Add Canada to the list of nations that, to varying degrees, make pariahs of Roma
FROM THE TORONTO STAR
September 13, 2009
Rosie DiManno
Columnist
PRAGUE–The music is mournful, a painfully slow lament that evokes longing and loss.
There are slides – glissandi – between chords that pluck at the heartstrings as well, as if all of a people's suffering can be encapsulated in the notes of a song.
In a smoky cabaret, the audience is appreciative, even if the lyrics aren't understood.
But it has always been thus: The gypsy-entertainer, bohemian and romanticized; minstrels for their supper, valued for talents with the violin, the guitar, the lute, pan-pipes and castanets.
Perhaps, as musicians of distinct skills, they might even gain easier work-visa access to Canada. Why not? It worked for strippers. And it's a tactic that could get Roma around entry restrictions recently imposed anew against Czechs, a spate of asylum-seeking gypsies the clear target.
"The Canadian environment is extremely correct," observes Prague sociologist and researcher Ivan Gabal, with wry emphasis.
The view here is that, if there was chicanery afoot – with many of those near-3,000 refugee claimants over two years misrepresenting their purported persecution – it was a two-way con: Agents for Canadian employers luring cheap labour from among Czech Roma eager to migrate.
"It's well-organized," says Gabal, author of an exhaustive report on the social exclusion of Roma, commissioned by the Czech government. "In a way, it's human trafficking. But both sides, Canada and the Czech Republic, are extremely politically passive about blaming each other."
In a chic Prague entertainment district, gypsy performers are thick on the ground, whether serenading diners in expensive restaurants or rocking young fans in noisy clubs. Many are gypsies-for-display, even if they are the genuine article; exotic, admired and respected for their artistry, but not necessarily someone you'd want for a neighbour – as, indeed, nine out of 10 Czechs surveyed in one poll cited by Amnesty International admitted.
A truer representation of gypsy life can be found in gritty Prague enclaves such as Zizkov and Smichov. These are not so colourful a postcard tableau: crumbling tenement buildings, wretched flats, unemployed youth loitering, exhausted women, vacant-eyed men.
And music, too, though nobody is paying to hear it there.
There was a time, when gypsies were forbidden to play music for their own pleasure. Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, wife of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I, issued rules in the 18th century: "They shall be permitted to amuse themselves with music, or other things, only when there is no field work for them to do."
That was almost a benign proscription. Vlad the Impaler tossed gypsy slaves into boiling cauldrons of oil. In Hungary, "gypsy hunts" were a common and popular sport. Henry VIII made transporting gypsies to England illegal, the punishment for such passengers the noose. In this very city, Joseph I issued an edict in 1710 that all adult Roma men be hanged without trial, boys and women mutilated.
And, of course, Hitler exterminated perhaps half a million of them — nobody knows the number for sure — in what Roma call O Porraimos, the Great Devouring.
But no gypsies were summoned to testify at the Nuremberg Trials.
Over the centuries, they've been blamed for the plague, cannibalism, baby-stealing, witchcraft, natural disasters, spies and traitors to Christian countries.
Roma – or Romany or Rom – all the terms are acceptable, including "gypsy," which many use to describe themselves, even though North Americans (wrongly) consider that word a pejorative.
They are the eternal pariahs, ill-understood, demonized, endlessly and unspeakably persecuted, seen as asocial, a foreign body within the national politic; shunted into ghettoes and encampments when not outright expelled.
And still they have the spirit to make wonderful music, from sad ballads to whirlwind dances to something called Nu Gypsy Sound: gypsy jazz, gypsy rap, gypsy hip-hop. These are the arts they've never lost over a millennia of restless nomadic wanderings: Music, fortune-telling, animal-training, metalwork, tinkering and blacksmithing. Also, as even the NGOs that have created an industry out of serving their needs will admit: thievery and begging.
Criminality isn't innate, despite the racist view of gypsies throughout Europe.
The judgment that most of those Roma who flooded into Canada over the past two years, seeking asylum, were actually fleeing poverty rather than persecution – and covetous of Canadian welfare – prompted Ottawa to re-impose visa requirements in July.
Just as in Canada, however, crime is more often an underclass response to poverty and social exclusion. In the Czech Republic, unemployment among Roma is a staggering 70 per cent. They live in ghastly housing, shunted to the outskirts of town, most especially since the post-communist transformation of Czech society, herded into decrepit estates through a council flat allocation system.
