Diplomatic License for Racism?

international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Wednesday May 12, 2004 18:13 by Valeriu Nicolae - European Roma Information Office, Brussels

EU Ambassador advocates forced separation of Romani children from their parents to make them valuable for economic growth.

“It may sound simplistic, but it is, I think in the root of the cause that we have to strengthen the education and re-organise the educational system in a way that we will have to start to, I’ll say it in quotation marks, force Roma children to stay in boarding schools from Monday morning until Friday afternoon, where they will be subjected to the system of values which is dominant (“vigerend”) in our society.

Question: Do Roma accept that, taking their children away from their families?

Answer: “I don’t think that they will accept it so easily. And after all we live here in a democracy, so I don’t think you can force it, but you can try to let it evolve more smoothly through financial considerations.”

“You can imagine that families get money - the amount will need to be defined later - in order to make them sent their children to school. But the generation that will be educated then and raised in the same time, will fit better in the dominant society, they will be able to cooperate truly productively to the growth of the economy.”

This is almost surreal as these statements were made by the EU Commission’s Ambassador to Slovakia Mr. Eric van der Linden during a TV interview.

Advocating the forced separation of children from their parents in order for them to be “educated” according to the ”system of values of the dominant society” to whose wealth they should later contribute in a more productive way is not a new idea. Policies of forced assimilation via the separation of Romani children from their parents were practiced by Empress Maria-Theresa from Austria and practiced in Switzerland until the beginning of the 1970s. In the same way as the suggestion made by the EU ambassador these policies aimed to eradicate Romani culture and identity.

The “dominant societies” were also promoting at different times in their history “values” which are on one hand the bases of their wealth, but on the other hand of the deprivation and almost annihilation of other societies and cultures such as those in Surinam and Indonesia, many in Africa, but also in Europe.

Europe is still unable to deal with its colonial and genocidal past and continues to imagine its history and prosperity as being glorious and the result of its hard working population, whereas much of it was based on the looting and often, with the same occasions, whipping out of entire civilisations. Roma as the European latecomers have repeatedly been the targets of such attempts and paternalistic talks about the need to be “educated’ are considered “normal”.

There is much to be done within the Roma communities, but as the Ambassador's blunt statements prove even more needs to be done at the level of the "dominant" society. Diplomats are supposed to be the masters of language and if this is the case, then is hard not to think that the abject poverty of over the Roma - 80 per cent living below the subsistence level in the CEE according to the UNDP - is if not wanted, then at least accepted benevolently. Maybe, one day will be bad enough to make bribed assimilation “affordable” for most of the Roma parents as the Ambassadors wishes.

It is also hard not to imagine that the Slovak government was confident that it would benefit of some complacency on the side of the EU represented by Mr Van der Linden, when it turned police and army against a desperate population of mainly Roma in February this year.

The European Commission has been talking much about equal opportunities and inclusion, but these do not simply come with the removal of borders. A removal of the EU Ambassador to Slovakia from his post, however, would be much helpful and a clear sign, that the Commission is actually committed to the values it is promoting outside the world.

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