Bi-weekly Roma news review: March 30 to April 20
26 April 2018
Good news and bad from Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Iraq, Italy, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, the UK and the US, with a selection of stories covering arts and culture, debunking myths and challenging stereotypes, as well as a couple of accounts of racists being brought to book for doing what they do, and paying for it.
March 30: Iraqi Roma village school reopens 14 years after armed extremists destroyed it in an attack on the village of Al Zuhour, 200 kilometres south of Baghdad. "On television, I would see other children with school bags and they looked happy," Malak told AFP. "I was a bit jealous because our school was destroyed years ago," she said. For more see: https://bit.ly/2Fg4N94.
April 4: In the UK Alex Kann demolishes Five Big Fat Myths about Gypsies, Travellers and Roma prevalent. Kann is General Manager and Editor of Community Channel, whose upcoming Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Season of community stories will dispel even more myths and stereotypes. For more see: https://ind.pn/2qUX9N8.
April 5: “Everywhere Roma continue to be subjected to staggering racism.” On a Radio Canada broadcast Lela Savic, Dafina Savic and Serge Denoncourt discuss Roma-related issues and anti-Roma racism. Lela: "Canada is not a white country," says Lela. It is therefore possible for the Roma to pass for Italians, Turks, Arabs or Greeks. In Croatia, I could not pass for a Croatian. This is the reality of most Roma in Europe. " For the article and radio broadcast see: https://bit.ly/2FcwnnP.
April 6: For Serbia's Roma, just getting a roof over their heads is a start: “Bekim Gashi and Kasandra Cac are neighbours in Orlovsko Naselje, a Roma area in Belgrade. But while one dreams of his daughter becoming a doctor, the other sees “no future” for hers.” For more: https://bit.ly/2Kanizo.
April 7: Check out the web page of the first self-organised Roma Biennial, where “specific experiences of exclusion are combined with individual artistic perspectives and feminist strategies to generate visibility and self-determination.” Curated by Delaine Le Bas and Hamze Bytyçi in memory of Damian Le Bas (30.1.1963–9.12.2017), initiator of the 1st Roma Biennale. See: https://bit.ly/2HVsQgt.
April 8: Roma minority asks Finns to look beyond the stereotypes: “Most Finns have little contact with the Roma people that live in their midst, and negative stereotypes abound. Jari Stenroth is one of a growing number who are out to set the story straight. For more: https://bit.ly/2Jq9j7H.
April 8: Poland's Roma community battles discrimination according to spokesman Wladyslaw Kwiatkowski Association of Roma in an interview with Deutsche Welle on: https://bit.ly/2qWMVf4.
April 8: The Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma launched its new English website “Racial diagnosis: Gypsy. The Nazi Genocide of the Sinti and Roma and the long struggle for recognition.” The website includes photographs, videos and interviews, and also documents the history of the survivors in post-war Germany, the success of the civil rights movement and the human rights situation in Europe after 1989. For more see: https://bit.ly/2FfOg52.
April 9: Drunk, sabre-wielding French mayor arrested after confronting travellers: Richard Trinquier, the mayor of a Paris suburb has been arrested after attempting, drunk, wearing a flak jacket and armed with a Japanese sabre and a handgun, to stop members of the travelling community setting up a camp in his town, police said. For more: https://bit.ly/2HY6LOo.
April 16: In Slovakia far-right MP Milan M. was ordered by the Specialised Court in Banska Bystrica to pay a fine of €5,000 for making racist statements on Radio Frontinus in 2016. In his defense, Milan M. claimed his statement about “Gypsy terror in eastern Slovakia” was about the high crime rates in settlements inhabited by asocial people, and he reiterated that he knew “many decent Gypsies.” (Yeah,yeah some of your best friends are …) For more see: https://bit.ly/2Kg1qmu.
April 18: Rome, Marcello Zuinici covers the case of Giorgio Halilovic, who was detained by police on April 12 and deported from Rome to Sarajevo the very next day. Halilovic was born in1982 in Rome, and until his deportation resided at the Camping River in Rome with his wife and children. For more on this story: https://bit.ly/2Kc5wfe.
April 19: “Berlin seems the perfect location for a ‘Roma Biennale’, then: an event celebrating the artistic self-determination of a people who have never had a country of our own.” Check out this excellent essay by Damian Le Bas Jr. published in Apollo, The International Art Magazine: https://bit.ly/2J7HuRq.
April 20: New York Times article: Term of Affection? Ethnic Slur? Theater Union Decides That ‘Gypsy’ Must Go. carries a quote from Petra Gelbart, a curator at RomArchive “The ceremony seems like a lovely ritual, and changing its name would not have been my first choice of a battle to fight. That said, the fact that the term Gypsy is so often used to denote free-spirited or traveling lifestyles has real-life repercussions for actual Romany people. We are always being reduced to ridiculous stereotypes that can make it difficult to find employment or social acceptance.”
