Time for Antiziganism to move along?
international |
eu |
opinion/analysis 
Saturday August 21, 2010 00:26
by iosaf
Integration would be cheaper than Persecution on the long haul..,
Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential decree ordering the expulsion of Roma gypsies from the French state is currently being carried out. It marks another milestone on an age old road of antiziganism (the hostility, prejudice or racism directed at the Roma / Romani people, also known gypsies or Romanian gypsies. An age old road tread in Europe which has not yet brought them early 20th century literacy rates. An age old road which has seen them pass & passed through camps, squatted sites, the Holocaust, forced sterilization & in this age of Facebook Ryanair globalisation their prettiest children have become the fodder for 21st century sexual slavery.
Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential decree ordering the expulsion of Roma gypsies from the French state is currently being carried out. It marks another milestone on an age old road of antiziganism (the hostility, prejudice or racism directed at the Roma / Romani people, also known gypsies or Romanian gypsies. An age old road tread in Europe which has not yet brought them early 20th century literacy rates. An age old road which has seen them pass & passed through camps, squatted sites, the Holocaust, forced sterilization & in this age of Facebook Ryanair globalisation their prettiest children have become the fodder for 21st century sexual slavery.
In the case of Romani gypsies, it is neither prescient nor retrocognitive to rhetorically ask
“how did they come to this place?”
I'll leave off the big words and take it for given that most readers could give a fair guess to how horridly shitty it is now and it seems has always been, to be born into the Romani gypsy nation. I'll also make it clear that I like many have sighed and put my eyes to heaven, groaned and shrugged & like we all have done “walked on upon my way” past a begging hand. I've clutched my mobile on a terrace café in my paw at the sight of kids who just aren't pretty enough to attract a malevolant eye. I've heard fellow passengers, many of whom jumped their fare, whine that if only these people & those people would busk, entertain us or not chant their lines in a stilted Romanian dialect approximately approaching Spanish or Italian they'd give a damn & a coin. After all is said and done about nature and nurture : I'm no saint.
Recently, perhaps too recently if I can be forlorn and self-piteous without touching either contrition or its bed-fellow the braggart, “for my own good” (coz I was being rowdy & bad in the worse cultural ambassador sense of the Irish) [berserk in other words] I found myself in the company of a greedy thief and a proactive beggar in a police holding cell in my home city of Barcelona. The greedy thief was the kind of lad who hits wanderly wagon tourists across the back of their heads & runs off like Usain Bolt to seperate the goodies of cash & cameras from the suntan lotion, passport & family photo album. The proactive beggar was a kid whose age the authorities couldn't ascertain and beyond establishing that his origin was Romania & he “looked the gypsy way” so no more outreach or special treatment was he going to get. Not even an antiseptic wipe or a short dash of milky coffee and reassuring paliative chit chat “it will all be over soon” trip like me or as it happened a solitary cell and hit of methedone for the greedy thief.
So me, myself and I, who are no saints, were banged up for the night with two fcked up fckers. Rub a dub dub. Was I not frightened does the attentive reader inquire....?!?!? No, I wasn't. Not because to be honest, gypsies don't terrify me & considering what kind of people do, they are as polar opposed as could be, but rather because the terror I saw in the Roma's face ; of me, myself, I (you know the saints), Usain Bolt the Olympic sprint winner, the coffee trolly lady, the cops, the doctor the whole shebang administration was such that I left that place wishing I could put him and his emaciated bones over my shoulder & adopt him. Brangelina style.
But we're not Brangelina.
either on the piggy's back kind of economic fiscal security side or the saintly doing our family/tribal bit to give everyone a step up in life.
No amount of civilisation, celtic tiger here or EU parity of income & opportunity there is : going to make all us saints or into the kind of people who see that integration of this nation of a mere paltry few million is in the long term “the right thing to do”..................................................................... ¿is it?
So Sarkozy sends them back. & no doubt quite a few of them will boomerang back at him or go on walking down that road wherever it takes them. I hope for his sake and all the fans of the cult movie Banlieu 13 series that only the nicest ones come boomeranging back at him.
But for whichever or "these / those people" stay where they're put or whoever of "those / these people" go on with where they're shunted to..........................It will be familiar enough to them.
They won't be welcome. They were never welcome. We've had the music played to us by Liszt and Bartok for the classically minded and the jazz or flamenco fusions for the people who like to dance in their concert venues. We never cared whether or not these or those people achieved literacy so we can't blame ourselves for not listing their authors or poets.
et cetera....
So before (& if) you continue reading the summary below (mostly culled from either the rights groups for these / those people or their wikipedia pages,let's go back to the prescient and retrocognitive "long word thing" & ask how the Roma got to this place.................................... hence.................................whither....................................
Are These or Those the people who killed Jesus? [ + peace be upon him ]
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The Irish people who loved the Brad Pitt half of Brangelina as he charmingly portrayed a bare knuckle boxer from the Irish traveller or gypsy community without speaking a word of Shelta in the move “Snatch” of course have had quite a few right goes at the Roma since a mere few thousand of them turned up around the island like so many other nomadic peoples before simply moving further to the fringes of the continent from their stronger persecutors.
In June 2009, having had their windows broken and deaths threats made against them, twenty Romanian Romani families were forced from their homes in the Lisburn Road, Belfast, in Northern Ireland. Up to 115 people, including women and children, were forced to seek refuge in a local church hall after being attacked. They were later moved by the authorities to a safer location. An anti-racist rally in the city on 15 June to support Romani rights was attacked by youths chanting neo-Nazi slogans. The attacks were condemned by Amnesty International and political leaders from both the Unionist and Nationalist traditions in Northern Ireland. Following the arrest of three local youths in relation to the attacks, the church where the Romanies had been given shelter was badly vandalised. Using 'emergency funds', Northern Ireland authorities assisted most of the victims to return to Romania.
