Traditional Roma went out to street

22/06/2009 - Men with hats and mustache and women with colored skirts. Not young anymore, but determined. Asking for their rights and not begging for mercy. This is how the traditional Roma protest looked like, as they manifested this week in front of the Government.

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On Tuesday, June 16, approximately 200 traditional Roma went to street, protesting against the Romanian Government’s policies on minorities. In a memorandum addressed to the Prime Minister Emil Boc, Roma asked for respecting the ethnic group’s rights, and at the same time they asked back the belongings confiscated to the families deported to Transnistria.

“Starting with 2001, Roma have been subject to several public policies: the Government’s strategy, the National Program against Impoverishment and for Social Inclusion and the Common Memorandum for Social Inclusion,” says the document released by the European Committee of Krisinitor Roma, initiator of the protest.

The goals of these policies are the improvement of Roma situation, the reduction of impoverishment and of social exclusion, the sustained promotion of the cohesive and inclusive society, all connected to the National Plan of Development 2007 – 2013.

But “after 17 years of strategies, Roma inclusion policies, implemented programs and projects for improving their situation, Roma minority continues to deepen into a vicious circle of social exclusion”, stated the subscribers of the Memorandum.

This is how in happened that on June 16, when 67 years from the Roma Holocaust in Romania was commemorated, around 200 representatives from traditional communities of this ethnic minority, gained in front of the Grigore Antipa Museum in Bucharest in order to protest.

Roma requests: roads, electricity, jobs…

Istrate Bratianu, an old Roma from Matasari explains: “He said that he will come to the mayor, to install electricity, to give us unemployment relief, to return us the gold that was not paid.” “Our gold that remained there, why are we not getting it back? From our ancestors who suffered…” groans a woman near him.

The Roma say they don’t need jobs, but they want their requests to be taken into consideration. “We don’t need work, we have what to work. We manufacture coppers, calderas, but we need the unemployment relief. We don’t receive it for five years. On the other had we don’t have a road in our village”, explained Istrate Bratianu.

The Memorandum has proposed to the Romanian Government a list of urgent actions to address the problems of the traditional and semi-nomadic communities, specifying that problems of these communities are not addressed by any social inclusion program. The requests are:

- The creation of a National Commission for Roma, which should adopt an annual Monitoring Report on Traditional and Semi-Nomadic Communities’ Inclusion into public policies’ actions for next year.

- Finding solutions for Roma migration in Europe, by setting up some Information and Documentation Centers in countries where significant numbers of Roma have emigrated from Romania, and of some Regional Monitoring Observatories of Migration as well.

- Enacting the status and role of the Krisinitor institution (piece judge of “Gipsy Law”/Rromanipen) by adopting an Ordinance of Law no.192/16.05.2006 regarding mediation and the profession of mediator.

- Enacting the seasonal Roma nomadic traveling for practicing handicrafts, as well as the flexible functioning of fairs and the creation of a “fair-trade” ad-hoc network.

- Adapting the Romanian education system to specific education methods for bilingual communities, according to international standards;

- Initiating a national program to consider the situation of Roma without housing, including cadastral enacting of houses in Roma camps and creation of a temporary camping network;

- Organizing medical caravans in traditional and semi-nomadic communities.

Mihaela Dumitrascu – DIVERS – www.divers.ro