The Roma and other Lost Populations of Eastern Europe Lecture on May 18, 2009

Additional Sources Roma (Gypsy) Victims of the Holocaust BBC NEWS | Europe | Roma Holocaust victims speak out BBC NEWS | Europe | Roma Holocaust victims speak out EUROPEAN ROMA RIGHTS CENTRE EUROPEAN ROMA RIGHTS CENTRE Center for Stateless Cultures Migration Information Source - The Roma of Eastern Europe: Still Searching for Inclusion Migration Information Source - The Roma of Eastern Europe: Still Searching for Inclusion

The Centrality of the Roma for Democratic Development in Eastern Europe To paraphrase Havel, how a society treats the Roma is a litmus test for the quality of its democracy. To date, that litmus test does not put either the Czech Republic or other east European states where the Roma reside in large numbers in a good light. But, then again, recent events in Italy suggest that the treatment of the Roma and other dark skinned immigrants leaves much to be desired in w. European states as well. As the Roma are Europe’s largest minority, adequate solutions to address their plight need to be found on both the national level and on the EU level as well. Nonetheless, the Roma are most often represented as largely if not solely an east European problem.

Roma as an East European Problem Viewing the Roma as largely an east European problem has both an objective basis (they comprise significant percentages of the populations in Central Europe and the Balkans, see figures on next two slides) and a subjective basis given the extent to which problems with minority rights have historically been ascribed to eastern Europe with western Europe assuming a ‘civilizing’ role as Burgess points out. (article on course e-reserve)

Different estimates of Roma population levels

Roma as % of total population

Burgess on the detrimental nature of Western Europe’s engagement with Eastern Europe on minority rights According to Burgess, “ the most disturbing feature of contemporary Europe is the persistence of a profound sense of division between east and west. The moral policing of eastern Europe, of which the promotion of minority rights is a key component, is helping compound inequality between the two halves of the continent, and thereby codifying the descent of ‘the East’ from ‘second world’ to ‘third word’ …. (p. 19) Further, “with the moral standards demanded of Eastern Europe being often based on an idealized conception of those enjoyed in the West, it is hardly surprising that they prove unattainable. Such moral criteria are moving goalposts. Who is to say when minority identity has been sufficiently promoted? Compared to whom?” (p. 30)

Are the minority rights promoted by western Europe even adequate? As Istvan Pogany points out (in “Minority Rights and the Roma of Central and Eastern Europe,” Human Rights Law Review, 6:1, 2006), there are real grounds for concern that promoting minority rights, largely understood as preserving cultural + linguistic rights, is entirely inadequate to address the socio-economic exclusion faced by the Roma. “Arguably, minority rights represent a luxury that many Roma, particularly those in the CEE region, are unable to benefit from because of their chronic poverty and comparable lack of formal education. For still other and substantial sections of the Roma population, who retain little, if any, sense of a distinct culture and who no longer speak Romani, their ancestral language, minority rights may have become largely irrelevant.” (p. 4)

Pogany “More fundamentally, it is at least open to speculation whither current conceptions of minority rights, as recognized by international law, are well suited to such an extraordinarily heterogeneous ‘people’ as the Roma. In reality, the communities and individuals generally labelled as ‘Roma’ or ‘Gypsies’ by the outside world lack a clearly defined common culture, language or religion. They do not possess much, if any sense of a collective identity. As anthropologists and other experts have repeatedly emphasized, identity amongst the Roma is generally much more sharply and narrowly constructed. Therefore, the categories and tacit assumptions of the international law of minority rights may be, at least partially, inapplicable to Europe’s largest and –almost certainly – most vulnerable ethnic minority.” (p.4)

World Bank Assessment “Increasingly severe poverty among the Roma in CEE has been one of the most striking developments in the region since the transition from socialism began in While Roma have historically been among the poorest people in Europe, the extent of the collapse of their living conditions in the former socialist countries is unprecedented.” urces/roma_in_expanding_europe.pdf

Life Expectancy Non-Roma Bulgaria 72 years Ireland Men 71 Women 77 Czech Republic Men 66 Women 73 Roma Bulgaria 66 years Ireland Men 61 Women 65 Czech Republic Men 55 Women 59

Inevitably, “Against this stark background of deprivation, racism and marginalisation, most Roma in CEE are unlikely to consider the preservation of their cultural or linguistic identity – where readily identifiable – as an overriding priority, particularly in terms of any material assistance that may be available from the state or from other sources. Lack of employment opportunities, inadequate housing and educational and medical provision, acute difficulties in obtaining food and clothing for themselves and their families, as well as fears about their physical safety are the most immediate and pressing concerns of the bulk of the Roma population of the post-Communist states.” (Pogany, pp )

Hungary “For example, since 1990, Hungary has created a comparatively liberal and innovative minority rights regime, allowing the country’s minorities, including the Roma, to form national and local self-governing councils. The creation of these self- governing bodies constituted a radical initiative in constitutional terms, allowing national and ethnic minorities a degree of autonomy in cultural and educational affairs and embodying the still controversial principle of collective rights. As of Oct there are 1004 Romani councils of this type in Hungary. However, it is doubtful whether Hungary’s minority rights regime addressed the fundamental problems experienced by the country’s Roma – unemployment, inadequate living standards and widespread discrimination.” (Pogany, pp. 4-5)

