TRAV-ED searchlight magazine

From tacit head-nodding xenophobia to more extreme anti-"foreigner"

The articles can be read at
http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/stories/roma.htm

Or here they are in full:

The Outsiders: the Roma in Europe 

There is no group comparable to the Roma in terms of the persecution they
have faced throughout
their long history, in almost every country that they have settled. Yet
their case has remained
perpetually overlooked. A widespread anti-Roma bias is one of Europe's most
pressing, yet most
neglected, human rights issues. 

This negative imagery manifested itself most clearly in the attempt at
complete extermination of the
Roma during the Nazi period. But the vilification has not gone away. 
In parts of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), racism against the Roma has
been on the increase
since the collapse of the Eastern bloc, with a shocking catalogue of human
rights abuses routinely
taking place. But as the contributors to this edition highlight, this is not
a problem confined to CEE countries; the problem is Europe-wide, and indeed
worldwide. In the context of a move towards greater  European integration,
we must also take a look closer to home. 
The ongoing vilification of the Roma at the hands of the British media,
which fuels discrimination, and the attempts to deny asylum status to the
Romani people highlight our own refusal to recognise the suffering that Roma
face across the globe.  It is hoped that this feature, by focussing on
anti-Romani racism, will educate people about a group that is much maligned,
yet little understood, and enable them to build on this base to form a more
positive framework to fight it. 

Contents
A brief history of the Romanies - Donald Kenrick 
Czech Gypsies - Angus Bancroft 
In search of refuge - Kate Taylor 
Gypsies, asylum and Britain - Colin Clark 
Ethnic cleansing in Scandinavia - Sven Johansen 
Freedom to roam: Roma and the EU - Kate Taylor

A brief history of the Romanies 
by Donald Kenrick 

Describing the early history of the Romanies is like putting together a
jigsaw puzzle when some of the pieces are missing and parts of another
puzzle have
been put into the box. They suddenly appear in Europe speaking an Indian
language, yet there is no trace of their passage across the Middle East. But
their
language is the key to the route of their travels, as they adopted words
from the various peoples they met as they journeyed west. 

The Romanies (commonly called Gypsies) are an ethnic group who arrived in
Europe around the 14th century. Scholars argue about when and how they left
India but it is generally accepted that they did emigrate from Northern
India, then crossed the Middle East and came into Europe. 

Their name for themselves is "Rom" (with a plural "Roma" in most dialects).
This is generally considered to be cognate with the Indian word dom, the
original meaning of which was "man". 

There are over four million Romanies in Europe and they form a substantial
minority in many countries. The vast majority have been settled for
generations.
Most still speak the Romani language. As the Romanies are an ethnic group
and not a class, there are rich and poor and they have a variety of
professions. It
is only in western Europe that Romanies are seen as a nomadic people and
that the term "Gypsy" is loosely used meaning "nomad". 

The ancestors of the Romanies of Europe began to leave India from the 6th
century AD onwards. Some left voluntarily in order to serve the rich courts
of the
Persian and later Arab dynasties in the Middle East. Others were brought as
forced labourers. 

The Romanies who crossed into Europe during the 14th and 15th centuries
included farm workers, blacksmiths and mercenary soldiers, as well as
musicians,
fortune tellers and entertainers. They were generally welcome at first as an
interesting diversion in the dull everyday life of that period. Soon however
they
attracted the antagonism of the three powers of the time: the state, the
church and the guilds. The authorities wanted everyone to settle on feudal
property, to
have a fixed name and to pay taxes. The church was worried about the
competition of fortune tellers, while the guilds did not like to see their
prices undercut
by these newcomers who worked all hours of the day and night, with wives and
children helping, trading from tents or carts. 

There were other factors at play that led to feelings of mistrust towards
the newcomers. They were dark-skinned, itself a negative feature in Europe,
and they
were suspected in some countries of being spies for the Turks. 

It was not long before these feelings of antagonism and mistrust led to a
reaction. As early as 1482 the Holy Roman Empire's parliament passed laws to
banish the Romanies from its territory. Spain introduced similar legislation
ten years later and other countries soon followed. The punishment for
remaining
was often death. This policy failed in most cases, as the countries to which
they were deported often expelled them in their turn. The time then came in
most
countries to try a new policy - enforced integration or assimilation. 

In 1758 in Hungary and Spain new laws said that Romanies had to settle down
or leave the country. They had to settle as landworkers or be apprenticed to
a
master craftsman. But they also had to be assimilated into the native
population. Everywhere one finds edicts forbidding Romanies to wear their
distinctive
colourful clothes, to speak their language, to marry other Romanies and to
ply their traditional trades. As a result of these settlement policies there
are today
large populations of settled Romanies in Spain and Hungary, while in Romania
Romani landworkers and craftsmen were reduced to a status below that of the
serfs, to slavery. 

Discriminatory laws (on language and dress) fell into abeyance except those
against nomadism, which remained a threat to those practising traditional
crafts.
The policy of banning nomadism without helping the nomads to settle proved a
failure throughout Europe and nomadism continued unchecked until the
Second World War. Nomadic Romanies have survived as a distinctive group in
western Europe up to the present day. 

The Holocaust 
When the Nationalist Socialist Party came to power in Germany in 1933 the
nomadic Romanies were already subject to restrictions. However the Nazis
regarded Romanies as a race and made both nomads and sedentaries subject to
the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. In 1942 Himmler signed the Auschwitz Decree
and in the following years over 20,000 Romanies were sent to the camp. In
the occupied countries of eastern Europe Task Forces massacred Romanies in
the
woods outside the towns where they lived. Then extermination camps were
opened and Romanies were brought to them to be shot or gassed, alongside
Jews.
It is estimated that between a quarter and half a million Romanies were
killed during the Nazi period. 

After 1945 
In the first years following the end of the Nazi domination of Europe the
Romani community was in disarray. The small educational and cultural
organisations that had existed before l939 had been destroyed. The family
structure was broken with the death of the older people - the guardians of
the
traditions. 

