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

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
• EUROPEAN ROMA RIGHTS CENTRE
• http://www.errc.org/db/03/4D/m0000034D.pdf
• EUROPEAN ROMA RIGHTS CENTRE
• Center for Stateless Cultures
• 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 1989. 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.”
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTROMA/Reso
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. 11-12)
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 selfgoverning 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. 2002 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 socioeconomic 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.
2.
3.
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.’
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.
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.