THE INDEPENDENT (UK) [11/02/13]
New Neighbours of 2014, Part 1: Right-wing
politicians and media are stoking fears that Romanian Gypsies plan to
flock to Britain. But the reality is very different, the residents of
the country's worst slums tell Jerome Taylor
 |
| [SOURCE: http://www.independent.co.uk] |
A freezing wind sweeps in across the Romanian countryside. The sweet
stench of garbage catches at the back of the throat, and feral dogs
chase one another over the heaps of filth. This rubbish dump, for
Claudia Greta and her family, is home, her house a ramshackle
single-storey shack. Claudia, 40, is one of more than 1,500 Roma Gypsies
who live in a sprawling, fetid encampment on a landfill site outside
Romania's second-largest city Cluj-Napoca. The residents of Pata Rat –
half of them are children – have been forcibly moved there over the past
15 years. Claudia opens the shack door to a room little bigger than a
caravan and sighs: "Look where we live. We live on top of garbage."
Many Romanians have been perplexed by the British Government's
determination to dissuade them from coming to the UK. Next year, the
quotas which let EU countries limit the number of Bulgarian and Romanian
migrants crossing their borders will be lifted – allowing 29 million
people free travel and working rights across Europe. But Britain wants
to deter them from crossing the Channel.
Suspicions have been
raised in Bucharest and Sofia that what the UK Government really fears –
but dares not say publicly – is the mass migration of Roma, Europe's
most marginalised and maligned minority. That, in turn, has created
further animosity towards the Roma, with other Romanians and Bulgarians
blaming those communities for tarnishing their country's image.
For
the garbage-dump Roma people of Pata Rat, there's little reason to feel
loyalty to their homeland. Many have been forcibly moved there by the
local authorities. In the most recent eviction, two years ago, nearly
400 Roma were given two days' notice to move out of houses where
families had been living without conflict for generations. The European
Roma Rights Centre is fighting a
court battle to have their evictions quashed. "For 20 years we lived in
real homes in the centre of town," says Claudia. "We paid rent, we paid
electricity, we didn't steal anything. We had jobs and we found work.
Our kids went to school, they went to internet cafés or down to the
library. Now look where we live. We live on top of garbage. Where we are
now, we can't do anything."
Claudia is adamant that no matter how badly treated her family is, she will stay in Romania.
"If
we are not even accepted in our own country, what is the chance
somewhere else will accept us?" she asks. "My children are here, my
mother is here. This is where I was born. All we want is to be able to
live and work. We want to stay in Romania."
It is a testament to
how strongly she feels that, despite the discrimination, Romania is
still her homeland. But others are thinking about leaving. Her sister
Elena, who lives up the road in a similar-sized room that sleeps eight
of her family, is willing to look outside Romania's borders.
"If I
could provide a better life and condition for my children, I would
think about getting away," she admits. "If there was a way to escape
this discrimination, then of course I would go. But no one wants to
leave."
She adds: "I have thought about political asylum in the
UK. Some people from Spain, Brazil and Great Britain promised to help
after the eviction. But no one did anything."
The situation in
this landfill slum is just one example of the multiple persecutions Roma
face across much of Eastern, Central and Southern Europe. And it is a
form of oppression that is beginning to have a direct impact in Britain.
Over the past four years, increasing numbers of Roma have appeared in
Western European cities, from Berlin to Paris, Stockholm and London.
Romania and Bulgaria have the largest Roma populations. No one knows how
many of the estimated 90,000 Romanians in Britain are Roma, but it is a
fraction of the one million Gypsies who live in France and Germany. Yet
this trickle towards Britain could become a torrent come 2014, when the
two nations are given full movement rights.
The small but steady
increase of Roma arrivals in Western Europe has already led to a
plethora of scare stories from populist media which portray them as
endemically criminal communities thriving on begging networks and
illegal settlements. Last year, a Swiss magazine ran a cover story about
Roma arrivals under the headline: "They come. They Steal. They go." The
cover featured a picture of a young Roma boy holding a gun. It later
turned out to be a toy.
While some Roma are involved in crime (or,
more often than not, forcibly trafficked into crime networks by
organised syndicates, or pushed there by poverty), the reports rarely
stop to ask why so many people are on the move. The simple answer is
that Europe's Roma are trying to escape a new wave of oppression that
has swept across Eastern, Central and Southern Europe. Unlike those who
migrate for economic reasons, many Roma say they are seizing the
opportunity to find a home without harassment. Those who fight for Roma
rights make the argument that those who head to the West are as much
political refugees as they are economic ones.
Persecution of Roma,
who trace their lineage back to northern India but have lived in Europe
for more than 1,500 years, is well documented. Alongside Jews, gays and
the disabled, they were targeted by the Nazis for extermination. But
while European views on Judaism, homosexuality and disability have come
on in leaps and bounds in the past six decades, the attitude towards the
Roma still drips with prejudice.
Nowhere is this more visible
than in those nations that are supposedly traditional Roma homelands,
where for centuries they were historically viewed as slaves for the
region's landed aristocracies. All across Central and Eastern Europe
today, discrimination against Gypsy communities is virulent and rising.
The global economic crash hit the region hard and the Roma are an easy
target.
Far-right groups are resurgent in Hungary, Bulgaria and
the Czech Republic, with attacks on Roma villagers now commonplace. Last
summer an off-duty policeman in Slovakia went on the rampage, killing
three people from a Gypsy community.