It was hard for the Romanies to come to terms with their Holocaust for there
had never been a persecution on this scale before. There had been executions
of
smaller numbers in earlier centuries, in Britain and Germany in particular,
but nothing like this. There were no global reparations and not many
individuals
received restitution. 

  In both eastern and western Europe a return to prewar nomadism was
discouraged, if not
banned. In the east they were one more minority likely to cause trouble to
the monocultural
states created by communism. Here, where some 4 million Romanies lived under
totalitarian rule, they were not allowed to form organisations and the
language was again
suppressed. In most countries of eastern Europe the Romani population was
very large and
policies were evolved to meet the challenge of this large unassimilated
minority. In the case
of the Soviet Union, Stalin had decided that the Romanies had no land base
and therefore
could not be a nation and their status as a nationality was not recognised.
Assimilated
Romanies were encouraged to change the "nationality" in their passports to,
for example,
Serbian or Russian. The few activists were sent into internal exile or
imprisoned, such as the parliamentarian Chakir Pashov in Bulgaria. 

Here and there, however, Romani national sentiment remained alive. In
Czechoslovakia
organisations were formed and began to demand their rights, a demand
temporarily
squashed after Soviet troops entered Prague in 1968. 

 The idea of "Romanestan", a homeland for the Romanies, had emerged in
Poland in the
1930s, clearly influenced by the Zionist movement. Since l945 this has not
been seriously
considered, although many intellectuals are fostering the link with the
"Motherland" of India. 

With the fall of the totalitarian regimes in eastern Europe came a new
freedom to form organisations. The language is beginning to be taught in
schools and
intellectuals are refinding their roots and reaffirming their identity. The
Romanies, who had never completely forgotten how to trade on their own
account,
were the first to set up small businesses. Their ability to survive the
changes better than their compatriots led to jealousy and an outbreak of
anti-Romani
violence. The road to capitalism was not as smooth as had been expected and
with no Jews to act as scapegoats the population turned to the Romanies as
the
reason for their real or imagined troubles. 

Freedom has also meant freedom for right-wing racists to organise and this
was facilitated by a falling away of the control exercised by the police. As
early
as January 1990 a crowd of 700 Hungarians and Romanians attacked the Romani
quarter in Turu Lung in Romania. Thirty-six of the 42 houses belonging to
Romanies were set on fire and destroyed. Two similar incidents took place
that year in Romania, resulting in the death of four Romanies. In September
1990
skinheads attacked Romani houses in Eger and Miskolc in Hungary. The
following year saw pogroms in Mlawa, Poland, where nine houses were
destroyed,
and Bohemia (Czechoslovakia), where a Romani was killed during an attack by
skinheads on a Romani club. Racist attacks and murders have continued until
today. 

Many Romanies, in particular from Poland and Romania, sought asylum in the
west but very few have been granted refugee status. 

The sedentary Romanies of eastern Europe have quite different needs from the
nomadic Romanies in the west who want secure stopping places. In spite of
years of compulsory education, the children in the communist lands did not
manage to acquire many new skills or paper qualifications. They were the
first to
go in the new capitalist climate in the east when factories began to shed
surplus labour. They have found it the hardest to obtain new jobs. 

Historians and other writers have been, pessimistically or optimistically,
predicting the disappearance of the Romanies each generation since they came
to
Europe at the beginning of this millennium, but they have survived as an
ethnic group and are likely to do so into the foreseeable future. 

Shortened from the introduction to A Historical Dictionary of the Gypsies
(Romanies), Scarecrow press. 

Czech Gypsies, the 'inadaptable people' 
Angus Bancroft 

A computer game called Kill Yourself a Gypsy appeared in early 2000. It
began to circulate not long after a wall was built
in Maticni Street, in the Czech town of Usti nad Labem. The wall was built
to separate Roma (Gypiesy) from their "white"
Czech neighbours. In the game the player has to shoot at Gypsies who appear
on the screen while adding blocks to the wall.
The game was of a piece with the casual racism against Roma that pervades
the post-communist Czech Republic. 

Roma in the Czech Republic 
Roma in 14th century Bohemia carried out many functions valuable to the
feudal lords of the Czech Lands, working as blacksmiths, soldiers and so on.
Anti-Gypsy legislation was passed in Moravia in 1538. Following the Turkish
conquest of central Hungary, Roma were targeted as Turkish spies and
murdered by local mobs. The situation calmed down somewhat following
Maria-Theresa's accession to the Austro-Hungarian throne in the 18th
century. The
Roma then became the objects of a reformatory policy instituted by her
government, a policy that was designed to end their nomadic way of life and
assimilate them into the settled population, by force if necessary. Many had
their children removed from them. 

After the establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918 the Roma gained
citizenship and recognition as a national minority, but theirs was a brief
respite. 

Dark clouds began to gather with the revival of anti-nomadism ordinances in
1927. An anti-Roma pogrom in Pobedim, Slovakia, in 1928 was one instance of
the worsening of relations between Roma and their Czechoslovak neighbours.
The newspaper Slovak commented that "the Pobedim case can be
characterised as a citizens' revolt against Gypsy life. In this there are
the roots of democracy." 

With the Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1939 the net began to close
around the Czech Roma. Beginning in 1940, Czech Roma were rounded up and
forced into "labour" camps along with Jews. Some were shipped to
concentration camps in other countries, such as Auschwitz, others to the
Czech
concentration camps at Lety and Hodonin, where they were massacred. Few
Czech Roma survived the war. 

Most Slovak Roma escaped extermination, the Nazi puppet state subjecting
them to harassment and discrimination but not, for the most part, actively
participating in the genocide. 