Sadly,..”the Roma of the CEE region were invested with minority rights at precisely the time when comprehensive codes of social and economic rights were withdrawn or drastically curtailed. One of the defining features of the Communist system was that it accorded rights with respect to employment, education, healthcare, pensions, housing, etc. as a matter of constitutional entitlement. The abrupt removal of these rights, on which many Roma had come to depend, was an inevitable consequence of the transition from command to market economies. However, the substitution of minority rights (along with civil and political rights) as scarcely compensated for the disappearance of a wide range of socio- economic guarantees that had assured the Roma a relatively secure way of life and a modest standard of living that many, accustomed to severe hardship in the inter-war era and before, considered acceptable.” (Pogany, p. 12)

Can Political Rights make a difference? As Barany points out, Western Europe (through the EU accession process and the OSCE) have “brought intense political pressure to bear on East European states to improve their treatment of Gypsy minorities. Although there is still widespread societal discrimination against the Roma in Eastern Europe, state policies toward them have become considerably more progressive in the past decade.” (p. 278) In general, “after 1989 E. European states created the political opportunity for ethnic minorities to mobilize themselves and gain representation in state, regional, and local legislatures through electoral competition. Albanians in Macedonia, Hungarians in Slovakia + Romania, Turks in Bulgaria, and other previously marginalized ethnic minorities quickly achieved levels of representation approximating their proportion in their respective societies. Almost all of their candidates ran on their own ethnic parties’ tickets, and virtually all those who voted for them were their conationals.” (p. 277)

Why no political mobilization among the Romani? According to Barany (in “Ethnic Mobilization without Prerequisites: The East European Gypsies,” World Politics, 54, April 2002), specific traits internal to the Romani communities (e.g., weakness of a collective Romani identity, divided leadership, competing organizations, meager financial resources, absence of mobilizing symbols and difficulty articulating reasonable political goals) interact with external conditions (collapse of socioeconomic rights, discrimination in the educational system and co-opting strategies of political actors from the majority population) to disable the Roma from replicating the political success of other minorities across eastern Europe. It follows that the situation of the Roma is not necessarily indicative of how East European minority rights regimes have developed since the collapse of communism. For the most part, these regimes approximate West European standards. They simply do not, however, meet the unique needs of the Roma.

Given the apparently unique situation of the Roma, why approach the question of minority rights in East European political development through the particular case of the Roma? 1.As the largest European minority, their rights are a concern across Europe, both East + West, which serves as a useful reminder that minority rights issues are by no means ‘solved’ in western Europe and therefore a problem for eastern Europe only. In fact, the failure of the EU to respond to blatant violations of Roma rights across the space of the enlarged union represents a profound challenge to its claim of being a ‘normative power.’ 2.Even if Roma rights and minority rights in general should be a shared concern of all EU memberstates, the prevailing construction of minority rights provisions is one whereby the West must carry out a civilizing mission in the East. Why is this such a deeply rooted construction? In other words, even as other minorities in the region are successfully integrated politically, the continued exclusion of the Roma justifies western perceptions of superiority even as the Roma are treated poorly in the West and even as their unique circumstances call for different solutions than those advocated by the ‘civilized’ West. 3.Finally, the Roma provide a good entry into a more general look at the lost populations of eastern Europe. While the Roma are obviously still present physically, they have experienced a “cultural genocide” with the loss of their way of life and hence are perhaps comparable to the loss of eastern Europe’s Jewish communities through the Holocaust and the loss of German communities in the post-WWII expulsions from the region, predominantly from Poland and the Czech Republic. Interestingly these lost populations all converge in Berlin where monuments for Jews, Roma and Germans are all to be placed in proximity to one another: the monument to the Holocaust is already in place, one for the Roma ‘devouring’ is planned, and more contentiously, one for the German expellees is also being planned in the context of the much debated, Centre Against Expulsions.

Why the deep-seated association of minority rights violations with eastern Europe? In Tony Judt’s essay on “Eastern Approaches” (on e-reserve for the course), one can discern the standard tropes that inform the mental imagery of, even intellectual, westerners looking eastward: late state-building, too many small peoples + states, hyper-nationalism, mutual antagonisms across the region, the ‘freezing’ of prejudices under communism, collaborating in the Nazi extermination of Europe’s Jewish populations – all in contrast to a more civilized Western Europe that has progressed beyond the hyper-nationalism ever present under the surface of East European polities. These tropes are certainly not inaccurately applied to the history of Eastern Europe but stressing them in contemporary circumstances carries two risks: 1.the notable progress the region (north of the former Yugoslavia) has made with regard to minority rights risks being obscured. Is there room for substantial improvement –absolutely. But conceptualizing the entire region as de-frosting previously frozen ethnic conflicts is not an accurate reflection of current realities. 2.the need for a critical examination of the state of rights protection in Western Europe risks being obscured as all attention and focus on rights is directed eastward.

Ultimately, What divides East and West Europeans today on the question of minority rights, may be the extent to which East European prejudice and stereotyping is more openly displayed, not necessarily the extent to which such sentiments are more prevalent in the east as opposed to the west: 1.In the absence of political correctness socializing, East Europeans tend to be rather unself-conscious about expressing themselves in terms that alienate western listeners 2.Competing narratives of victimization can also be grating on western ears. In the face of the Holocaust, all other claims to victimhood appear delusional at best, self-serving at worst. 3.Eastern polities and societies are also subject to greater scrutiny from the outside and are therefore less able to cloak or veil prejudice and rights violations than W. European states not subject, for example, to the EU accession process and where the mistreatment of immigrants is a lesser order offense than the mistreatment of, for example, Roma citizens in E. Europe.