The commemoration of the murder of Romani prisoners by the
Nazis in the Auschwitz concentration camp in August 1944 is a chance to reflect
on the future of the Romani people in the UK and around the world. But instead of being overwhelmed by their history, Roma
campaigners see their history as offering a way forward not only for
themselves, but for the world community.
For the first time, the Nazi genocide of their people, the
Porajmos (destruction), is being linked to a ceremony in Hiroshima to remember victims of the atomic
bomb dropped on the city.The event is timely. It comes just as the European Roma
Rights Centre has detailed
attacks against Romas in Hungary ,
Bulgaria and the Czech and Slovak Republics
In these and other EU countries, including Italy , a
wholesale suppression is “operated from behind a smokescreen of rules over
documentation, planning law and even people trafficking,” says campaigner Grattan
Puxon,
Amongst the acts of violence are firebombings, shooting,
stabbings and beatings, which have left eight people dead and many others
injured. The report says there is an increasingly racist climate and that
offenders are not being successfully prosecuted.
And lest we think the UK
is exempt from anti-Roma attitudes, prejudice is being fuelled by Channel 4’s
“observational documentary” Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, now being marketed around Europe . UK Romani campaigners are rightly enraged by the humiliating
depiction of Irish and English Travellers and Romany Gypsies in this crass portrayal
of their culture.
Mike Doherty, of the Irish Travellers Movement, in a
penetrating deconstruction
of BFGW, describes it as “car-crash television that feeds into - and inflames -
the extremely visible political and social conflict around Gypsy and Traveller
site provision in the UK
and nods towards…the death of the idea of multiculturalism. in Europe ”.
He adds:
“It uses sleight of hand to allow the viewer to laugh at
cartoonish and seemingly racist representations of some of the most
marginalised and persecuted ethnic minorities... the prejudiced tropes fly
thick and fast.”
Romas see the 1971 World Romani Congress, held in Orpington
near London , as
a key historical moment, which placed their culture on the map. It established
April 8 as Roma Nation Day. Then in 2000, the Fifth Romani World Congress put
forward a ground-breaking claim: non-territorial nationhood.
An extraordinary statement in 2001 rejected the
“consubstantiation” of concepts of state and nation, which, it said “is still
leading to tragedies, wars, disasters and massacres”.
The history of the nomadic Roma nation cuts through the
merging of state and nation. The Roma nation’s dream, could offer to the world
community and individuals belonging to other nations a new way for the “new
world” of the 21st century, it added.
Granting the Roma’s request for nationhood, the statement
proposes, could enable all of humanity to make a substantial step forward. “We
offer our culture, our tradition, the resource which is in our historic refusal
to search for a state: the most appropriate awareness of the contemporary
world.”
Puxon, spokesperson for the
April 8 movement, is calling for co-ordinated mass action, voter power
and an “upgrade in self-representation”. He notes that anti-Roma injustice and
abuse is being confronted by activists in Germany ,
Paris , Prague and
Skopje .
Roma numbers within the European Union are set to double by
2050. Puxon believes this will make their demands irresistible. But, alongside
other people’s movements, Roma writer Ronald Lee’s dream of a Romanistan – a
nation with or without a token state – is gaining momentum.
As Puxon notes, “long-term survival has been the single
greatest achievement of the scattered Romani communities” but now the
communities can come together to create a virtual
Romanistan.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
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