Antiziganism

Antiziganism (pronounced /æntaɪˈzigənɪzm/) or Anti-Romanyism is hostility, prejudice or racism directed at the Roma people, commonly called Gypsies.

The root zigan is the basis of the word for the Roma people in many European languages. In most of those languages, the pronunciation is similar to the Hungarian cigány (pronounced [ˈtsiɡaːɲ]). The Roma — who have often been stereotyped as thieves, tramps, con men and fortune tellers — have been subject to various forms of discrimination throughout history.

Due in part to their semi-nomadic lifestyle and differences in language and culture, there has been a great deal of mutual distrust between the Roma and the more settled indigenous inhabitants of the areas to which the Roma migrated. This distrust has persisted even though Roma who migrated into Europe often converted to Christianity, and those who arrived in the Middle East became Muslims.

In the early 13th century Byzantine records, the Atsínganoi are mentioned as "wizards... who are inspired satanically and pretend to predict the unknown."^[1] By the 16th century, many Gypsies in Eastern and Central Europe worked as musicians, metal craftsmen, and soldiers.^[2] As the Ottoman Turks expanded into the territory of modern Bulgaria, they relegated Gypsies, seen as having "no visible permanent professional affiliation", to the lowest rung of the social ladder.^[3] In Royal Hungary (present-day West-Slovakia, West-Hungary and West-Croatia), strong anti-Gypsy policies emerged since they were increasingly seen as Turkish spies or as a fifth column. In this atmosphere, they were expelled from many locations and increasingly adopted a nomadic way of life.^[4] The first anti-Gypsy legislation was issued in Moravia in 1538, and three years later, Ferdinand I ordered that Gypsies in his realm be expelled after a series of fires in Prague. Seven years later, the Diet at Augsburg declared that "whosoever kills a Gypsy, will be guilty of no murder."^[5] In 1556, the government stepped in to "forbid the drowning of Roma women and children."^[6]

In England, the Egyptians Act 1530 banned Roma from entering the country and required those living in the country to leave within 16 days. Failure to do so could result in confiscation of property, imprisonment and deportation. The act was amended with the Egyptians Act 1554, which removed the threat of punishment to Roma if they abandoned their "naughty, idle and ungodly life and company" and adopted a settled lifestyle. However, for those who failed to adhere to a sedentary existence, the punishment was upped to execution.

In 1710, Joseph I issued an edict against the Gypsies, ordering "that all adult males were to be hanged without trial, whereas women and young males were to be flogged and banished forever." In addition, they were to have their right ears cut off in the kingdom of Bohemia, in the country of Mähren (Moravia), the left ear. In other parts of Austria they would be branded on the back with a branding iron, representing the gallows. These mutilations enabled authorities to identify them as Gypsies on their second arrest. The edict encouraged local officials to hunt down Roma in their areas by levying a fine of 100 Reichsthaler for those failing to do so. Anyone who helped Gypsies was to be punished by doing a half-year's forced labor. The result was "mass killings" of Roma. In 1721, Charles VI amended the decree to include the execution of adult female Roma, while children were "to be put in hospitals for education."^[7] In 1774, Maria Theresa of Austria issued an edict forbidding marriages between Gypsies. When a Roma woman married a non-Gypsy, she had to produce proof of "industrious household service and familiarity with Catholic tenets", a male Rom "had to prove ability to support a wife and children", and "Gypsy children over the age of five were to be taken away and brought up in non-Gypsy families."^[8]

A panel was established in 2007 by the Romanian government to study the 18th and 19th century use of Roma as slaves for Princes, local landowners, and monasteries. Slavery of the Roma was outlawed in Romania around 1856.^[9]

Main article: Porajmos

Persecution of Roma reached a peak during World War II in the Porajmos, the Nazi genocide of Roma during the Holocaust. Because the Roma communities of Eastern Europe were less organized than the Jewish communities, it is more difficult to assess the actual number of victims though the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Research Institute in Washington puts the number of Roma lives lost by 1945 at between 500,000 and 1.5 million. Former ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill has argued that the Roma population suffered proportionally more genocide than the Jewish population of Europe and that their plight has largely been sidelined by scholars and the media.^[10] The extermination of Roma in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was so thorough that the Bohemian Romany language became a dead language.

Roma woman demonstrating in Bucharest against an antiziganist remark of the Romanian president Traian Basescu against a journalist who bothered him in May 2007. The text on the shirt is Ţiganca imputita! ("Dirty gipsy!")

Antizigan discrimination has continued in the 2000s, particularly in Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia^[11], Hungary^[12], Slovenia^[13] and Kosovo^[14]. Roma are often confined to low-class ghettos, are subject to discrimination in jobs and schools, and are often subject to police brutality. In Bulgaria, professor Ognian Saparev has written articles stating that 'Gypsies' should be confined to ghettoes because they do not assimilate, are culturally inclined towards theft, have no desire to work, and use their minority status to 'blackmail' the majority.^[15]. This was a reaction to the murder of his colleague professor Stanimir Kaloyanov who was beaten to death by a Roma group while he was celebrating his son's prom in Sofia in May 2005 ^[16].

