memory developed a form of self-esteem and confidence based on prejudice towards difference on what a person should and should not be.
Xenophobia and racism naturally followed. The most important Romanian national writers of those times and even later were also the harshest anti-Semites. They include Vasile Alecsandri, Mihail Kogãlniceanu, Ion Heliade Radulescu, Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, Costache Negri, A.D. Xenopol, Vasile Parvan, Octavian Goga, Mihai Eminescu and Ion Luca Caragiale.
In 1856, when slavery was abolished, the Roma had been slaves domiciled in Romania for more than 500 years. There are good reasons to view the slavery system as a far-right policy before such a thing could be named, because it was underpinned by an ideology of extreme exclusion and domination through racism. Having the status of a slave meant that Roma were not perceived as members of the human race. They were objects of exchange, sometimes sold by weight: a Rom could be sold for a smaller price than two copper pots, a Roma child could be bought for a smaller price than a cow, because she was not yet good capable of working full-time.
Photograph by Matt Kollasch
Indeed, the very name attributed to Roma by Romanians, tsigan, meant slave in the Romanian language of those times. Masters offered Roma girls as pleasure toys to their guests; they had the right of life and death over the slave. Marriages between Roma and Romanians were strictly forbidden by law. Roma and Romanian graveyards were also separate. Roma slave settlements were outside villages, their inhabitants isolated and barely scraping together a living, with no access to any institutional education or social support. This was a natural fact for a non-person or slave. Romanian slavery was an apartheid system.
Racism continued well after the abolition of slavery. Liberated from it, Roma were simply evicted from their masters lands and their huts, with no means of survival, and no resources to carry on with their lives. Many of them went back to their former masters, begging for food and shelter in exchange for hard work: doing anything to survive. That way, they continued to be half-slaves, servants in the masters houses or working on the land, with no access to development resources or to school education.
In a gradual, step-by-step process, Roma began to lose their cultural identity and internalise their inferior status in society as if it were inalienable. Ashamed of themselves, perceiving their ethnic identity as damnation, they were stigmatised and excluded from the society of their former masters. Roma thus became a scapegoat for all the frustrations and failures of Romanian society.
The Iron Guard
Even after the abolition of slavery the political leadership of Romania agonised over whether or not to grant Romanian citizenship to Roma. The latter were in fact considered strangers in their own country.
Between the two world wars, many prominent Romanian intellectuals declared that the Constitution of 1927, which indeed gave citizenship to Roma, Jews and Turks, was against the spirit of the Romanian nation-state.
During the second world war, Romanias alliance with Nazi Germany was no political gesture. It was based on the rise of far-right ideologies, promoted by the most important representatives of the Romanian cultural elite men like Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran, and Ion Petrovici.
These ideologies emphasised the need for a nation-state to be formed by one single race, to fight any attempt to mingle nations or erase borders, and to eliminate any person that thought or acted differently. Paramilitary organisations such as the Iron Guard (also called the Legion of St. Michael) were also established and they carried out killings. Politicians of the moderate right, left-wing intellectuals, Roma and Jews were the victims.
Photograph by Sandy Carter - www.sandycarterphotography.com
During the military dictatorship of Marshal Antonescu, one of Hitlers allies, the far-right ideologies of the legionary movement became state policy. One of its missions was to eradicate the Gypsy plague. The Holocaust against Jews and the genocide against Roma began. Roma were deported to Transdniestria and killed. Official figures speak of more than 36,000 Roma who died there, amongst whom there were more than 6,000 children. The real figures are probably considerably higher.
The post-communist morass: strategy and reality
After centuries of institutional racial discrimination, manifest either in social exclusion culminating in murder or in forced assimilation, Romanian government policies towards Roma today at least have politically correct pretensions. These are influenced by Romanias aspiration to become a member of the European Union and the fact that the Roma situation is one of the political criteria in the pre-accession process. Roma are recognised as a national minority and the Romanian government has adopted a national strategy to improve their social situation.
Despite this, the Roma situation has actually become worse. The government allocates no financial support for its strategy, and there is no real political will to put it into practice. Local authorities act in an openly discriminatory way against Roma, ignoring the strategy and confining Roma to special ghetto neighbourhoods or forcefully evicting them from their settlements. Police torture and ill-treatment continues, as well as the lack of access to justice and discrimination at the workplace, in housing and school systems.
Hate speech is widespread in the Romanian media and the highest political and academic circles. To make things worse, collective violence against Roma communities, including arson and killings, remains unpunished by the Romanian judicial system.