 "Right from the beginning, the Communists shoved us out to the edges of
society. And woe to anyone that might want to change their label of
inadaptable
 person." Anna Polakova, Radio Prague, 1998 

After the Second World War the Communist government forced nomadic Slovak
Roma to settle in the Czech Lands. There, the Roma were put into low wage
jobs to replace the Sudeten Germans, who had been expelled from the country
after the war. 

The Communists had a distinct social engineering aim in mind. Working as
unskilled labour would help extract "social and labour conformity from
Gypsies". To enforce their participation in the socialist labour system, the
government passed the 1958 Act on Permanent Settlement of Nomadic People.
Nomadic Roma were subject to a policy of forced settlement. Their horses
were killed and their caravans destroyed. A campaign of forced sterilisation
of
Roma women was put in place. There was a deliberate attempt to destroy them
culturally through forced assimilation, much as the Nazis had attempted to
eliminate them physically through extermination. 

Roma since the Velvet Revolution 
It is estimated that there are currently some 275,000 Roma in the Czech
Republic, 2.9% of the population. After Communism was overthrown in 1989
there
was some optimism that the Roma would be able to take an accepted place in
national life. It was not to be, and the Roma have paid a heavy price for
democracy, in the form of discrimination, racial violence and segregation. 

Discrimination 
The Communist government had represented its assimilation of Roma into the
labour force as a success. To them, the Roma were normalised, newly admitted
to the ranks of the proletarian masses. What the government had failed to do
was to tackle the anti-Roma prejudice that pervaded Czechoslovak society.
Indeed its actions had if anything reinforced that prejudice by forcing many
Roma into low wage and low status occupations. When the labour market was
freed up after the Velvet Revolution, most Roma were thrown out of their
jobs and became unemployed. Employers continue to discriminate against Roma
and are not punished when they reject Roma who try to get jobs. The
positions formerly held by the Roma were filled not by other Czechs but by
unskilled
labourers from Romania, Hungary and other parts of Eastern Europe that have
suffered badly in the transition. The result is that the unemployment rate
among Roma is 80%, compared to 4% for the Czech Republic as a whole. 

Discrimination is pervasive in other areas of life. Roma are excluded from
restaurants, bars and nightclubs. The school system is effectively
segregated. Two
thirds of Roma children are sent to special schools for children with
learning disabilities. Of the children in these schools 75% are Roma. They
are put in a
sub-standard educational system and treated as intellectually deficient.
Their education is severely curtailed because of this practice. 

Many Czech Roma were denied citizenship of the newly formed Czech Republic
under the Citizenship Law of 1993. This pushed many further to the
margins of society. Many Roma living in the Czech Republic were technically
considered Slovaks, having been moved there from Slovakia after the Second
World War. They were not given automatic citizenship of the new Republic. To
apply for it they had to leap a series of hurdles that were designed to
prevent
them gaining citizenship status. 

Since the law was introduced many courts have expelled "Slovak" Roma who had
never
lived in Slovakia. A new law introduced in 1999 has improved things, but
many Roma still
do not have citizenship, and this excludes them from many rights that Czechs
take as
normal. 

Racist violence 
Since 1989 there has been a sharp upsurge in anti-Roma violence and racial
abuse. There
have been many high-profile attacks on Roma, and a number of racially
motivated murders
carried out by gangs of skinheads. Last year police recorded 364 racially
motivated or
extremist crimes. Many go unrecorded, due to the reluctance of police to
document them.
For instance, in August 1999, several Romani homes near the town of
Jaromerice nad
Rokytnou were attacked by 30 skinheads. For one hour the skinheads attacked
the Roma
while shouting racist abuse. Police charged 12 of them with various
offences, such as
rioting, property damage and violence. They were not charged with racially
motivated
crimes. 

When racist crimes have been prosecuted the courts have tended to hand down
lenient sentences. In 1998 a group of skinheads beat a Roma man, Milan
Lacko, unconscious. They left him in the road and a lorry ran him down and
killed him. Four men were prosecuted for his murder and, although found
guilty,
they received suspended sentences. The government has set up a number of
initiatives to combat violence, but the statutes against racially motivated
crime are
often not enforced. There appears to be a pattern of the national government
introducing measures to combat anti-Roma violence, which then are thwarted
on
the ground by courts and police who are reluctant to carry them through. 

Racial politics became a phenomenon during the 1990s. The Republican Party
of Miroslav Sladek made its platform opposition to immigration, to Germans
and to Roma. It enjoyed some poll success during the 1990s but lost all its
parliamentary seats in the 1998 election and has since disintegrated into
infighting. The remnants have recently attempted to revive their fortunes
with the formation of the National Social Bloc. Given the continued strength
of the
skinhead movement it still has a potentially significant base of support. 

Segregation 
Under Communism the Roma were assigned to old, crowded blocks of flats with
inadequate services. The discrimination in housing continues, both by local
authorities and private landlords. In 1998 a Czech town, Usti nad Labem, was
propelled into the national and international headlines by its proposal to
further
extend this ghettoisation by building a wall separating one apartment block
inhabited mainly by Roma from their neighbours. 

 "We simply want to separate the decent people from those who are not."
Ladislav Hruska, Mayor of Usti nad Labem, 1998 

Usti is a classically Soviet industrial town. With the exception of a
recently repainted Baroque church, it combines rundown 19th century
buildings with
Stalinist concrete monstrosities. Soviet era apartment blocks are stacked up
the sides of the gorge. In one of these apartment blocks on Maticni Street
live 30
or 40 Roma families. City officials erected a four-metre high wall around
the apartment block in October 1999. In addition there were to be 24-hour
police
patrols. The wall was pulled down after the local authority finally gave way
to pressure from the national government. Local authorities in several other
Czech
towns were inspired to build their own walls separating Roma from non-Roma. 

An opinion poll carried out in 1997 asked Czechs their view of Roma. Seven
per cent had a sympathetic view and 69% could not tolerate them. The Czech
Republic thinks of itself as the most Westernised of the former Communist
states. The Roma minority is viewed as embarrassing evidence of backwardness
and is not seen as Czech. 

