Tens of thousands of Roma have fled the misery and discrimination they suffer in Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and elsewhere. In Romania, a far-right group last January called for the sterilization of Roma women. Bulgaria last year saw anti-Roma demonstrations in the capital, Sofia. In 2012, a mob in the Czech Republic chanted "gas the gypsies" after a 15-year-old claimed he had been beaten up by Roma people.
"The Roma in Hungary are systematically discriminated against," says Gabor Daróczi, director of the Romaversitas foundation which funds education projects for Roma. "They can't find work, children don't get an education." In August, three men were convicted of murdering six Roma out of racial hatred. Members of the right-wing government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán openly agitate against Roma people. Zsolt Bayer, co-founder the ruling Fidesz party and supposedly a confidante of Orbán, said: "Most gypsies aren't suited to communal living. They immediately want to fuck everyone they see. If they encounter resistance, they commit murder. These gypsies are animals and they behave like animals. They shouldn't exist, the animals. One has to solve that -- using all means available!" Neo-Nazis marched through the streets threatening and beating up Roma people. The government didn't intervene against the racists. When an aid organization evacuated hundreds of children , the government described the rescue as an "Easter vacation."
In France, Italy and Germany, they end up in camps or living in ramshackle accommodation. Some resort to crime. In the West too, virtually all of them remain bitterly poor and discriminated against. But EU member states are failing to help them. Hans-Peter Friedrich of the CSU, who was German Interior Minister until recently, wanted to get rid of these immigrants as quickly as possible and to prevent more from coming to Germany. He demanded that the countries of origin improve living conditions for Roma people there.
The Hungarian village is governed by the far-right Jobbik party which demands "birth control for gypsies" and is linked to one of the neo-Nazi militia groups that terrorized the Roma in Gyöngyöspata. Police demand fines when pedestrians walk on the street rather than the sidewalk. In the school in Gyöngyöspata, Roma children were reportedly taught on a separate floor. Given such treatment, it's a miracle that not more Roma try to leave their home country.
But they also face discrimination in richer countries like Germany. They frequently suffer verbal abuse and are assaulted, and they don't have equal prospects in the labor market, says Markus End, a Berlin-based political scientist. Racism against Sinti and Roma is "an everyday occurrence in Germany," he says.
The information center RomnoKher presented a report to representatives of the German parliament's Human Rights Committee that contained accounts of media prejudice against Roma people, damage to monuments commemorating the deportation and murder of Sinti and Roma under the Nazis, and right-wing campaigns against immigrants from Eastern Europe. A Sinto from Klingenhain, a village in Saxony, was called a "wog chieftain" and his wife Claudia a "gypsy slut." The Sinti family endured verbal abuse for six years. Their children were threatened at school and police once had to protect them from neo-Nazis on their way home from school. Their house was broken into several times by people who smashed the furniture. In autumn 2009, a brick was hurled through their window with a note attached to it saying: "Beat it, you wogs." At Christmas their house was set on fire. That's when the family gave up and moved away.
In Italy, the government is trying to rehouse Roma in segregated estates made of containers. Elviz Isola lives in such a camp. Before that they lived in "Casolino 900,"one of Europe's biggest slums which was razed by bulldozers overnight. Then the government rehoused them. Salone is on the outside of the ring highway surrounding Rome. It's a godforsaken place, reachable only by a narrow path. Behind the gate stands a dreary encampment of corrugated iron containers each measuring three by seven meters, standing in neat rows, with windows that resemble arrow slits. Some 500 families live here, in many cases more than six or seven people in just 30 square meters. Rats scuttle along the paths between the containers, stray dogs roam and the place is filled with rotting old sofas and mattresses some from Rome secretly dump here at weekends. But Salone is supposed to be a model of a city-financed, "fully equipped" housing estate for the minority -- at least, that's how the Italian government sees it. In fact, Salone is more a ghetto than a village, and it deprives young men like Elviz of the chance to belong to the normal Italy. It takes three or four hours to get to the center of Rome where they might get a job or job training. "Who's going to take me on as a stableman, mechanic or kitchen helper with that length of commute, with this stamp as 'zingaro' that I carry on my forehead?" says Elviz.
"They win elections," says Salome, "by sticking Roma people in a prison like Salone." You can't win votes by supporting the Roma.
Last summer the vice president of the Genoa city council said: "Jellyfish are like gypsies: useless and always an annoyance." According to an Amnesty International report, politicians regard the presence of Roma people as "comparable to a natural disaster."
France too is hardly squeamish when dealing with Roma. Camps made of mobile homes and provisional shacks, established in many places by Roma from Romania and Bulgaria, are simply bulldozed away. The method began under conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy, and has continued under his so-called socialist successor, François Hollande. It isn't just the right-wing Front National that believes the majority of Roma are incapable of integrating. Socialist Interior Minister Manuel Valls agrees. Their way of life is "extremely different," he says.
Just how little EU member states care about the Roma became clear to her when she travelled in 2010 to the Roma summit in the Spanish city of Córdoba. "Just three ministers came," she said. Germany's then-Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière likewise showed little interest and sent a representative. The EU, often seen as so powerful, has little influence when it comes to Roma policy and has few possibilities to impose sanctions. European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding would write former German Interior Minister Friedrich complaint letters when his rhetoric grew too biting. She has also criticized Italy and even began official proceedings against France when Paris expelled large numbers of Roma. Reding making in clear that EU rights guaranteeing personal freedom of movement apply to Roma as well. Her office noted that the EU would do everything in its power to defend these rights. The response from Germany admitted that there were difficulties when it came to integrating immigrants. But, it went on, "there is no need for a special Roma strategy." They have a Roma strategy in Romania, but only because Brussels demanded it. It is just a paper. Damian Draghici, chief advisor on Roma issues to the Romanian prime minister, sums up the Roma strategy of his government and the efforts from Brussels succinctly: "Based on bullshit". He says that in the last 20 years, Roma issues were very last on Romania's list of political agenda. "The Roma are today are in the same condition they were as 150 years ago," he says. Municipalities can only help Roma on a local level, he believes, and not by resolution in Brussels and certainly not by the Romanian parliament. The lawmaking body has but a single Roma representative for the close to two million Roma in the country.
At the beginning of December, EU member states passed yet another paper in Brussels. All 28 countries committed to adopting targeted measures to accelerate the integration of their Roma populations. European Commissioner Reding says that it shows that member states are prepared to do something to help the minority. "We will not hesitate to remind EU member states of their obligations and to ensure that they fulfill them," she says. Member states haven't even made use of all of the €26.5 billion euros made available over the last five years to help integrate Roma. She says "there are two main things that you generally get from member states: either a few well-meant Sunday speeches or populism directed against Roma."
"We Roma didn't take part in any war, we're a peaceful people. To defend ourselves now, to rise up, what use would that be?"
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