History of racism towards Roma peoples in Europe

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Does anyone here know of any books on the history of discrimination against Romani people in Europe? I've been wanting to read about this for a while but haven't been able to find anything substantial on the subject. I'm also completely uninformed on the modern form racism towards Roma today, except on the fact that it's pretty bad. But apart from some segregationist policies in the not too distant past (purges in Kosovo and those giant walls the Czech government was building around communities), I know next to nothing about any policies about institutional racism towards Roma nor social attitudes. I also have no understanding of when the discrimination came into effect - was it during the 1400s or something, when many people from the balkans and Romania were being sold into slavery?

A link to any organisational websites or databases would be just as great.

Thanks.

[Devrim]

I know someone who has done an enormous amount of research into this issue particularly concerning the situation in the Czech and Slovak Republics. I will ask him when I see him if there is any good stuff in English. It might be a week or so.

Devrim

[Captain Ahab]

http://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/albania/persecution-and-politicization-roma-gypsies-eastern
It also cover the Eastern Bloc period policies of the Eastern European governments.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

Ian Hancock is a Romani British-American scholar who has written about this in English. Probably the book most similar to what you're looking for is "The Pariah Syndrome: An account of Gypsy slavery and persecution." It's available for free online here. (http://www.reocities.com/~patrin/pariah-contents.htm) It's hosted on the website of the Patrin Web Journal (http://www.reocities.com/~patrin/) which has other resources that might be of interest.

This is a decently informative academic paper on the subject of Roma enslavement: Gypsy Slavery in Wallachia and Moldavia (http://www.academia.edu/1132654/Gypsy_Slavery_in_Wallachia_and_Moldavia).

Another one that seems ok (haven't actually read it): Roma/Gypsies in the History of Romania: An Old Challenge for Romanian Historiography (http://www.academia.edu/2534874/Roma_Gypsies_in_the_History_of_Romania_An_Old_Chal lenge_for_Romanian_Historiography).

Yahoo has some groups for Roma which are updated pretty frequently with news/articles about history, current events, etc:
Roma in the Americas (http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Roma_in_Americas/info).

Here on Revleft there is the Romani Solidarity Group (http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=177)with a few links/discussions but no recent activity.

[brigadista]

you might want to visit the European Roma Rights Centre

here:

http://www.errc.org/

[Goblin]

My fathers side of the family are Romani (Tatere/Romanisæl), so i should have some knowledge about the treatment of Romanis in Norway.

The norwegian government were up until the 1970s trying to exterminate it´s romani population. In the 1700s, there where something known as "fantejakt" (hobo hunting) were people would literally bring guns and hunt down gypsies and other Roma travelers.

In the 1930s the government would forcefully sterilize Romani people.

Those Romani people who had children would have their kids forcefully taken from them and given to a foster family, or placed in a mental hospital. Over half of the children who were put in mental hospitals were experimented on, and then killed. These child killings were started by Vidkun Quislings nazi government, and lasted till´the late 1970s.

"The rock of shame". Memorial to the Roma children who were murdered in norwegian mental institutions.
http://media35b.dimu.no/media/image/OST-HH/REK.SKAMMENS%20STEIN-1/25326?width=600&height=380

Gaustad hospital in Oslo. Many Roma children were killed here.
http://www.nyhetsspeilet.no/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Gaustad_massegrav_Riis_kirkeg.jpg

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Thanks for the help folks. :grin:

And I'm shocked, quite frankly. I had no idea that the slavery of Roma persisted so far into the modern era, nor did I know of the genocidal laws in Norway (they lasted into the 1970s!?). I knew racism against Roma was really bad in Europe (people who would go to anti-racist marches and stuff would be caught talking about 'the dastardly gypsies' and other garbage), but I had no idea it was this bad.

Do you know if there were similar policies in place in the other Scandinavian countries, Goblin?

[hatzel]

Do you know if there were similar policies in place in the other Scandinavian countries, Goblin?

Sweden's infamous eugenics program saw as many as 60,000 Romani women sterilised, continuing into the mid-70's. At the same time the Finns were taking children from their families and adopting them into white families. (As a side note, the resulting situation saw certain communities accused on criminality, given the actions of groups of known criminals commonly identified as Roma, whilst the Roma themselves rightly pointed out that it was nothing to do with them, as these individuals had actually been adopted and raised by white families, making them - at least in the eyes of the Roma, according to their traditional understanding of 'who is a Rom,' so to speak - as white as anybody else.)