Some Roma have asserted their right to be part of the Czech nation, saying
"we are Czechs". Yet many Roma do not support this slogan. They see the
Czech
nation as something from which they are permanently excluded. 

Dr Angus Bancroft is a lecturer in Public Health, Sociology and Social
Policy at the University of Edinburgh. He has worked with Gypsy-Travellers
in
Scotland and Wales, and Roma in the Czech Republic 

 In Search of Refuge 
by Kate Taylor 

Kate Taylor interviews Ladislav Balaz, a Rom refugee who formed 'Europe
Roma' in order to help others who have fled to
Britain from some of the most appalling prejudice in Eastern Europe 

Ladislav Balaz sits in his small office in north London, speaking Romani
with a family who seek help from him. He is well placed to understand the
problems they face in Britain, and he also possesses a unique insight into
the situation from which they have fled. For Ladislav is himself a Rom
refugee,
forced to leave his home in the Czech Republic due to the rising tide of
racism being perpetrated against the Romani people. 

Unfortunately such prejudice has gained momentum in the years following the
collapse of the Eastern bloc. Arriving in Britain three years ago, Ladislav
encountered first hand the asylum process that has so far refused to grant
any Roma asylum status in this country. 

It was against this backdrop that Ladislav formed Europe-Roma, an
organisation that seeks to give Romani asylum-seekers in Britain proper
legal
representation, advice, accommodation and simple day-to-day possessions that
are so lacking. Ladislav works primarily with Roma from Slovakia, Poland,
the
Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia and other eastern European countries, "but I
help all refugees", he adds. On arrival in this country, more often than
not,
Roma are faced with desperate poverty and expressions of racism. Yet they
find themselves vilified by the British media and politicians for trying to
provide
for their families. The view perpetrated is that the Roma are solely
economic migrants who have no right to asylum in Britain. 

But the situations from which they are fleeing stand in stark contrast to
this perception. In the Czech Republic, Ladislav encountered on a daily
basis the
anti-Roma bias that has become entrenched in the country: "every day they
attack Roma ... skinheads and fascists march and fight on the street ... I
was in the
same situation with my family - it was horrible. But nobody would help us,
nobody. And all the people agree with the skinheads, it is like many years
before,
during Hitler." 

In frank and moving terms, Ladislav relates the circumstances surrounding
the anti-Roma wall erected in Usti nad Labem, and also talks of an attempted
pogrom on Roma in a restaurant in the town of Ceské Budejovice last year.
Skinheads entered the building shouting "Sieg Heil", "Gypsies to the gas
chambers", and other racist slogans. Armed with stones, bottles and even
guns, the skinheads relentlessly attacked the 40 Roma inside the restaurant.
These
are just two examples of the racism that permeates Czech society and is
directed towards the Roma. In many instances the police and courts turn a
blind eye
and many mainstream politicians espouse racist sentiments in public,
effectively sanctioning the actions that can ensue from such attitudes. 

Ladislav believes that the treatment of the Roma is a litmus test for any
humane society. It is for this reason that he believes the Czech Republic
should not be
allowed to join the EU. His quest to alert people to the situation of the
Roma in eastern Europe has taken him down many avenues, even to the House of
Commons, where last year he addressed Parliament. Ladislav has a simple
question: "I want to know why this government gives support to the racist
Czech
Republic ... that is why the Roma have to come here ... I've met Barbara
Roche, Jack Straw, Jeremy Corbyn, Dianne Abbott ... We are talking to
everybody
about the situation in the Czech Republic. There it is a very hard life, you
know." 

For those that do make it here against the odds, the ordeal is not over.
When they arrive they are accorded little in the way of help or dignity as
human beings.
Ladislav estimates that around 6,000 Roma refugees from eastern Europe in
Britain, out of a world population of around 10 million. Often Roma are
dispersed widely across the country, allowing them to have little contact
with others in their situation, nor to build up any sort of community.
"These people
are sent everywhere, to Coventry, Colchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham,
and so on. But I am starting to drive everywhere to visit these people, to
try and
help them." 

Ladislav also mentions cases where families have been deliberately separated
from one another. One Roma refugee was sent to Manchester and when his
wife arrived in the country later, she was sent to Colchester. "When this
action was questioned, they were told, 'if you won't stay there, we will
give you your
passport back and you can leave'." Ladislav took this case to Refugee Action
and the family now lives together. But this case is just symptomatic of a
wider
attitude towards refugees that is both endemic and unchallenged. 

"Many people just do not understand what a refugee is. They just understand
what they hear and think these people are just after money, that this is
merely
an economic problem, that they steal and so on. But this is just not true." 

Ladislav is a man whose own experiences are interwoven into his work and his
quest for justice for Roma refugees. It is not difficult to see why he
speaks so
passionately about his desire for a better life for the Roma. But the
problems did not end for Ladislav after he arrived in this country: he has
struggled to gain
refugee status, money is vastly lacking, he lives in a five-bedroom house
with 35 other people and he has been attacked four times by racists.
Throughout this
period, life was terrifying for Ladislav and his family and they would stay
up all night for fear of further assaults. He was told he could not be moved
to new
accommodation because he only had temporary permission to stay in Britain.
But this has given him greater insight into the work that needs to be
undertaken
in order to change things, no matter how small the steps might have to be. 

Sometimes it is the little things that bring hope to those in desperate
situations. At Christmas, Ladislav cooks for other Roma families and
collects clothes and
toys for the children. But good intentions do not always map out when one is
faced with the bureaucracy and obstacles of the asylum process. When
Ladislav tried to deliver items to Oakington detention centre on Christmas
Day, an officer told him that they could not take any of the presents. "I
said look,
this is detention not prison, why do you do this? And he replied, this is
policy." 

