Daily Archives: June 18, 2014

Greece News Eastern Europe News Western Europe

18.06.2014 Rroma and blonde children: racial prejudices remain

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The Greek newspaper Greek Reporter reports on a new case of possible child abduction. Neither the authorities nor the journalists seem to have learned anything from the case of the blond Rroma girl Maria. Instead, they continue to set out from racial prejudice and criteria: a begging Rromni in Rhodes is accused to have kidnapped and abused a blonde, blue eyed, male infant that was with her. Prosecutors demand a DNA test as well as a clear proof confirming the woman’s motherhood (compare Zikakou 2014). The idea of Rroma as child traffickers exists since centuries, as critical literary studies have shown. They are the projection of distrust on the Rroma, who just arrived in Europe, and were accused of paganism and a criminal disposition. These prejudices are an expression of uncertainty in contact with a new group of people who through their mere presence question the rigid power structure of medieval society. However, Rroma converted shortly after or even before their arrival in Europe to Christianity and clearly demonstrated their willingness to integrate.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe News Western Europe

18.06.2014 Obrnice receives award for its integration policy

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The Czech town Obrnice was awarded the European integration award for its successful inclusion of the Rroma into social life of the city. Rosenzweig’s (2014) article focuses on the work of the two social workers Milan Grundza and Zdeněk Nistor. They check if everything is in order and at night, send young people back home or tell them to linger somewhere else. The peculiarity of the social work of the two officers: Milan and Zdeněk are Rroma. Their work is said to be representative for the successful integration of the minority in Obrnice. However, it is noticeable that Rosenzweig mentions only positive aspects and denies still existing problems. The mayor of Obrnice, Drahomira Miklošová, sees the reason for the success of her integration strategy in a policy of simultaneously promoting and demanding: “Receiving this award from Strasbourg was a wonderful moment and gave me energy to keep on going. This has convinced me not to give into the negative voices that say that the situation requires radical solutions. For me, it is vital that nothing is freely given – I always say that the rewards are only given in exchange for something else. I will help you, but only if you do something in return. If you take this approach, I think that all cities in the country could make the same progress […].” However, it remains unclear how the integration policy in Obrnice, in addition to the example given, proceeds in detail.

France News Eastern Europe News Western Europe

18.06.2014 Lynching of a Rroma in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine

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Many newspapers report a case of lynching in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine. Neighbours of a local Rroma settlement accused a sixteen-year-old Rrom to have broken into one of their apartments. The group penetrated into the camp and abducted the young man with violence. They locked him in a basement and beat him severely. He was found along the National Road One on June 13th, lying unconscious in a supermarket shopping cart. His condition is critical; he is in a coma: “According to the current status of the investigations, that have been entrusted to the criminal investigation department of Seine-Saint-Denis, the prosecution of Bobigny remains cautious about the facts and the motives of the perpetrators. What is known is that a group of individuals arrived at camp where Darius and his family lived, late afternoon on Friday. According to a witness, the group was in possession of long weapons and opened fire around 17:30 without hurting anyone, before abducting the adolescent into a Clio” (Seelow 2014). The mother of the adolescent notified the police after the abduction of the boy. The victim was detained several times by the police for theft offenses. Lynch-law against minors is severely punished by the French judiciary. A couple, who had imprisoned and abused a fourteen-year-old thief in Toulouse for hours, was sentenced to three years in prison. However, until now, none of the perpetrators of this abuse has been arrested. Representatives of various organizations see the act as symptomatic of the increased intolerance towards Rroma in France. At the last European elections, the right-wing nationalist and repeatedly xenophobic National Front achieved a new high in votes. This act was preceded by a series of car break-ins, which the resident blamed the Rroma for. According to Libération (2014), the inhabitants of the local Rroma settlement have left their home precipitately. Ironically, Manuel Valls, who was repeatedly blamed for racist remarks against Rroma, condemned the incident decidedly and asked for an immediate arrest of the perpetrators (compare BBC News 2014, 20 minutes 2014, Le Figaro 2014, Le Monde 2014 I/II, Le Parisien 2014, Rollot 2014, Seelow 2014, Vincent 2014).