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Sweden's infamous eugenics program saw as many as 60,000 Romani women sterilised, continuing into the mid-70's. At the same time the Finns were taking children from their families and adopting them into white families. (As a side note, the resulting situation saw certain communities accused on criminality, given the actions of groups of known criminals commonly identified as Roma, whilst the Roma themselves rightly pointed out that it was nothing to do with them, as these individuals had actually been adopted and raised by white families, making them - at least in the eyes of the Roma, according to their traditional understanding of 'who is a Rom,' so to speak - as white as anybody else.)

Do you have any sources for this? I'm not doubting you at all but I would really like to have stuff like this at the ready.

Also, I can't believe the similarity between this and other forms of racial discrimination in previous eras. What you just described sounds almost like a mirror to what Britain did in Australia and America!

[TaylorS]

My fathers side of the family are Romani (Tatere/Romanisæl), so i should have some knowledge about the treatment of Romanis in Norway.

The norwegian government were up until the 1970s trying to exterminate it´s romani population. In the 1700s, there where something known as "fantejakt" (hobo hunting) were people would literally bring guns and hunt down gypsies and other Roma travelers.

In the 1930s the government would forcefully sterilize Romani people.

Those Romani people who had children would have their kids forcefully taken from them and given to a foster family, or placed in a mental hospital. Over half of the children who were put in mental hospitals were experimented on, and then killed. These child killings were started by Vidkun Quislings nazi government, and lasted till´the late 1970s.

"The rock of shame". Memorial to the Roma children who were murdered in norwegian mental institutions.
http://media35b.dimu.no/media/image/OST-HH/REK.SKAMMENS%20STEIN-1/25326?width=600&height=380

Gaustad hospital in Oslo. Many Roma children were killed here.
http://www.nyhetsspeilet.no/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Gaustad_massegrav_Riis_kirkeg.jpgAs an American of Norwegian ancestry, this makes me feel ashamed. Those poor kids! :(

[Remus Bleys]

When my parents went to Italy a few years ago, they said that they (and many naives) saw two roma girls and just ran away from them. "They are scared of you, but there father will beat them more if you don't give them monry" "don't give them money, they willfollow you all week!"

And here I was thinking America was bad. .-.

Edit: tour guide told them to run

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

I'm 100% ruska roma, you can PM if you like.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

Do you have any sources for this? I'm not doubting you at all but I would really like to have stuff like this at the ready.

Also, I can't believe the similarity between this and other forms of racial discrimination in previous eras. What you just described sounds almost like a mirror to what Britain did in Australia and America!

Here is one source I found on the 60,000 sterilizations, commentary from a swedish doctor, Eradication of "deviants": the dark side of the Swedish Model. (http://www.independentliving.org/docs5/sterilization.html)

It was only this year, 2013 (!), that Sweden finally repealed its law on forced sterilizations of transgendered people: Forced Sterilization for Transgender People in Sweden (http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2012/01/sweden-still-forcing-sterilization)


Sweden's relationship with forced sterilization goes way back. In 1997 journalist Maciej Zaremba, a reporter for Dagens Nyheter, discovered that over 60,000 people between 1935 and 1976 were sterilized against their will, including "'mixed race individuals,' single mothers with many children, deviants, Gypsies, and other 'vagabonds.'"

Czechoslovakia was another country that saw a lot of forced sterilization.

From The Pariah Syndrome, chapter XIII: (link in my first post)


Just as governmental spokesmen in Britain have, since the end of the war called for the extermination of Gypsies as a way of dealing with them, ensuring their non-propagation by means of sterilization did not stop with Hitler either. The Czechoslovakian newspaper Vychodoslovenske Noviny, in May, 1976, carried the text of a governmental proposal which called for the compulsory sterilization of Gypsies as an act of "socialistic humanity," and sterilization is clearly what is being referred to in a more recent news bulletin first published in Bratislava Smena on August 6th, 1986, and in the Western press in Insight, on the following September 15th. Claims of a 20 percent rate of mental retardation among the Romani population are now being made to justify its instigation:

The destruction of the Romany (Gypsy) minority is the task of Czechoslovakia's Government Commission for Problems of the Gypsy Populace. One of its Slovak officials, Jozef Prokop, who recently expressed official horror at the high Romany birthrate, claimed that 20 percent of the 7,000 Gypsies born annually were mentally retarded. He asserted that those who still maintained the traditional itinerant lifestyle were genetically unfit.
Prokop announced that "we will also in the future pursue regulation of the birthrate of the unhealthy population." And, as for any children born to traditional Romany families, "we will have to seek alternative methods of their upbringing; for example, in foster homes, special boarding schools and the like (Anon., 1986a:40).