It is stories such as this that have prompted Ladislav to change the name of
his organisation from Europe-Roma to the West European Roma Rights Centre.
This, he says, is to ensure that civil rights abuses against the Roma in
this country do not continue unchecked. "I want to monitor this government,
these
police, these court cases and how they deal with the Roma. Because many
police, immigration officers, detention centres and prisons break the law.
When we
find out which people are bad, we will write reports about this and get more
witnesses to speak about the situation in the UK. We will hold people
accountable. This is my future in the organisation." 

In Ladislav's opinion the Roma have every right to seek refuge in Britain.
"We are from a former English colony. At the moment, we, the Roma, are not
on
the map. But we came into Europe from north India 1,000 years before. Now we
don't have a country, everybody, everywhere is fighting the Roma ... If this
government accepts people from India, they must accept the Roma. I have lots
of friends from India and we have the same language. 

"Last month I spoke at a Fire Brigades Union conference. Many people there
asked me, 'Ladislav, do you have a country?' and I said no. They again asked
me, 'Ladislav, where are you from?' and I said the Czech Republic. They say,
'then this is your country'and I say no, I was just born there. But my
parents and
grandfather came into Europe from north India, this is my country. And they
all agreed and said Ladislav, you must tell this situation to this
government.
They must learn this. I said look, this government just likes to talk about
money, and all they are talking about is petrol and fuel and the weather,
not about
people. This is very bad. It is the same in the Czech Republic. This is a
bad situation." 

Despite Ladislav's dedication to his work, the strain on him personally has
begun to take its toll. The organisation receives no funding and relies on
small
donations and help from individuals. The constant travelling and frustration
that accompany the job offer few rewards. 

"It is no life for me ... I come home and everybody is asleep. I don't see
my children. You know, this is very hard. I am so tired all the time, it
never stops."
But in spite of the effect on his personal life, Ladislav remains determined
to create a more positive environment for Roma refugees in Britain. 

"I visited the Refugee Council and I talked to them. I asked them what they
are doing, how they are dealing with the situation and they said to me look,
this is
our job, not yours, go. This is very bad. I think that if all the
organisations in the UK go in together and fight bad policies, it would be
much better." 

This is the vision that Ladislav holds for the future. The barbaric racism
that he encountered in the Czech Republic, alongside the inhumane asylum
process
that he has faced personally in Britain, have led to a desire to channel
these experiences into something positive for others who are overlooked and
marginalised by society: "I want to be a man who has power over Roma rights,
this is my future. If we get no help, I will do it myself." 

Persons unknown': Gypsies, asylum and Britain 
Colin Clark 

 "The next Conservative government will assess the validity of asylum claims
within weeks, not years. And, where applications are
 unfounded, immediate deportation will follow." William Hague, 2001 

It seems the "race" card has just been pulled out of the Conservative pack
for the forthcoming general election. William Hague's speech to the
Conservative
Spring Forum in Harrogate in March, carefully worded and heavily loaded, was
designed to raise the "spectre" of asylum and immigration as one of the
major issues for what increasingly looks like a May election. 

Should we, on the left, be that surprised by this kind of provocative
speech? Not really. In a pre-election warm-up, and with a fairly healthy
economy to
contend with, opposition parties need to raise the stakes to try and grab
some of the headlines. Do you recall the Conservative slogan for the
Smethwick
by-election of 1964, which asked: "If you want a nigger for a neighbour,
vote Liberal or Labour"? A large Tory swing was the result of this strategy
and it
came on the back of a substantial Labour victory at the general election the
same year. The point is that asylum and immigration issues can make and
break
elections for parties: if the debates continue as they have done in the past
few years then we could see the return of some very crude racism. The
slogans and
attitudes have not, alas, been consigned to the vaults of history; clearly
we must keep looking and listening. 

The re-emergence of such an opprobrious climate is all the more likely when
the opposition party has a "leader" such as William Hague. It is difficult
to
remember a Conservative leader with a less "high profile" media image. He
might well be the "card" that Tony Blair will play as we approach election
day:
"Would you trust this man to run modern Britain?" Hague is the Tory version
of what in April 1992 some called the "Kinnock factor" (that is, a leader
incapable of leading a party to victory). 

But it is worth remembering that Blair isn't just the leader who over the
past four years has helped bring some progressive change to battered
Britain. On the
face of it we have had some inspired moments: the passing of the Human
Rights Act 1998, the implementation of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act,
which built on the bitter lessons of the Macpherson Report, and the
dignified commemoration of the first Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was
used as a
memo to all of us that we need to be on our guard against 21st century
racism and fascism. These are all healthy signs that "tolerant" Britain is
singing a
more "multicultural" version of Rule Britannia. Or is it? 

Asylum and Romanies 
As we go to the voting booths, we must also remember that the Labour Party
has introduced legislation that has had a devastating impact on some of the
most
marginalised and vulnerable groups of people in society, particularly
asylum-seekers. Their "pariah"and "bogus" status has ensured that they have
had the
kind of tabloid front cover exposure that Hague can only dream about. But
the crucial difference is they would rather not have had it. With the
passing of the
Immigration and Asylum Act on 1 April 2000, untold suffering has been caused
in the name of a spin-doctor-approved "tough" stance on what one Dover
newspaper infamously referred to as "Human Sewage" (Dover Express, 1.10.98).
This, of course, was to be read as meaning Romani asylum-seekers. 

Indeed, groups of Romani asylum-seekers have consistently been vilified by
the press and politicians during the past couple of years. Such attacks have
grown in both frequency and ferocity. What often starts as a letter or two
to local newspapers in the "garden of England" (that's Kent apparently) has
a
tendency to transform into a particularly vicious style of national press
"investigation" of the "asylum issue". The conclusion, inevitably, is that
Britain is "too
soft". 