In the Czech Republic the majority of the Czech people do not want to have Roma as neighbours (almost 90%, more than any other group ^[17]) seeing them as thieves and social parasites. In spite of long waiting time for a child adoption, Roma children from orphanages are almost never adopted by Czech couples.^[18] After the fall of communist party from power in 1989 the jobs traditionally employing Roma either disappeared or were taken over by workers from Ukraine and the stereotypes about Roma further reduced their employability.^{[citation needed]} European Union officials censured both the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 2007 for forcibly segregating Roma children from normal schools.^[19]

As of 2006, many Roma who had previously lived in Kosovo, lived in displaced refugee communities in Montenegro and Serbia. Those who remain often fear attacks from ethnic Albanians who see them as "Serb Collaborators". In February 2007, three Roma women in Slovakia received compensation after suing a hospital for sterilizing them while they were underage and without their consent. While the sterilizations occurred in 1999 and 2002, and the women had been repeatedly appealing to prosecutors since then, they were up until this time ignored.^[20]

In July 2008, a high court in Italy ruled that antiziganism is an acceptable practice "on the grounds that [the Roma people] are thieves."^[21] With the ruling, the judges overthrew the conviction of defendants who had publicly demanded the expulsion of Roma from Verona in 2001. One of those freed was Flavio Tosi, Verona's mayor and an official of the anti-immigrant Lega Nord.^[21] The decision came during a "nationwide clampdown" on Roma by Italian President Silvio Berlusconi. The previous week, Berlusconi's interior minister Roberto Maroni declared that all Roma in Italy, including children, would be fingerprinted.^[21] Opposition party member, Gian Claudio Bressa, responded by insisting that these measures "increasingly resemble those of an authoritarian regime".^[21] In response to the fingerprinting plan, three United Nations experts testified that "by exclusively targeting the Roma minority, this proposal can be unambiguously classified as discriminatory."^[22] The European Parliament denounced the plan as "a clear act of racial discrimination" and asked the Italian government not to continue.^[22]

The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg has been an outspoken critic of antiziganism, both in reports and perodic Viewpoints. In August 2008, Hammarberg noting that "today's rhetoric against the Roma is very similar to the one used by Nazis and fascists before the mass killings started in the thirties and forties. Once more, it is argued that the Roma is a threat to safety and public health. No distinction is made between a few criminals and the overwhelming majority of the Roma population. This is shameful and dangerous." ^[23]

According to the latest Human Rights First Hate Crime Survey, Roma routinely suffer assaults in city streets and other public places as they travel to and from homes, workplaces, and markets. In a number of serious cases of violence against Roma, attackers have also sought out whole families in their homes, or whole communities in settlements predominantly housing Roma. These widespread patterns of violence are sometimes directed both at causing immediate harm to Roma—without distinction between adults, the elderly, and small children—and physically eradicating the presence of Roma in towns and cities in several European countries.^[24]

The practice of placing Roma students in segregated schools or classes remains widespread in countries across Central and Eastern Europe. In Hungary and Bulgaria many Roma children have been channeled into all-Roma schools that offer inferior quality education and are sometimes in poor physical condition, or into segregated all-Roma or predominantly Roma classes within mixed schools.^[25] In Hungary and Bulgaria, many Roma children are sent to classes for pupils with learning disabilities, regardless of whether such classes are appropriate for the children in question or not. In Bulgaria, they are also sent to so-called "delinquent schools", where a variety of human rights abuses take place.^[25]

Despite the low birth rate in the country, Bulgaria's Health Ministry was considering a law aimed at lowering the birth rate of certain minority groups, particularly the Roma, due to the high mortality rate among Roma families, which are typically large. This was later abandoned due to conflict with EU law and the Bulgarian constitution.^[26]

Roma in European population centers are often accused of crimes such as pickpocketing. This is a regular justification for anti-Ziganist persecution. In 1899, the Nachrichtendienst in Bezug auf die Zigeuner ("Intelligence Service Regarding the Gypsies") was set up in Munich under the direction of Alfred Dillmann, cataloguing data on all Roma individuals throughout the German lands. It did not officially close down until 1970. The results were published in 1905 in Dillmann’s Zigeuner-Buch ^[27], that was used in the next years as justification for the Porajmos. It described the Roma people as a "plague" and a "menace", but almost exclusively presented as Gypsy crime trespassing and the theft of food. A UN study^[28] found that Roma in Eastern European countries such as Bulgaria are arrested for robbery at a much higher rate than other groups. Amnesty International^[29] and Roma groups such as the Union Romani blame widespread police and government racism and persecution.^[30] In July 2008, a Business Week feature found the region's Roma population to be a "missed economic opportunity."^[31] Hundreds of people from Ostravice in the Beskydy mountains signed a petition against a plan to move Romani families from Ostrava city to their home town, fearing the Romani invasion as well as their schools not being able to cope with the influx of Romani children.^[32]

