Roma-Europe's Largest Minority

▪ 2006

Introduction

by Erika Schlager

      Europe's Roma (Gypsies) were much in the news in 2005. Claims of discrimination and racism—including appeals to the U.K. Human Rights Act of 1998—filled the British press. In May Germany returned to their native Kosovo 60 of the estimated 34,000 Roma who had enjoyed a temporary protected status since the outbreak of the Kosovo conflict in 1999. In the Czech Republic the government ombudsman began an investigation into claims that Romani women had been sterilized without informed consent. In October a Bulgarian court upheld a claim brought against the Ministry of Education alleging racial segregation in schools. Meanwhile, Roma continued to make inroads into political participation when Livia Jaroka, the first Romani member of the European Parliament, took her seat in that organization after Hungary joined the EU in 2004.

Who Are the Roma?

      By the early part of the second millennium, the ancestors of today's Roma had migrated from what is now India to Europe and taken with them their own language (Romani, related to Sanskrit) and distinct cultural traditions. The name Gypsy, used commonly in English-speaking countries, is a corruption of the word Egyptian, reflecting a mistaken belief that Roma had come from Egypt. Roma are also known in many European countries as Tsigani (or a variant thereof). Many Roma reject the terms Gypsy and Tsigan as pejorative and instead prefer designations such as Roma, Sinti, or Manouches (all based on Romani words for “man,” “human,” or “person”). For the purposes of international political discourse, the word Roma has become the most widely accepted term for this dispersed people.

      Today Roma live throughout all European countries (as well as the Americas and Australasia); taken together, there are an estimated 8 million–10 million Roma in Europe, with large concentrations in central, eastern, and southern Europe. The number of Roma in Europe is comparable to the population of Sweden or Belgium. Constituting Europe's largest ethnic minority, Roma in many countries are the fastest-growing ethnic group.

Historical Background.

      Historically, experiences of European Roma were characterized by exclusion and intolerance, although there have been occasional periods of toleration and even some romanticization of Romani life. At various times Roma have been subjected to expulsion or arrest solely on the basis of their ethnicity. In Spain, for example, Roma suffered mass race-based imprisonment (1749). Roma have also been forcibly assimilated. In the Habsburg Empire in the late 18th century, for example, Roma were subject to banishment if they did not submit to apprenticeship, and children were forcibly removed from Romani homes for “reeducation.” The Romani language and dress were forbidden. In the provinces of Wallachia and Moldova, Roma were actually enslaved to the crown, nobility, and the monasteries from the 14th century until the founding of modern Romania in the mid-19th century.

The Fate of Roma Under Nazism and Communism.

      Calculating either the size of Europe's Roma population before World War II or the number of Roma killed in the 1930s and '40s is not yet possible because of the dearth of reliable statistics and inaccessibility even of official documentation. (For Estimated Roma Population of Europe: 1939, 1945, and 1998, see Table (Estimated Roma Population of Europe: 1939, 1945, and 1998).) Clearly, the Nazis targeted Roma for extermination, and the losses were horrendous. A widely used estimate for the number of Roma killed during World War II is 500,000. The fate of Roma varied considerably from one country to another, however. In Croatia, for example, virtually all Roma were murdered, while in neighbouring Bosnia, Muslim leaders intervened on behalf of their coreligionists, and the survival rate of Roma was much greater. The genocide eviscerated Romani cultural and political movements that had begun to emerge in Europe by the early 20th century.

      Roma political development was further stunted by the totalitarian regimes that took over in Eastern Europe, the area where Roma were most numerous, after the war. The communist regimes nominally sought to integrate Roma into the new class structure of society as part of the proletariat. In practice Roma were largely channeled into unskilled or semiskilled labour. Communist regimes undertook forcible assimilation of the Roma, suppressed the use of the Romani language, confiscated their private property, and restricted their freedom of movement. During this period de facto segregated education emerged in several Eastern European countries, and in Czechoslovakia Roma women were even coerced into submitting to sterilization.

Current Situation.

      Ironically, after the fall of communism in Europe, the situation for Roma deteriorated markedly in many respects. They experienced a sharp increase in racially motivated violence, pogroms in Romania, and the denial of citizenship in the Czech Republic and some countries emerging from the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. As British social anthropologist Michael Stewart wrote in his 1997 book The Time of the Gypsies, “More Gypsies had their houses burned, were expelled from their villages, and were killed in racist attacks between 1989 and 1996 than in all the time that has passed since World War II.” Roma were also disproportionately affected by the dislocations associated with the transition in Eastern Europe from a command to a market economy, with correspondingly high levels of unemployment relative to non-Roma. The outbreak of war in Yugoslavia, the European country with perhaps the largest Roma minority, turned significant numbers of Roma into refugees and internally displaced persons. In 2003 the United Nations Development Programme issued a report on the situation in five Central European countries, concluding that “by measures ranging from literacy to infant mortality to basic nutrition, most of the region's Roma endure living conditions closer to those of sub-Saharan Africa than to Europe.”

      A variety of international organizations, including the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Council of Europe, and the European Union, have increased their engagement with Roma issues. In 1990 the OSCE adopted the Copenhagen Document, the first international agreement that recognized the human rights problems faced by Roma. In 2000 the OSCE High Commission on National Minorities issued a report stating that “discrimination and exclusion are fundamental features of the Roma experience.”

      The conditions of Roma in Eastern Europe sparked heightened attention to their plight and, eventually, reexamination of their condition in Western European countries as well. With the accession of 10 new countries to the EU in 2004, Roma are today its largest ethnic minority group. Romani activists and a small but growing cadre of Romani government officials have called attention to issues such as discrimination in education, employment, housing, public assembly, and public services; spotlighted the plight of Roma refugees and internally displaced persons in and from the Balkans; improved political participation of Roma; and lobbied for the inclusion in school curricula dealing with World War II of information about the genocide of Roma.

 Some progress has been made toward these goals. Racially motivated murders of Roma have declined since the early 1990s, and increased publicity has drawn public attention to human rights abuses. Currently eight countries—Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, and Slovakia—are participating in a Decade of Roma Inclusion, a multilateral initiative to identify measurable national goals for improvements in the social and political status of this ancient and vital people.

Erika Schlager

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