Elaine Campbell and I recently analysed the press coverage of events in
October 1997 when Romanies from the former Czechoslovakia arrived in Dover
to
claim political asylum. We were shocked, but not surprised, by the reporting
methods and tone of the British media - both tabloid and broadsheet. The
Independent (21.10.97) rather bizarrely talked of "cuckoos in the nest" who
were brought to England by "the lure of promised lands". The previous day
the
same newspaper had led with the front-page headline: "Gypsies invade Dover
hoping for a handout" (20.10.97). The Daily Mail, like most other papers,
focussed on supposed "benefit abuse" and also spoke of Britain as being
Europe's "soft touch" when it came to the "Gypsy Invasion" (22.10.97). The
Express (21.10.97) said the port of Dover was "under siege" and The Sun
(24.10.97), while speaking of the desire to "kick them out", also made it
clear
that it was an "EU law" that was the "Gypsy Curse" (the law in question
being the Dublin Convention, which was implemented in September 1997). 

Asylum, in other words, has been a renewed issue of national populist cause
for a few years now. The implementation of the Immigration and Asylum Act
2000, along with the screams of the press on the issue, has led to a new
institutionalised strain of xenophobia becoming part of the everyday
"commonsense"
way of thinking about Romani families who come to seek shelter from skinhead
violence, discrimination and abuse. Their only crime was to come to an
island country in the grip of a "moral panic", where xenophobia mixes with
the kinds of racism that longer established ethnic minority communities
already
face - including British Gypsies. 

What I have found most worrying over the past couple of years has been the
mantra-like repetition of hostile anti-asylum-seeker/Romani messages in the
press. If they are repeated often enough, with few alternative viewpoints
being heard, then they are accepted by the general public as a "natural"
view to hold.
>From tacit head-nodding xenophobia to more extreme anti-"foreigner"
violence, it is all seen as an "understandable" response to the "huge
numbers" that are
said to be "illegally" entering Britain. With all the bellicose rhetoric and
politics in the air, the facts of the matter are often blurred and allowed
to fall by the
wayside. Britain takes in less than half the European average of refugees
(in relation to its size) and between 1988 and 1998 a total of just under
60,000
people were allowed to settle. Not exactly a "swamping" and, while the
number of applications is increasing, so is the number of those being
rejected. To date
no Romani applications for asylum have been successful, while only half a
dozen or so have been given "leave to remain" in this country. 

Britain and the Gypsies 

 "Now the first thing we have to say is that people have got to stop being
sentimental about so-called Travellers. There are relatively few Romani
Gypsies
 left, who seem to be to able to mind their own business and don't cause
trouble to other people, and then there are a lot more people who masquerade
as
 Travellers or Gypsies, who trade on the sentiment of people ... in the past
there has been rather too much toleration of Travellers and we want to see
the
 police and local authorities cracking down on them ... Many of these
so-called Travellers seem to think that it's perfectly OK for them to cause
mayhem in
 an area, to go burgling, thieving, breaking into vehicles, causing all
kinds of other trouble including defecating in the doorways of firms and so
on, and
 getting away with it, then their behaviour degenerates." Jack Straw, 1999 

Even before the Home Secretary made his vacuous comments above, the 120,000
population of Gypsies and Travellers in Britain had had a hard time of it
(Kenrick and Clark, 1999). When Labour came to power there was some hope
that the battering they had taken from successive Conservative governments
would end. Some thought that the worst aspects of the 1994 Criminal Justice
and Public Order Act (CJPOA) might even get scrapped. This was to prove
rather wishful thinking. During the reading of the Bill, Labour sat on the
fence even though the Lords did their best to stop some sections of it going
through.
Labour had no plans to reintroduce the 1968 Caravan Sites Act, which section
80 of the CJPOA had ripped up. Sir George Young, when he introduced the
Bill, told Gypsies that they had to pay for their own sites and "look after
their own". Today, for those families with a bit of money, this has been
feasible, but
getting planning permission to station their caravan legally on their own
land - as recent cases at the European Court of Human Rights have shown - is
nearly
impossible. 

The private site planning problems that Gypsies have, along with the impact
on local authority sites of the repeal of the 1968 Caravan Sites Act, has
meant that
between 3,000 and 4,000 Gypsy and Traveller families are literally "on the
verge" with no legal place to go in Britain. After the passing of the CJPOA
in
November 1994, nomadism became a criminal offence and more councils were
starting to notice more Gypsies and Travellers "residing" and "resorting" to
their areas - illegally. The Labour response to this was a Guide to Good
Practice entitled Managing Unauthorised Camping (Department of the
Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR), 1998). This document
continues the long-held tradition of viewing Gypsies as "the problem" and
the
DETR is really aiming at helping local authorities to move roadside
encampments on quicker, and with fewer complications, rather than actually
preventing
pointless evictions and the disruption and costs they bring. Some £7 million
a year is spent by local authorities on evictions: a bigger waste of
taxpayers'
money you would be hard pushed to find. 

Gypsies and Travellers in Britain are often called "Persons Unknown". This
is the standard phrase used on most eviction notices to move them on from
roadside sites. Finding out people's names to print on an eviction notice is
usually considered to be too much trouble and not worth the effort by the
authorities. The use of "Persons Unknown" also serves further to dehumanise
Gypsies and Travellers, reducing them to almost "object" or "invisible"
status.
It makes evictions easier for those carrying them out if you don't have to
call a person by their name. 

The same argument, I would suggest, applies to those Romanies who have
attempted to come to Britain from various parts of Central and Eastern
Europe in
the past few years. They are "Persons Unknown" because their specific and
individual cases for asylum are not important, whereas their Romani
ethnicity has
been. The net effect of the kind of tabloid bastardisation of asylum-seekers
that we spoke of earlier has been enough to ensure that as a group they were
"bogus", even if individual families did have "genuine" reasons to be
seeking sanctuary in democratic and tolerant Britain. 

We are now singing a version of Rule Britannia that is tinged with the
blood, sweat and tears of an issue that may very well decide the next
general election.
Use your vote wisely. 