The country is home to about 150,000, who live mainly in squalid conditions on the outskirts of major cities such as Rome, Milan and Naples. They amount to less than 0.3 per cent of the population, one of the lowest proportions in Europe. In general, the ethnic group lives apart and is often blamed for petty theft and burglaries.^[33]

On July 3, 2008 it was announced that Italy had started fingerprinting their Roma populations, despite accusations of racism by human rights advocates and international organizations. Interior Minister Roberto Maroni told parliament the move was needed to fight crime and identify illegal immigrants for expulsion, but also to improve the lives of those legally living in the makeshift, often unsanitary camps.^[34]

On July 19, 2008 two Roma girls drowned off Torregaveta, west of Naples. Local newspapers reported that sunbathers continued as normal with a day at the beach despite the bodies of the two girls being laid out on the sand nearby for an hour. ^[35] Hostility to the Roma has been growing in recent years, and according to Enzo Esposito of Opera Nomadi, Italy's largest Roma organisation, the events on the beach "showed a terrible lack of sensitivity and respect."^[36]

On September 4, 2008 the European Commission said Italy's census of illegal gypsy camps does not discriminate against the Roma community. They said the census is in line with European Union law. An analysis of an Italian report on the census showed it did not seek "data based on ethnic origin or religion," said Michele Cercone, spokesman for European Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot. The controversial fingerprinting programme has the sole aim of "identifying persons who cannot be identified in any other way," he said. The fingerprinting of minors was only being carried out "in strictly necessary cases and as the ultimate possibility of identification," Cercone said. ^{[37] [38]}

In May 2008 Roma camps in Naples, Italy were attacked and set on fire by local residents.^[39] In July 2008, the Italian government began fingerprinting all Roma, including children, whether or not they are Italian citizens. The government claimed fingerprinting would cut crime, avoid children being used for begging and help identify illegal immigrants for expulsion. ^[40]

In the early 1990s, Germany deported tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to Eastern Europe. Sixty percent of some 100,000 Romanian nationals deported under a 1992 treaty were Roma.^{[citation needed]} In Norway, many Roma were forcibly sterilized by the state until 1977.^[41][42]

In Denmark, there was much controversy when the city of Helsingør decided to put all Roma students in special classes in its public schools. The classes were later abandoned after it was determined that they were discriminatory and the Roma were put back in regular classes.^[43]

In the UK, "travellers" (referring to Irish Travellers, Scottish Travellers and New Age Travellers as well as Roma) became a 2005 general election issue, with the leader of the Conservative Party promising to review the Human Rights Act 1998. This law, which absorbs the European Convention on Human Rights into UK primary legislation, is seen by some to permit the granting of retrospective planning permission. Severe population pressures and the paucity of greenfield sites have led to travellers purchasing land and setting up residential settlements very quickly, thus subverting the planning restrictions^{[citation needed]}. Travellers argued in response that thousands of retrospective planning permissions are granted in Britain in cases involving non-Roma applicants each year and that statistics showed that 90% of planning applications by Roma and travellers were initially refused by local councils, compared with a national average of 20% for other applicants, disproving claims of preferential treatment favouring Roma.^[44] They also argued that the root of the problem was that many traditional stopping-places had been barricaded off and that legislation passed by the previous Conservative government had effectively criminalised their community, for example by removing local authorities’ responsibility to provide sites, thus leaving the travellers with no option but to purchase unregistered new sites themselves.^[45]

Law enforcement agencies in the United States hold regular conferences ^[46] on the Roma and similar nomadic groups. It is common to refer to the operators of certain types of travelling con artists ^[47] and fortune-telling ^[48] businesses as "Gypsies," although many are Irish Travellers or not members of any particular nomadic ethnic group.^{[citation needed]}

The European Center for Antiziganism Research officially filed a complaint against Sacha Cohen — who plays Borat in the mockumentary film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan — for inciting violence and violating Germany's anti-discrimination laws.^[49] One part of the satirical film, which supposedly portrays Borat's impoverished native village, actually shows a Roma village in Romania. In character, Borat has referred to himself as a former "gypsy catcher," and he has made a reference to "running over Gypsies with a Hummer".

The TinTin book The Castafiore Emerald heavily criticizes antizigansism, as the gypsies who moves onto the captain's property are falsely accused of stealing Bianca Castafiore's priceless emerald, only to turn up completely innocent.

• Porajmos

• Human Rights First Report on Violence Against Roma
• Council of Europe webpage on Antiziganism
• European Centre for Antiziganism Research
• OSCE/ODIHR portal on Roma and Sinti issues