In Romania the far right has
been kept in check, but not for altruistic reasons. "There isn't really
much need for extreme-right groups because you find racism and
stereotyping in all the mainstream parties," explains Marian Mandache,
head of Romani Criss, a Bucharest-based group that campaigns for Roma
rights. "Roma face hardship, exclusion and discrimination in almost all
fields of public life."
Last month, a small far-right group in
western Romania proposed paying €300 (£254) to any Roma woman who came
forward to be sterilised. Unusually, prosecutors opened a case against
the group under the country's little-used hate crime laws. But earlier
this week, the idea of forced sterilisations was lent a veneer of
mainstream acceptability when the head of the National Liberal Party's
youth wing, Rares Buglea, voiced his support for the idea on Facebook.
In Baia Mare, a mining town in Romania's impoverished north, the mayor
has been building walls around Roma areas – to the delight of the other
residents.
Back in the rubbish-dump of Pata Rat, Romeo Greta Petra
says he has plans to leave the squalor and discrimination behind him.
Standing next to a single bathroom which serves 40 people, he declares
that his family has simply had enough. "Just look at the filth in which
they threw us," he says, sucking deeply on a rolled-up cigarette. "Come
summer, we're going to leave. Everyone here just thinks we're garbage.
If I could have the possibility, I would go with my whole family."
Pressed
for further details about where he might head, he becomes more
circumspect. But he explains that if his whole family can't leave, then
he will pin his hopes on his eldest son, who is on the verge of
finishing high school. "It's difficult to get a job at the best of
times, but for Roma it is even harder," he says. "Every parent just
wants what is best for their children. That's normal. I want him to go
abroad, at least until he is 30. He can go abroad and save some money.
Then he can come back to build a house."
In Romania's sprawling
capital, the situation for Roma is equally grim. Bucharest has never
been one of Europe's prettiest cities and it is still renowned for
swathes of dilapidated Soviet-style apartment blocks. Roma tend to be
concentrated in the worst suburbs, such as Ferentari and Plumbuita,
where sewerage and electricity are virtually non-existent.
Most
families tap illegally into the local energy supply, while in Plumbuita,
two miles from Bucharest's commercial centre, asphalt highways give way
to muddy tracks fringed by shacks with corrugated-iron roofs.
Local
police accuse Roma groups of being behind much of the crime in
Bucharest, a city that still has a significantly lower criminality rate
than most Western European capitals. Activists say that while some Roma
are pushed towards opportunistic crimes because of the poverty they live
in, the majority try to get on with their lives. But the prejudices
leave them acutely vulnerable to abuse from the authorities.
Over
the past 10 years, Romani Criss has documented 50 instances in which
Roma people have been killed or attacked in police-related incidents.
But despite the filing of multiple criminal complaints, no police
officer has yet been convicted of killing a Roma. In the past eight
months alone, there have been three instances where Roma have been shot
and killed by police.
Daniel Radu, a 22-year-old father of one,
was killed after a police chase last June. His family have never spoken
to the media before. But standing around a single electric heater in
their tumbledown cottage in Tei, north Bucharest, they tell The
Independent what happened.
According to his mother, Garofitsa,
Daniel and a friend had been stealing materials from an abandoned
building last June to construct a new roof on the family home. While
driving back through town on a moped, they encountered a police car and
made a break for it. Both Daniel and his friend jumped from a bridge
into a lake that runs behind Tei.
While the two men were stranded
in the lake, police fired three shots at them. The third hit Daniel
above the eye, killing him instantly. "They could have waited for him to
get out of the lake but instead they shot him," his mother explains.
"He was no danger to anyone. If he was guilty of a crime, they should
have put him in prison, not killed him."
The police have yet to
comment publicly on the shooting and say they will not do so until the
results of an ongoing investigation are revealed. Romani Criss is
helping the family pay for legal representation."We are worried we won't
get justice," says Daniel's older brother, Florea. "But that is all we
want, justice."
All across the neighbourhood of Tei, locals have
stories of police brutality. This week Romani Criss researchers logged
an allegation that a man was hospitalised after a beating in a police
station. Ionut Covataru, 17, lifts his shirt to reveal a vivid scar from
an operation to drain blood from his lungs. His family have filed a
complaint and are waiting to hear from prosecutors.
Analysts
believe that the wider EU needs to take a much more active role in
persuading the latest members of its expanding community to integrate
Roma – and make them feel like there is something to stay for. If they
don't, then Roma will inevitably seize the opportunity to head west.
Roma: the history of a persecuted people
Roma
originate from India and by the 8th century had begun their long trek
to Europe, via Mesopotamia and the near-east. They were probably living
in Greece by 1200. They speak a language closely related to Sanskrit.
By
the early 16th century they had reached most parts of Europe, including
England and Scotland. Many were initially welcomed for their skills as
craftsmen or as Christian pilgrims or penitents but from about 1500
attitudes changed.
Persecution became commonplace across Europe.
In
Saxony, "gypsy hunts" were treated as public entertainment. In Prussia
in 1725 King Friedrich Wilhelm I gave permission for all adult gypsies
to be hanged without trial. Up to 500,000 Roma are believed to have been
murdered during the Holocaust in Nazi concentration camps, pictured.
From the 1970s until 1990 there was a programme of enforced
sterilisation of Roma women by doctors in Czechoslovakia.
An
estimated 400,000 live in ghettoes in Bulgaria. In 2009 in Ostrovany,
Slovakia, a two-metre wall was erected with public money to cordon off
the Roma from the rest of the town. Similar measures were adopted in
Michalovce, Lomnika, Trebišov and Prešov.
An estimated 7 million to 8.5 million Roma live in Europe, with 90,000 to 120,000 estimated to be in the UK.
No comments:
Post a Comment