If some gypsies are thieves and pickpockets, more substantial crime is being committed against them, provoked by resurgent fascism and marauding skinheads, the kind of louts who march through the streets chanting: "Gypsies to the gas chambers!"
The European Roma Rights Center in Budapest says 35 gypsies have been killed in the Czech Republic alone since 1989.
All of this is also well-known to Canadian authorities, with two reports released by the Immigration and Refugee Board after a fact-finding mission in May – homes firebombed, Roma turned away from restaurants and refused housing, how gypsies rarely travel by train for fear of being intimidated and attacked, the consensus among Czechs that Roma are scroungers who prefer an idle "lifestyle." Recently, a video prepared for the extremist right-wing National Party was broadcast on Czech TV, calling for "the final solution" to the Roma "question."
Only in 1991 did the Czech government formally cease sterilizing gypsy women, though critics allege the practice continued for more than a decade, via non-informed consent.
Theirs is a story of continuous struggle and persecution, their entry into Europe through Persia and Armenia a mysterious diaspora that historians have yet to comprehend.
Legend has it that a Persian shah asked an Indian king to send him 10,000 luri – musicians – for distribution throughout his empire. What's accepted as fact is that the ethnic nomads migrated from Rajasthan in northern India around 1000 AD. The term "gypsy" comes from the erroneous belief that they originated in Egypt.
Whatever their genesis, there is no single Roma culture anymore, not even a common Roma language. The original tongue, related to Sanskrit, has splintered into dozens of dialects. Although variously segregated or forced into assimilation, they largely adapted into the dominant culture and religion of wherever they ended up – when they were permitted. Just as often, they were enslaved and ostracized, subjected to pogroms and genocide simply for being what they were, dark-skinned and perceived as alien, inferior, parasitic.
There are an estimated 6 million Roma now living throughout Europe. It was only in 1998 that the governor of New Jersey repealed that state's anti-Roma law.
Many have tried to integrate, others stick to themselves, pre-emptively shunning rather than being shunned. Some do, in fact, keep their children out of school but this might be because they see no profit in education, can't even afford to buy their kids shoes.
Gabal, the sociologist, likens gypsies to North American native Indians more than oppressed blacks, though Roma were certainly enslaved, abolition of Romani slavery – Slobuzenja – occurring in the Baltic states only in 1856.
In former Czechoslovakia, as in all communist bloc countries, the Roma were forcibly assimilated, nomadism banished. Only recently, however, has the Czech Republic turned serious attention to effective Roma integration, largely at the insistence of the European Economic Community, with the Court of Human Rights repeatedly citing discriminatory violations. The Czech Republic is the only EU member with no anti-discrimination laws on the books.
"It was a shock, even for me," says Gabal, who in March 2008 tabled the country's first in-depth study on Social Inclusion in Roma Localities, which identified 333 such communities. "This is the first picture we had of how it actually looks, the first time we've have the courage to face the situation. You cannot run proper policies being stupid and uninformed."
While post-Communist Czech society has embraced a free-market economy, with greatly improved lifestyles, "Roma have simply not caught up to everybody else," says Gabal. "They've fallen further behind. There's a whole new generation born and brought up in an environment that offers none of the protections Roma used to have under the old system. These are people living outside the welfare structure.
"It is a lifestyle of social destruction with no chance of upward mobility."
Even the widely welcomed abolition of compulsory military service deprived Roma of a ticket out of social isolation. "At least, with military service, boys were able to leave these communities, live without their families, learn a skill," notes Gabal.
His report makes a slew of recommendations, some of which are already being implemented. These include hiring Roma teacher's assistants for the classroom – "demonstrating that even a Roma can obtain a reputable job and that education is meaningful," as stated in the report – and minority liaison officers in policing.
Certainly there's money to implement all the integration efforts. Europe is four years into a "Decade of Roma Inclusion," launched when governments with large gypsy populations (Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic) agreed to close the gap in education, employ, health and housing, with $17 billion available from an EU social fund.
But it will be a long and incremental process, with no guarantees of success. Meanwhile, such funding has further inflamed hostility among Europe's non-Roma population, many seeing it as financial pandering for the inherently indolent. Polls repeatedly show mainstream society as blaming the Roma for their situation, citing their purported aversion to education, low motivation to work and unwillingness to take responsibility for themselves.
Given these prevalent attitudes, it is understandable that, in poignant Roma tradition, the birth of every child is heralded as a sad event – a promise of poverty and misery to come.
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