International Roma Day: 8 April 2021
Geneva: International Roma Day was born in 1990 in Serock, Poland, the site of the fourth World Romani Congress, to celebrate Romani culture and raise awareness of the issues facing Romani people.
Genetic and linguistic evidence suggest that the Romani originated from the northern Indian subcontinent and share the basic lexicon with Hindi and Punjabi, and many phonetic features with Marwari, while its grammar is closest to Bengali. Genetic evidence validates their migration from India. In fact in February 2016, during the International Roma Conference, then Indian Minister of External Affairs, late Sushma Swaraj had described Romanis as children of India, and the conference had ended with a recommendation to the Indian government to recognize the Roma community as a part of the Indian diaspora.
Traditionally nomadic itinerants, these Indo-Aryan people live mostly in Europe and in the Americas and widely referred to as Gypsies, which some Romanis consider as pejorative.
During World War II, the Nazis had proceeded on a planned genocide of the Romani and marked them for extermination. In Nazi puppet state, Croatia, the Croatian fascist organization Ustaša had killed almost the entire Roma population of 25,000. Czechoslovakia labeled Romanis as a “socially degraded stratum”, and Romani women were sterilized as part of a state policy to reduce their population – a practice that continued from 1945 to 2004 in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Even now, the rise of hate speech disproportionally targeting Roma and Sinti (a subgroup of Romani people mostly found in Germany and Austria) in social media demonstrates the urgent need for greater focus and measures to control those forms of online hate speech which violate international human rights obligations and can lead to violence against Sinti, Roma and other minorities.
Online hate begets offline violence, and unfortunately Roma have experienced physical attacks linked to the vitriol and scapegoating increasingly aimed at them because of hate, bigotry and intolerance towards minorities which has become almost normalised, and even politicised in some countries. “As my 2020 report on hate speech, social media and minorities warned, inflammatory speech online can lead to violent acts against minorities, as has been seen in incidents in Europe where far-right groups hatred against Roma expressed on social media led to violence and killings,” the UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Fernand de Varennes, who is Extraordinary Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Pretoria in South Africa, said in a statement to mark International Roma Day.
This year, the Roma minority celebrate 50 years since the first World Romani Congress in 1971 which was held near London, as a forum to discuss issues relating to Roma people around the world. It was seen as a significant push for unity by the minority and an attempt to build a common ethnic identity. Among the goals of that meeting were improvements in civil rights and education, preservation of the Roma culture and recognition of them a national minority of Indian native origin.
“While the anniversary may be a cause for celebration…, not much seems to have changed since last year when we reflected on the prevalence of hate speech against minorities, in particular Roma, both online and in mainstream media which included scapegoating of Roma for the spread of the Covid virus. Public authorities who not only condoned but actively took part in such vitriol could contribute to threats to public health and incite unnecessary and future harm,” Varennes said.
Given the situation, he urged States prioritise the strengthening of measures to combat prejudice, hate speech and discrimination of Roma together with ways to effectively implement and monitor such measures.
“I would also invite States, civil society organisations and Roma minorities from all regions of the world to participate in this year’s regional fora which focus on minorities and the prevention of conflict and which can be triggered as a result of hate speech,” he said.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres says the troubled human rights situation of Roma worldwide has long been a matter of serious concern to the United Nations. He assures that the United Nations is strongly committed to working together with Roma civil society and other partners in strengthening the protection of human rights and freedoms. “We stand with all Roma who stand up to combat multiple forms of discrimination, including stereotyping and hate speech. We will continue to speak out against anti-Gypsyism and support efforts to secure the genuine inclusion of Roma in societies across the globe,” Guterres said.
It would be interesting to know that Juscelino Kubitschek, Brazilian president during 1956–1961 term, was 50% Czech Romani by his mother’s bloodline; and Washington Luís, last president of the First Brazilian Republic (1926–1930 term), had Portuguese Kale (a Romani subgroup) ancestry.
– global bihari bureau
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