Sterilised Roma accuse Czechs (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6409699.stm)


The practice officially ended in 1990 after the collapse of communist Czechoslovakia, but a number of doctors are said to have continued the operations on their own initiative.

In recent times a far right group in Romania offered 300 lei (approximately 90 US dollars) to Rromani women who could prove they had been sterilized: The sterilization of Roma women: a serious threat to the fundaments of a democratic society (http://www.romea.cz/en/news/press-releases/the-sterilization-of-roma-women-a-serious-threat-to-the-fundaments-of-a-democratic-society)


Also in Sweden, it has just recently been revealed that Swedish police were keeping databases on the Rromani population in southern Sweden, including children as young as two, in the year 2013.

Justice minister asks Roma for forgiveness (http://www.thelocal.se/50432/20130925/)

In the Netherlands this year, the Dutch government began shipping Rroma to ghettos which their politicians call "scum villages," where families live in cargo boxes under police watch: Amsterdam to create 'scum villages' (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherlands/9719247/Amsterdam-to-create-scum-villages.html)

And these are the supposedly "liberal, social democratic" countries!

The last two months saw some of the most widespread demonstrations and riots against Rroma in the history of the Czech Republic:
THE ANTI-ROMA RIOTS IN CZECH REPUBLIC (http://romediafoundation.wordpress.com/2013/10/02/the-anti-roma-riots-in-czech-republic/)

[Venas Abiertas]

This may be incorrect but I've heard that in many of those European countries they don't consider the Roma to be a "race", since they are a people of mixed ancestry. Some of the Roma in Northern Europe have blonde hair, for example. So, they classify them as "criminal gangs" or "foreign undesirables" who can then be brutalized at will. After all, it doesn't constitute "racial discrimination" because the Roma are not a "race". They choose to be a criminal element. :rolleyes:

[Red_Banner]

I was watching an episode of that old Western comedy F Troop last night, and I cringed when they were portraying Roma as being Hungarian and having Slavic names.:glare:

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Again, thanks so much for the helpful information, folks. I appreciate it. :)

[Zealot]

Most of you have probably heard of the case involving a white, blonde, blue-eyed girl "rescued" by police from a gypsy family in Greece. The international media have had a field day with this, neglecting to mention that literally thousands of non-white, non-blonde, non-blue eyed girls are kidnapped and/or found every year and apparently the media usually don't find it very newsworthy. This has lead to a Roma witch-hunt in Europe. In Ireland, two blonde children were illegally kidnapped by fascist police (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/24/blonde-girl-roma-parents-returned-dna) only to later find out that they were in fact the biological children of the respective Roma families. In other words, Gypsies have recently been unfairly targeted in a disgusting display of fascism. I had no idea of the extent of the discrimination against the Romani people until this blatantly racist media circus over the case in Greece and I think more awareness should be raised about this issue.

[bcbm]

Most of you have probably heard of the case involving a white, blonde, blue-eyed girl "rescued" by police from a gypsy family in Greece. The international media have had a field day with this, neglecting to mention that literally thousands of non-white, non-blonde, non-blue eyed girls are kidnapped and/or found every year and apparently the media usually don't find it very newsworthy. This has lead to a Roma witch-hunt in Europe. In Ireland, two blonde children were illegally kidnapped by fascist police (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/24/blonde-girl-roma-parents-returned-dna) only to later find out that they were in fact the biological children of the respective Roma families. In other words, Gypsies have recently been unfairly targeted in a disgusting display of fascism. I had no idea of the extent of the discrimination against the Romani people until this blatantly racist media circus over the case in Greece and I think more awareness should be raised about this issue.

and it turns out the girl in the greek case was their biological child too.

http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-dna-bulgaria-roma-girl-20131025,0,7931069.story

[ed miliband]

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/gypsy-child-snatchers-dont-really-exist

[BOZG]

and it turns out the girl in the greek case was their biological child too.

http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-dna-bulgaria-roma-girl-20131025,0,7931069.story

She isn't the biological daughter of the couple who were raising her, she is though the daughter of a Bulgarian Roma couple who basically confirm what the Greek couple claimed - that they were caring for the child because her mother was too poor to do so.

