What Is In A Name?

From The Romani To The Rohingya,
Ethnic Cleansing By Renaming.
(Part of The Darkness Visible series
& Roma In Europe series)

(Roma Face The PNL Party / Rohingya Face 969)

A name is in many aspects the very nature of who we are or who we consider ourselves to be. A person born and raised in France would not suddenly consider himself to be Mexican one day simply because it sounded right. A child born and raised in Yemen would not suddenly decide that he is Korean because somebody suggested it. We are raised to be proud of who we are. The nationality we are given from birth is that which we desire to keep as we age. It is funny in sense, yet we do not easily part from this seemingly arbitrary title. It is simply just too important for us to do without.

Americans are raised with a slightly different sense of what it means to be this or that. We add African, Asian, Latin, Hispanic, Native, and many other nationalities in front of American when we want to be rather specific about our origin. And for most of us, this is a welcome part of declaring our heritage to the world around us. It not offers us a sense of being distinguished in a country that melts our diversity to form a new culture of its own. Yet despite this, we still do much the same as a Parisian might do when we tell others who we are and where we come from... we give them a name that describes it.

For the Roma people of Romania the decision to proclaim their heritage by calling themselves "Roma" is under threat. National Liberal Party (PNL) deputies Mircea Dolha and Grigore Crăciunescu proposed an amendment to the Romanian constitution that would make it illegal for Roma to call themselves Roma. The wording is ambiguous enough to avoid outright rejection by other parties within Romania's government yet according to NGOs and activists clearly targets Romani people. And for the most part the amendment would serve to further alienate Roma living within Romania.

This issue of state sponsored discrimination against an ethnic minority places Romania in the same group as the genocidal government of Myanmar. By attempting to deprive the Roma of their natural right to claim their ethnicity and cultural heritage the government of Romania attempts to push a policy of ethnic cleansing through renaming of an ethnic minority. The parallel between Romania and Myanmar is only further constructed through Romania's PNL party's policy that ethnic minorities may not call themselves "Romanian" unless they can prove their ethnicity to the government. This policy mirrors the policy of Myanmar in it's devout dedication to a policy of denial as it continues to deny the existence of an indigenous Rohingya population within Burma.

In the case of the Roma people in Romania the only major difference is the fact that the PNL has not given them a name with which to scapegoat the Romani people. Though ethnic slurs and the stereotypical gypsy image is paraded readily by PNL party members, the Roma are simply going to face total ethnic cleansing in Romania. The Rohingya people of Burma on the other hand are being given a name to replace their own; Bengali. This form of ethnic cleansing allows Myanmar the opportunity to justify deportations while also revising the history of Burma... erasing Rohingya from history.

For both the Rohingya and the Roma, these attempts to commit ethnic cleansing are only partially masked by political language and platitudes. If allowed to stand these attacks will devastate entire ethnic groups while setting back their attempts to coexist with their neighboring ethnic groups. In the long run these moves also undercut the history and heritage of these two ethnic minorities. By making it illegal to register under their own ethnic name the governments force these groups to accept and adopt the ethnic heritage of groups to which they do not belong.

In the eyes of the world a name is a funny little thing. It seems somewhat odd to many just how important these simplistic titles seem to us. Yet if we were to take just a moment, a brief moment of meditation, we would find in our empathy the disturbing notion of what it would mean to be without our own name. It is in that little title we carry with us that we link ourselves to others within our culture, our beliefs, our heritage. In the eyes of those who realize this a name is not just a silly word but a treasured part of who we are.




An opportunity to scream:

You can help the Rohingya people hold onto their name by signing yours here:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Allow_the_Rohingya_to_Register_Their_Name/ via +Jamila Hanan 

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Source Documents
(Note: not all sources listed)

Romania Insider
http://www.romania-insider.com/ngos-outraged-by-proposed-amendment-to-romanias-constitution-banning-roma-from-calling-themselves-romanians/101635/
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http://www.romania-insider.com/amnesty-international-report-slams-romania-on-roma-rights-and-cia-prisons/99947/

SE Times
http://setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/articles/2013/06/10/reportage-01

Amnesty International Live Wire (blog)
http://livewire.amnesty.org/2013/06/13/you-cant-give-up-you-have-to-fight-for-your-rights/

Burma News International
http://www.bnionline.net/index.php/news/kaladan/15481-rohingya-village-is-uprooted-by-forced-registration-program.html

Yahoo News
http://news.yahoo.com/why-myanmars-rohingya-forced-bengali-144444651.html

Villagers With Pitchforks

Putting the Flame to Roma Homes
(Part of The Darkness Visible series)

Roma Camp Set Ablaze in Italy December 2011

It turns out you can be just about anything in Europe and the Europeans will accept you for the most part. You can be a communist who sets up squats in Denmark where you can push drugs of all sorts. You can be a right wing hack and join the Jobbik party in Hungary. The one thing you can't be in Europe if you want to live in peace... Romani. 