Ethnic cleansing in Scandinavia 
>From Sven Johansen, Monitor 

As the Third Reich went under in a Götterdämmerung of blood and fire, racism
and eugenics were to remain official policies of the Scandinavian
governments for the next three decades. Racism was not born with Hitler's
Germany, and certainly did not die with it. And the Norwegian group that
suffered
most from the state's programme for "racial hygiene" was the Roma minority.
Escaping from the Indian subcontinent about 1,000 years ago, Roma appeared
in western and northern Europe at the beginning of the 16th century. Roma*
were first observed in Sweden in 1512; they had probably migrated from
Scotland. 

As in other European countries the local population wondered where these
people had come from. Popular superstition and prejudices soon made the
travelling people victims of persecution. 

In 1536 King Christian III of Denmark-Norway announced an edict that
prohibited any Roma access to the kingdoms and required any Roma residing in
the
kingdoms to leave within three months. A later amendment to this law
directed that any leader of a Roma band found within the frontiers of the
kingdoms
should be executed. In 1589 a new edict commanded the capture or killing of
Roma. 

>From 1643 Roma were hunted in Denmark-Norway. In Norway this hunting, with
various degrees of intensity, lasted until the 1920s. 

In the 18th century the state started to build chastisement houses, where
Roma and others who did not fit into society were confined. 

In 1893 the Norwegian Church Council estimated the number of Roma in Norway
at 4,000. From 1896 a law allowed the state to remove children from their
parents and keep them in state custody until they were 21 years old. 

In 1897 the Reverend Jacob Valnum founded the Association to Counteract
Vagabondism. Three years later the first children's home was opened. From
then
on Romani children were taken away from their parents and placed in these
homes. The Association to Counteract Vagabondism was transformed into the
Vagabond Mission, a Christian organisation, which from 1907 was given
responsibility for the settlement of Roma. 

The "Mission", as it is still remembered among old travellers, went on to
build two work camps for travellers. The goal was to assimilate the
travellers into
Norway's agricultural society. 

The first half of the 20th century was a golden era for racial biology. In
Oslo Dr Jon Alfred Hansen Mjøen built his race biology laboratory and wrote
several books and articles on the subject. According to Dr Mjøen, and
several others, travellers were inferior and defective human beings who
should be
interned and if possible sterilised. 

More important than Dr Mjøen was the renowned psychiatrist Johan
Scharffenberg. A republican when Norway gained independence from Sweden in
1905,
Dr Scharffenberg belonged to Norway's radical political tradition. Others on
the Scandinavian left agreed with him, including Alva Myrdal, who later won
the
Nobel peace price. 

During the early 1930s Dr Scharffenberg wrote several articles demanding
legislation to permit the forced sterilisation of "the inferior". While
working as a
prison doctor, Scharffenberg measured the skulls of inmates. His conclusions
were clear: Roma belonged to an inferior race and should be interned or
prevented from having children in order to protect the Norwegian people from
racial degeneration. 

In 1932 the government's "Vagabond Commission" concluded its work. It had
tested the IQs of Romani children at the Mission's children's homes and
found that their average IQ was 78. According to the commission this was the
same as among "Negroes, Indians and Mexicans". The commission therefore
recommended a law "that gives access to the unfertilisation of low and
inferior individuals". 

In 1934 the law passed through parliament, with one vote against.
Sterilisation became permissible on both social and eugenic indication.
Social indication
was defined as "persons who could not nourish themselves or their offspring
through their own labour". Eugenic indication was defined as "insanity or
major physical defect that could be transferred to the offspring". 

>From the mid 1930s state conducted what today is called ethnic cleansing.
Using, not soldiers armed with guns, but doctors with knives and priests
running
children's homes, the state tried to annihilate the Roma through an attack
on their fertility. The Vagabond Mission cosmetically changed its name into
the
Norwegian Mission among the Homeless, a name it continued to use until it
was finally closed down in 1986. 

Norway, and the rest of Scandinavia, were not the only places where racist
ideas were transformed into practical politics. From 1911 to 1930 similar
laws
were passed in 33 states in the USA. From 1911 to 1950, 60,000 people were
sterilised on eugenic grounds in the USA. 

Hitler's Germany went one step further in launching its euthanasia
programme. While German bishops were protesting, many European and American
psychiatrists were applauding. 

The German occupation brought no noticeable change in Norwegian policy
towards the Roma. It is known that the Mission offered the authorities its
traveller archives. Quisling's Minister of Police, Jonas Lie, urged that
Roma should be given the same treatment as the Jews, but the war ended
before this was
implemented. 

When the war ended, and the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed to the
public, the whole world said "never again". But for Roma in Norway, it was
about
to become worse. 

Postwar Norwegian society was blooming with optimism. The ruling Labour
Party was building a welfare state and wanted to change society and its
inhabitants. Unluckily for the Roma they did not fit into this project and
the state reinforced its efforts to assimilate them. From 1934 until the
mid-1970s an
unknown number of people were sterilised or even forcibly castrated. 

The violations against the travellers committed by the state did not stop at
the sterilisation campaign. Those who opposed the assimilation process could
risk
being victims of one of the newer methods of modern psychiatry: lobotomy. 

The first lobotomy in Norway was conducted in 1941. The patient died. From
1941 to 1950, 24 per cent of lobotomy victims at one hospital in Oslo died.
Many were buried in a mass grave, marked with a stone with no names. 

One lobotomist, travelling from hospital to hospital, boasted that he could
conduct 14 lobotomies before lunch and 350 in a year. Other methods, such as
overdoses with insulin or cardiazol, which caused terrible spasms, were also
used to calm or "cure" those who ended up within the walls of Norwegian
mental
institutions. 

At the same time special laws targeting travellers were passed through
parliament in order to force them into settled lives. In 1953 travellers
were forbidden
from owning horses. 