[bcbm]

thanks, i odn't like to read past the headline

[brigadista]

Most of you have probably heard of the case involving a white, blonde, blue-eyed girl "rescued" by police from a gypsy family in Greece. The international media have had a field day with this, neglecting to mention that literally thousands of non-white, non-blonde, non-blue eyed girls are kidnapped and/or found every year and apparently the media usually don't find it very newsworthy. This has lead to a Roma witch-hunt in Europe. In Ireland, two blonde children were illegally kidnapped by fascist police (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/24/blonde-girl-roma-parents-returned-dna) only to later find out that they were in fact the biological children of the respective Roma families. In other words, Gypsies have recently been unfairly targeted in a disgusting display of fascism. I had no idea of the extent of the discrimination against the Romani people until this blatantly racist media circus over the case in Greece and I think more awareness should be raised about this issue.

the media coverage of this non story['blonde angel' syndrome] has been vomit inducing in its offensive racism - more vile despicableness - horrible film coverage here and no mention of the grinding poverty shown which Roma are forced to live in - only positive thing in the film coverage was how righteously angry the Roma people in the film were with the media

[synthesis]

Most of you have probably heard of the case involving a white, blonde, blue-eyed girl "rescued" by police from a gypsy family in Greece. The international media have had a field day with this, neglecting to mention that literally thousands of non-white, non-blonde, non-blue eyed girls are kidnapped and/or found every year and apparently the media usually don't find it very newsworthy.

Didn't they also raid the Roma camp "just because," like "fuck it, why not?"


In the 1700s, there where something known as "fantejakt" (hobo hunting) were people would literally bring guns and hunt down gypsies and other Roma travelers.

This is fucking crazy. Wasn't this a plot point in Borat?

[Sasha]

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/gypsy-child-snatchers-dont-really-exist


i was just about to post that, really good article that everyone should read and share, scary like hell

[Remus Bleys]

This thread deserves more attention.
Today I was at Cedar Point with friends and German Foreign Exchange student.
Me (after seeing "Gypsy Fortune teller"): Thats some racist shit.
Friends: How?
Me: Roma arent magic. Hey, doesn't Germany have a roma population?
Foreign Exchange Student: I don't like them. Gypsies are stupid.

She is an otherwise nice girl who claims to be all anti-racist and shit. How the fuck did this happen?

[Flying Purple People Eater]

This thread deserves more attention.
Today I was at Cedar Point with friends and German Foreign Exchange student.
Me (after seeing "Gypsy Fortune teller"): Thats some racist shit.
Friends: How?
Me: Roma arent magic. Hey, doesn't Germany have a roma population?
Foreign Exchange Student: I don't like them. Gypsies are stupid.

She is an otherwise nice girl who claims to be all anti-racist and shit. How the fuck did this happen?

It's racism in the extreme, and even the most anti-racist people can be hacks of this sort. Most terms for Roma in European languages derive from insults like 'heathen', 'infidel' or even 'Tatar' (many people living in northern europe thought that everyone without white skin was ethnically a Tatar, due to the Tatar invasions of what is now Russia - they never actually saw any ethnic Tatars, they were just racist morons. This terminology has existed into the modern day, I hear).

A similar thing happens in Australia with indigenous peoples. You'll see people who openly declare their opposition to racism, will be on good relations with Sudanese and Hazara people, that will then go on to attack aboriginal australians with the most disgusting, white supremacist racist vitriol.

It's in much the same way Roma are treated in Europe, and San are treated in Westcape South Africa. "BEER ADDICT! HOMELESS BUM! DRUG ADDICTS! AGGRESSIVE! THIEVES!" Interesting that these stereotypes all result from a cycle of aggression where ethnic groups who have historically been completely politically repressed and ripped off get blamed for the destitution said racism causes (and indeed, stereotyped and generalised based on looks).

[Quail]

I think it's kind of strange how a lot of people who otherwise are not particularly racist are incredibly prejudiced against travellers (Roma or Irish), and pretty worrying. Perhaps it's just had more media attention lately, but it seems like in the past few years there has been a lot of racism directed at travellers all across Europe.