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe News Western Europe

18.06.2014 Lety: protest against pig farm at the site of the former concentration camp

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Several newspapers reported on the protest by activists in several European countries, who objected to the presence of a pig farm at the site of a former concentration camp in Lety, in the Czech Republic. In the Czech Republic itself, several representatives of the European Grassroots Antiracist Movement (EGAM) were present. They remembered the approximately 1,300 Rroma women and children who were interned between August 1942 and May 1943 in the concentration camp of Lety. Most of them were then deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and gassed there. In Lety itself, around 330 Rroma died, most of them children. They perished of typhoid fever, hunger, or because of the catastrophic conditions in the camp. Under the communist government, an industrial pig farm was built on the site of the former concentration camp. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, members of the Rroma community and human rights activists have called for the demolition of the pig farm and the establishment of a memorial (compare 20 minutes 2014, L’essentiel 2014, The Times of Israël 2014).

News Eastern Europe News Western Europe

18.06.2014 “Judicial ethics body: citing “Gypsy crime” unethical”

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Politics.hu (2014) reports on a verdict of the Hungarian national council of judicial ethics. The council passed judgment that the verdict of judge Erika Mucs from Gyula was unethical. The judge concluded in lawsuit on the prohibition of the right-wing extremist citizens militia Szebb Jövőért Polgárőr Egyesület (Civil Guard Association for a Better Future) that the term “Gypsy crime” is legitimate, as “criminals” and “gypsies” cicrles would not coincide but strongly overlap. Lajos Makai, president of the Hungarian judicial council, subsequently started proceedings against Mucs. The investigation came to the conclusion that Mucs’ behaviour is unethical and that she broke the judges’ moral code. The latter since she didn’t evaluate the case she was handling objectively. Tunde Hando from the national judicial council said in a statement that the objectivity of the judges must be comprehensible in speech and writing. In addition, a new code of ethics is being adopted, which will be published at the end of 2014 and to which all Hungarian judges must obey.

News Eastern Europe News Western Europe

18.06.2014 “It is time for historians to write Romani history into the mainstream”

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Taylor (2014), an historian at the Birkbeck University in London, talked about her new book “Another Darkness, Another Dawn: A History of Gypsies, Roma and Travellers”. At the beginning, she addressed the intense politicization and instrumentalization of Rroma by politics and journalism. The Rroma are once again made to scapegoats for all social ills and abused in political debates about immigration, debates that are dominated by fear mongering.

From a historical perspective, Taylor states that until today, Rroma are not part of the official historiography. However, Rroma are not granted separate history either, rather, they are ascribed an existence in a timeless bubble untouched by modern life. Taylor wants to overcome this deficiency with her book, and wants to complement the official, popular history with the history of the Rroma. She does it by connecting important historical upheavals, such as the emergence and decline of empires, wars, political upheavals, the expansion of the state of law, enlightenment and social crises with the history of the Rroma and examining mutual influences: “If exploring the history of Romani peoples was a way of holding up a mirror on the societies in which they lived, it was also a salutatory lesson that it is naive to believe in a progressive view of history: things don’t always get better, especially if you belong to a stigmatized ethnic group. […] Carrying out the research for this book showed how the enslavement of Gypsies coexisted under the Ottomans with remarkable cultural diversity and autonomy; how branding, mutilations and ‘gypsy hunts’ occurred at the same time that Gypsies established themselves across Europe and the Americas; and how despite developments in education and attitudes toward minorities across modern Europe and the U.S. has failed to bring anything like active acceptance of the place of Romani peoples within its societies.” Taylor’s book seems to be an interesting, new contribution to the historiography of the Rroma, even though one cannot critically assess her book with her own review. Her book should be read with a critical attitude, as many scientists and Rroma experts, despite their good intentions, reproduce and maintain false information about the Rroma.

  • Taylor, Becky (2014) It’s Time Historians Get Past the Stereotype of Romani Peoples and Write Them into History. In: History News Network online vom 15.6.2014. http://hnn.us/article/155822
Hungary News Eastern Europe News Western Europe

18.06.2014 “Günter Grass honors Hungarian Rrom Jenő Zsigó”

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The Hungarian Rrom Jenő Zsigó was awarded a prize by Günter Grass’ “Foundation for theRoma people”: “With the award, Zsigó’s lifetime work is rewarded, the secretariat of Nobel laureate said in Lübeck on Thursday. Zsigó was the founder and long-time director of the institution Romano Kher in Budapest, and chairman of the Hungarian Roma parliament. […]Since the 1980s, he was “an independent and dedicated spokesperson for political and cultural affairs of the Roma in Hungary” The foundation stated.” Zsigó was co-founder of the Hungarian Rroma parliament that championed both politically and culturally the interests of the Rroma and initiated the first scholarship program for Hungarian Rroma, who are still heavily discriminated against in the education system (compare Focus/DPA 2014, Hamburger Abendblatt/DPA 2014, Tiroler Tageszeitung/DPA 2014).

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