Globalist: Europe tackles
anomaly of bias against Gypsies
Roger Cohen
Roger Cohen
International Herald Tribune
Saturday, January 29, 2005
Saturday, January 29, 2005
BUCHAREST At the biggest garbage dump outside the Romanian capital, Marius Mandea, 21, scavenges for scrap metal. He is pursued by a dozen stray dogs, circled by black flurries of crows, enveloped in the acrid stench of the refuse, stung by the winds of a Balkan winter.
As European existences go, his is bleak. The day is
spent trawling for anything salable - a plastic crate, copper wire, iron - in a
sea of debris. On a good day, he makes $5, selling what he finds to a metal
merchant in town. "It's better to work than to steal," he said.
The Romanian stereotype, one shared in varying
degrees across much of southeastern Europe, is that stealing is what people like
Mandea are about. He's a member of the country's Roma minority, a group commonly
known as Gypsies.
Romanian children are still sometimes told to
behave or "be taken by the Gypsies," a fate considered more sinister than any
other.
The Roma settlement beside the garbage is sinister
enough. The mud tracks, open sewers, horse-drawn traps and shacks with plastic
roofs are eloquent of a poverty more often associated with Africa than
Europe.
Many of the houses have been built without permits;
they get no electricity. Yards are strewn with bric-a-brac and stacks of straw.
A handsome woman throws a protective arm around her adolescent son. "I want to
save him," she says, "from working at the dump."
But options for the Gypsies, thought to number
about 1.5 million people in Romania, or almost 7 percent of the population, are
scarce. Enduring prejudice, lack of education, discrimination in the workplace
and the effects of a distinct and sometimes impenetrable culture have tended to
maroon the Roma in penury.
More than half of the country's Gypsies live in
extreme poverty, compared with a rate of 9.3 percent among the rest of the
population. Only 17.2 percent of Roma children attend preschool; the figure is
67 percent for other kids. Only about one-fifth of Roma pupils receive secondary
education.
"It's hard to change habits," said Liliana
Preoteasa, general director of the Ministry of Education. "The Roma parents are
often uneducated and do not think that schooling is worthwhile."
I can understand her frustration. A degree of
mystery or elusiveness has long surrounded the Roma. Their origins, generally
agreed to lie in waves of migration from northern India into Europe, are still
disputed. An often nomadic existence, early teenage marriage, high birth rates
and a lack of political cohesion have all tended to militate against
integration.
But Romania, along with other countries of Central
and Eastern Europe, has now embarked on a push to bring change. This effort
reflects the fact that the Roma have become an anomaly in a uniting Continent.
In 2007, Romania is destined to join the European Union: shanty-town poverty and
prejudice against a large minority are not supposed to characterize the
EU.
Problems are by no means confined to Romania.
Numbering between seven and nine million across Europe, the Roma are at once the
Continent's biggest minority and the poorest Europeans. In Bulgaria, a recent
study found 80 percent of the Roma living on less than $4.30 a day.
Next Wednesday, leaders of several European
countries will gather in Sofia to mark the start of an initiative called the
Decade of Roma Inclusion. The aim is to raise awareness and funds and focus on
four areas - education, employment, health and housing - in a bid to end the
frequent pariah status of the Roma.
"It is essential that a framework be created in
which stigma is overcome," said Richard Florescu, a Bucharest-based official of
the World Bank, a major backer of the initiative.
Banishing a centuries-old stigma will not be easy.
Ilie Dinca is the president of a newly created Romanian government agency for
the Roma. At school he was often cursed as "a damn Gypsy" or
"crow."
Today, he says, the image of the Roma is still that
of people "who steal, who rape, who do drugs, even though the crime rate among
Roma is no higher than among the general population." Such stereotypes persist
despite laws that make discrimination a crime, ensure the Romany language is
taught in schools, and generally seek to ensure the Roma enjoy full
citizenship.
Next to Dinca is an EU flag. What, I ask, does that
signify? It's a reminder, he says, of the obligation to "bring the Roma up to a
certain level." To that end, he is urging wealthy Roma to "help the rest of the
community."
When the Roma are wealthy, they are conspicuously
wealthy. In Buzescu, west of Bucharest, Mercedes and Hummers are parked outside
mansions built in a riot of architectural styles. Tin roofs are adorned with
orbs, spikes, spears. Roma-rococo has run amok. The source of such wealth is
often unclear. The enigma feeds the Gypsy rumor mill.
"We are craftsmen," says Ion Constantin, the gleam
in his eye matched by the gleam of his gold teeth. "Our money comes from the
copper pots and receptacles we make. When we can, we invest in gold, because
gold brings happiness."
That happiness, whatever its source, could do with
being spread. Constantin helps the poorer in his village, but not others.
Coordination between communities has not been a Roma strength. But an
opportunity now exists to break old patterns.
Will it be seized? I wonder. The Roma, persecuted
by Hitler, who murdered perhaps 250,000 of them, amount to a stain on Europe's
conscience. But their status, like that crime, has long eluded focused
attention.
Mandea of the garbage dump has an empty look in his
eye. He never went to school, married early, had his first child at 15. Neither
of his children, aged 6 and 3, attend school. He said he wouldn't send them
because he couldn't afford to dress them adequately. "Nothing," he said, "will
ever change."
The challenge of Sofia is to prove this young
European wrong.
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***
Birou de traduceri autorizate. Oana Gheorghiu - tel/fax: 252.8681 / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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