The Roma Community of the CEEC

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Atchoum and myself have a keen interest in travelling around Central and Eastern Europe and we thought it would be a good idea to dispel some of the common misconceptions of the Romani people such as “you cant trust or rely on gypsies”; “all gypsies are lazy and irresponsible” and “all gypsies are thieves” to help fellow Tpunker’s have a great experience of travelling around this area.

From a personal perspective I have lived in Hungary (Magyaroszág) for 4 months as part of an academic exchange plan. I have been working on my final year dissertation “ Development and empowerment of Romani women in Hungary” for the past 8 months and have gained valuable ethnographic and academic research. From my studies, as well as personal experiences I have learned that the Rom community in Central Europe is plentiful…plentiful in numbers…plentiful in poverty…plentiful in life. Many people believe that the Roma people are a lazy, uneducated group…this is not true! I have had the pleasure of becoming great friends with a Roma woman who is training to be a neuroscientist whose Roma friends include psychologists, lecturers and doctors etc. The Roma community are very diverse being the most disadvantaged of all ethnic minority groups living in this area, as well as suffering from the most extreme human rights abuses such as “coercive sterilisation of Romani women in the Czech Republic”.

Because of the xenophobic and racist perspective of many tabloid newspapers in Europe, harsh stereotypes have been created aimed at increasing the fears of the general public and travellers alike. The illusory correlation between Roma ethnicity and delinquency has been frequently implied in criminal reports/statistics, however, for many Roma because of prejudiced police members these are often false accusations and criminal charges. Police brutality against the Roma, particularly in countries such as Macedonia are not unheard of. Romani people have suffered greatly throughout Europe’s history. They are a minority group which can it can be suggested are “forgotten victims of the holocaust”

I would like to tell you about a conversation that I had on a recent trip to Kaposvár. I had gone along on a training session run by an NGO to a school to talk about multicultural education. The teachers were all very surprised that I was there, being that I was English. Through out the training session I had to sit there and listen while a female teacher explained to us that as a drama teacher she was shocked by some of the Romani children’s attitude to a class exercise. This class exercise was asking the children through role - play what they would be doing when they were older. For the girls they replied through drama “I will be at home looking after the children” and the boys “ I will be in prison or I will be a drunk”. For someone such as myself from a working – class western society I find this heart breaking. I can remember as a child the games I used to play, pretending to be a teacher, or a vet.

If anyone else has any more positive views about the Roma minority or questions feel free to post your comments….