While their parents suffered the horrors of surgery and police persecution,
the children were literally abducted from their families and placed in the
children's
homes run by the Mission. Several of these children were abused physically
and sexually. 

In the 1970s the state's policy towards travellers came under attack. In
1980 a government report evaluated all the state's measures towards the
Roma. In 1986
the last work camp for travellers, Svanviken, was closed down, and in 1988
all special legislation concerning travellers was removed from the Statute
books. 

In 1998 the Romani people in Norway were given the status of a national
minority. Yet they are still experiencing racism and discrimination.
Travellers are
commonly denied entrance to campsites and the police apprehend those who
place their caravans outside campsites. 

Social democratic Norway did not have much room for diversity and travellers
suffered as a result. The attempt to annihilate the Roma of Norway has never
been publicly admitted by the church or by the state. A very small number of
victims of lobotomy and sterilisation have been awarded compensation. 

While some observers do not understand the growth of the populist Progress
Party, part of the explanation could be the country's racist history and
Norwegian institutions' lack of will to denounce it. 

*There are at least three different groups of Roma in Norway. The biggest is
the so called tatere or, as they prefer to call themselves, travellers. 

Freedom to roam - The Roma and the EU 
by Kate Taylor 

The treatment of the Roma can be viewed as a litmus test for any humane
society. The continued vilification of the Romani people has culminated in a
catalogue of racist attacks and human rights abuses, not just in many of the
Eastern European countries in which the majority of Roma are concentrated,
but
also in the Western European countries to which Roma have fled or settled. 

The ease with which the British media and politicians have dismissed Roma
asylum-seekers as economic migrants has revealed a stark refusal to
acknowledge the entrenched prejudice and systematic attacks with which they
are faced in countries such as the Czech Republic and Slovakia. 

Such hysteria that is whipped up in Britain by The Daily Mail and The Sun,
with headlines such as "Giro Czechs", also finds itself articulated through
mainstream politicians such as Jack Straw, who last year declared, "there
has been too much tolerance for travellers". When viewed in a wider context,
the
collapse of the Eastern bloc has opened up new avenues for Roma in terms of
migration to the West. This clearly marks out a fear that is propagated by
many Western governments, that processes of European enlargement will result
in an "influx" and a "deluge" of Roma migration. 

The framework of Europe homogenising its asylum laws, as stipulated by the
1999 Amsterdam Treaty, allows for the prospect that many fear of a so-called
"Fortress Europe". It is within this context, and that of the European Union
extending its boundaries, that the treatment of the Roma must play a crucial
role. 

The 1951 Geneva Convention states that persons are entitled to refugee
status where they are forced to cross national borders because of a well
founded fear
of persecution. It is clear that many EU member states, Britain being one,
interpret this principle very narrowly when it comes to asylum-seekers of
any
origin. To date, Britain has failed to grant asylum status to any Roma
entering the country: indeed such claims are usually vetoed almost
immediately. To
accept such claims would be seen to encourage more Roma to arrive in the
country, and would also undermine the British government's support for
countries
such as the Czech Republic to join the EU. Such countries are deemed by
Britain to be "safe". The endemic discrimination faced in a country where
90% of
Romani people are unemployed, Romani children outnumber non-Roma in special
schools by 27 to one, and there is an increasing presence of far-right
skinheads who target the Roma, is overlooked. 

Indeed Britain has taken measures to try and halt what it perceives to be a
Romani "influx", despite the numbers migrating being comparable to those of
non-Roma from the same countries. In 1998 Britain reimposed visas on Slovak
citizens for this very purpose. A less overt method at halting such "waves"
was to tighten application processes, leaving asylum-seekers, often with
limited English, just five days to present their case. 

In October 1999, the Belgian government forcibly expelled all Slovak Roma
asylum-seekers who were in the country. Perpetuated by the anti-Roma
rhetoric
of mainstream politicians and the press, this act is indicative of the
sentiments of many Western European governments at the prospect of greater
Romani
migration. 

But the possibilities raised by Eastern European states joining the EU may
be particularly unpalatable for Western European governments: in theory,
Roma
hailing from Eastern Europe would then have the right to travel and work
freely within other member states. To prevent this would be to contravene EU
law. 

There remains a question over whether countries such as the Czech Republic
or Poland, both in the first round of the enlargement process, should be
allowed
to join the EU at all, and whether this should depend to some degree on
their treatment of the Roma. One would assume from the ambitions of these
countries to play a part in European integration that they would like to be
seen to observe EU law with regard to human rights. Under the "Copenhagen
Criteria" it must be shown "that the candidate country has achieved
stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human
rights and respect
for and protection of minorities" if they are to meet the conditions
stipulated for entry into the EU. But we have already seen an unwillingness
to recognise
that human rights abuses are prevalent or even exist. How far the EU will go
in judging the treatment of the Roma as a criterion for entry is debatable,
with
some rumours suggesting that they will not push the issue of Roma rights
"too far". 

While potential EU membership of countries with dreadful records on Roma
rights is a pressing issue at present, some of the most appalling human
rights
abuses against the Roma take place in countries already within the EU. In
Greece, for example, there have been numerous cases of police brutality
against
Roma including shootings and largescale evictions of Romani settlements.
After the September 1999 earthquake, the mayor of Greater Athens accused the
Roma of "stealing from the whole world". 

As a nationless minority, the Roma are symbolic in the EU enlargement
process. How the EU responds to member states that contravene human rights
stipulations will depend on how far it is willing to apply and implement
laws intended to improve the situation of minority groups. Meanwhile, the
increasingly hostile environment that Roma face in both Eastern and Western
Europe still prevails. Many are still in exodus as a result of conflicts in
Kosovo
and the Balkan regions, and face an uphill battle getting asylum claims
processed. In the current climate it must be realised that we too are not
blameless.
Continued efforts must be made to help, rather than stigmatise, those
fleeing from desperate situations within Europe. 

  TOP 

Copyright © 2001, Searchlight, 

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