Meanwhile in the Eire state in 2009 one of the photographs accompanying this movie was taken (I'll give you a clue as to which - Borat aint in it)
February 2010 a Facebook group titled “I hate Romanian gypsies” had been started for an Irish membership and attracted thousands of members and hundreds of vile racist comments before finally that company took down the page & barred the person who had originally posted it.
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In 2007 and 2008, following a murder of a woman in Rome at the hands of a young man from a local Romani encampment, the Italian government started a crackdown on illegal Roma and Sinti campsites in the country. The Italian government declared that Italy's Romani population represented a national security risk & action was required to address the emergenza nomadi (gypsy emergency).Specifically, officials in the Italian government accused the Romanies of being responsible for rising crime rates in urban areas. Got that? Not the mafia. Not poverty. Gypsies. Jsut like Tintin's “the Emerald of Castefiorte” the gypsies got the blame.In May 2008 Romani camps in Naples were attacked and set on fire by local residents & real live little gypsy kids got killed....for real... not like the Brad Pitt movie where the gypsies ma's wasn't really dead -
it was all pretend .:. & as you dear reader ought know well .:. any pretence is always motivated
slight of hand as any conjuror amateur or professional knows is distraction & deception motivated to.
entertain party guests, pay the rent, balance the books or win elections
The European Centre for Antiziganism Research, or ECAR, is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to combatting Antiziganism, or prejudice against Romani people, also known as Gypsies. ECAR gained headlines worldwide when it filed a complaint to German prosecutors against the movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan for defamation and inciting violence against the Romani people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Center_for_Antizi...earch
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[.............."The European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) is an international public interest law organisation working to combat anti-Romani racism and human rights abuse of Roma through strategic litigation, research and policy development, advocacy and human rights education. Since its establishment in 1996, the ERRC has endeavoured to provide Roma with the tools necessary to combat discrimination and achieve equal access to justice, education, housing, health care and public services. The ERRC has consultative status with the Council of Europe, as well as with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations...............]
http://www.errc.org/
Get with the Program & bring this stuff home & think about the potential of this tiny European nomadic nation
The ERRC’s strategic priorities for 2010 – 2012 include:
* Violence against Roma and hate speech
* Education
* Housing
* Women’s and children’s rights
* Movement and migration
* Disaggregated data collection
SPOTLIGHT ON FRANCE: Targeted Evictions and Deportations of Roma
http://www.errc.org/cikk.php?cikk=3619
As of Thursday 19th August 2010, A special section of their website contains updated information and links related to the anti-Romani and anti-Traveller measures conducted by the French Government since President Sarkozy’s 28 July announcement. Media inquires and other requests should be directed to: sinan.gokcen@errc.org (+36.30.500.1324).
ERRC Actions
19 August: ERRC and Romanian organisations Romani Criss and Civic Alliance of Roma in Romania prepare to meet Roma returned by French government to Bucharest and Timisoara airports.
17 August: ERRC expresses concern that French and other policies which denigrate people because of their ethnic background frequently lead to violence against them.
3 August: ERRC refutes Sarkozy’s claim that Roma are a public security threat.
2-4 August: ERRC conducts mission to France in follow-up to President Sarkozy’s discriminatory plans.
29 July: ERRC sends letter urging French President to halt mass eviction and expulsion plans for Roma and Travellers.
28 July: French President announces targeted evictions and expulsions of Roma and Travellers.
Selected Media Coverage
http://www.errc.org/cikk.php?cikk=3619
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Roma Rights Network
[......"Despite being Europe’s largest and fastest growing minority, the Roma (pejoratively known as Gypsies) have been and continue to be misrepresented, mythologized, scapegoated and persecuted across the continent, and around the world. The Roma Rights Network wants to bring attention to plight of the Roma and spread the truth about these culturally rich, diverse, and resilient people....."]
http://www.romarights.net/v2/
These / Those nice people at RRN have the picture of the antiziganst attack in Ireland on their home page doing untold damage (perhaps I cast no aspersions) to the reputation of the Irish people in Europe of further afield as beyond Brangelina, "in the name of Father", Angela's Ashes, Trocaire boxes, Bob Geldof et cetera...... gach aít eile...... But they also do a map of European Roma communities offering some more information from state to state on populations and extent of persecution.
http://www.romarights.net/v2/country-profiles/
For those readers who only use GSP or never leave their homes, a "MAP", is a kind of semiotic communication tool which one doesn't really need to be literate in the average 1930's European sense to understand. Even if indeed both the Irish Free state and Eire state lagged behind the mean average of European readin' & writin' back then & left the island in droves to seek their fortunes where if one ( & only one ) miscreant of their saintly scholarly nation got into trouble : they at least knew they weren't getting evicted wholescale out of Kilburn. oh they must have been useful enough to intergrate in some way
http://www.romarights.net/v2/country-profiles/
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International Commercial & State Media coverage of Sarkozy's banlieu 13 decree :
Wall Street Journal: France Prepares to Deport Foreign Gypsies (18 August 2010)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703824304....html
AOL News: Sarkozy's Roma Crackdown Likened to WWII Roundups (17 August 2010)
http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/french-president-n...97244
Inter Press Service: Citizen Rights Don't Apply to Roma (7 August 2010)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52415
Deutsche Welle, Inside Europe: European governments cracking down on Roma (5 August 2010)
http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_single_mediaplayer/....html
Al Jazeera, Riz Khan: Expelling the Roma (3 August 2010)
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Wikipedia resources :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiziganism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Antiziganism#Modern...anism