The neo-Fascist legionary movement, taking advantage of new post-communist freedom of expression and association, has regrouped. Today there are highly professional far-right websites, newspapers, magazines and information networks. A significant number of students and young intellectuals have joined one of the affiliate organisations, the New Right. Their anti-Semitic, anti-Roma and anti-European ideology is an explicit part of their communication strategy. This is no mere outpouring of some irresponsible and less educated youngsters. The movement is also very close to academic and political circles, and to the Orthodox Church.
Moreover, with no direct connection to the new legionary movement, one of the most important political parties to emerge in Romania in recent times is Great Romania, a far-right political party which also has far-left undertones. Nostalgic about the crumbled communist regime, Great Romania is nationalist, anti-Semitic, anti-Roma, anti-Hungarian and anti-European, with its own leanings towards the Church.
In the elections of 2001, this party won a significant number of parliamentary seats and in the presidential campaign. Many young and educated people voted for it. Complaints against the racist hate speech of the party chairman, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, are currently being considered in Romanian courts. Meanwhile, Tudor enjoys senatorial immunity.
Recently, the walls of some Jewish theatres in several towns were painted with swastikas and other fascist symbols and quotations, amongst them a famous one from a Nazi extermination camp: Arbeit macht frei (Work liberates). Romanian police are still investigating the case, but it seems obvious that the crime was perpetrated by people who knew Nazi history and who were coordinating their activities in a network. Once again it seems clear that, contrary to the authorities initial statement, it is not only a handful of irresponsible youngsters who are to blame.
Local authorities act in an increasingly open racist way towards Roma communities. Forced evictions from houses are increasing in number. Increasingly, segregated ghettos or camps for the Roma on the periphery of the cities, with no access to school or health institutions, and with no heating in winter, are becoming the standard way of life for Roma in Romania. When Roma become victims of human trafficking and illegal migration networks, their experiences provide another reason for politicians and media in Romania and the west alike to recycle stereotypes and hate speech.
Photograph by Matt Kollasch
A future for Roma in Europe
In many Eastern European countries, far-right political or civil society movements are rising: from the forced sterilisation of Roma women in Slovakia to collective violence against Roma in Romania, from skinhead attacks in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Bulgaria to psychological testing of children in the Czech Republic and Slovakia which lead to Roma children being sent to schools for pupils with mental deficiencies.
Two case studies may serve as representative of a whole range of situations. The method of psychological testing designed by the Slovak National Institute of Education, and put into practice by the Slovak school system, encourages such conclusions as that Roma children are not fit to attend normal schools; are unstable, hyperactive and lacking communication skills; too lively and therefore incapable of processing the information provided by teachers. According to this official ideology, they should be disciplined through the auto-regulation of behaviour and should attend special schools or segregated classes.
In another case study, from 1994 to 1996 there were many group-led violent attacks against Roma communities in Romania, some with the connivance of local authorities. One tragic example is the Hadareni case: a whole Roma village was burnt down and three Roma were killed in an outbreak of collective fury. So far, nobody has been brought to account. The case is now pending at the International Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Violent police raids against Roma settlements carried out at night, with no legal justification, are once again commonplace, as they were before 1999.
At the same time, nationalism is also increasing in western countries too, against the background of the identity crisis brought about by the arduous task of building an enlarged European Union. The new wave of actual and prospective migrants from the east is not bigger than in the past, but it is viewed with more fear by European public opinion, largely due to racist media campaigns and to the rise of the far right in several nation-states. This migration wave, in the case of Roma, made up of people also looking for protection against racism, cannot be stopped with brute force.
Positive migration should be encouraged, by the legal movements of workers. In the process of EU enlargement, one of the political criteria of pre-accession is the situation of minorities, including especially the Roma. Applicant countries are obliged to fulfil these criteria; but the present EU member states should also reconsider their own public policies in the context of the accession process. This would in principle create a reformed legal and social settlement governing the reception of newcomers, including various Roma communities.
One of the pretexts for the rise of the far right is the defence of national identities. Any serious attempt to check this development would have to start with the transparent and vigilant promotion of diverse identities at the European Union level. As far as Roma are concerned, if the former nation-states are to preserve their cultural identities at regional or local levels, and in such institutions as universities, museums, or cultural centres, there is an urgent need for European support to empower Roma communities, making them equal partners at the decision-making level and establishing cultural institutions in every country where they live.
Roma also need representation and participation in decision-making at the European level, according to the principle of subsidiarity. For no state can fully represent Roma interests at the European level; they can only do it themselves. So they need to be represented on an equal footing with the nation-states, in the European Parliament and in other European bodies.