On September 28Th, 2012 in Marseille France a group of 28 vigilantes set a Roma camp on fire. They claim they did the right thing since they did avoid the loss of life and for the most part kept the reports of violence stifled. To back up their claims they have reported that they had contacted the government with their concerns about the Roma and nothing had been done to evict the "undesirables".

For the first time in Alder's Ledge's history it seems that France's government actually backed away from the opportunity to deport a group of Romani. It however is less admirable that the French government did so knowing that the locals in Marseille were planning to take action against the Roma. And that appears to be the reason that the French police were slow to respond to the complaints and never showed up to stop the arsonist when the camp went ablaze.

This sort of attack is becoming more and more common as the governments of Western Europe experience the effects of global recession and the side effects of Europe's union... in which borders become hard to identify. When a government like France's decides to step back from its attacks on Romani (both those who have lived in France all their lives and those coming from Eastern Europe) the locals take action to continue the violence the government started. To add to this the Roma in Eastern Europe continue to flood Western Europe due to countries like Bulgaria and the Romania joining the European Union. 

This recent wave of Romani from Eastern Europe are coming to the West due to the fact that countries in the Eastern half of Europe do not grant them citizenship or even civil liberties. Romania, for example, bans all Roma from voting or from moving from one city to the next without permission. The Balkan states refuse to allow Roma any form of participation in their government or the communities day to day life. And in countries like Hungary, long part of the EU, Roma rarely are defended in court when they are the victims of crimes (both violent and sexual). 

It only makes sense for a person subjected to these sorts of prejudice and discrimination that they would want to venture to the Western half of Europe. Places like France, Germany, and Italy all look like the land of milk and honey compared to Serbia or Romania. And it doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you are banned from employment in Romania that you would gladly illegally immigrate to France. 

With this said it should be easy for anyone to see that the Roma of Eastern Europe will always be more than willing to put up with people like these in Marseille, France. And it will take a lot more than a giant brick wall, like the one the residents of Beja Portugal erected to keep the Roma out of sight, to keep the flood of Romani from coming west. This migration has been spurred by the image of tolerance the West has portrayed to the world for decades. It is a migration of people who have been oppressed and tormented in Russia, Romania, the Ukraine, and the Balkans. They just want to live, and live free. 

So it leaves us to ask, why in the land of opportunity, tolerance, and peace can you not be a Roma? Why is it that the Europeans of today are so eager to forget the lessons of the Porajamos and resort back to the intolerance their ancestors fought to destroy? 

Have we learned nothing in the past 70 years?

Left To The Wolves

Preparing for Porajmos
(Part of The Darkness Visible series)

As attacks on Roma continue to escalate in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Romania the rest of Europe seems complacent as they ramp up attempts to deport their Romani populations. In France it has become evident that the police are more like the SS than civil servants... no longer enlisted to protect and serve but rather harass and deport. In England the Roma live in constant fear that the government's bipolar disorder might switch for the worse. Yet now we watch the rest of the world begins to turn its back on the Roma once again.

Canada and the United States have both recently begun to take steps to deny entry and to deport Roma within their borders. Canada claims that the Roma who came to Canada to seek refuge from Hungarian pogroms no longer deserve to stay within Canada as refugees. In doing this the Canadians must first ignore the rise of violence against Roma communities throughout Eastern Europe, let alone within Hungary itself. Secondly the Canadian government will have to ignore the fact that the Hungarian government may not be willing to allow the Roma back into Hungary.

We are watching as the most abused and neglected people within Europe are once again facing ethnic cleansing. Pogroms have already begun to take shape in Hungary and the Czech Republic. These violent flash mobs are part of daily life for Roma within Romania, Bulgaria, and other Balkan states. Now we have the other hallmark of ethnic cleansing... deportations.

France has been the leader in this deplorable act of fascism. In France today the police wear jackboots and even strap on red armbands. The "democracy" of France no longer recognizes the civil liberties they claim to uphold as they now pick who has the right to live free and who must leave or die.

The bulldozing of camps, burning of caravans, and beatings of Roma citizens can not be overlooked. The bastions of freedom can not be allowed to operate in a manner that mirrors the crimes of their Nazi past. And with that I know I may be pushing the envelope with some...

But was it not the brown shirts in Washington who lobbied for our government to set on the sidelines while Hitler put Roma in the first concentration camps? Was it not the Vichy regime who helped the SS gather up France's Roma for the first Porajmos? And was it not Germany that gave us the horrors of the Holocaust in the first place?

All these governments have had their failures when it comes to the Roma. Now they are slipping into the darkness of their past failures once again. Over the past decade alone we have become apathetic when dealing with the right wing and their anti-Romani demands. We have watched as groups like Jobbik in Hungary have grown out of control. We have remained silent while French president after president has wrongfully deported French citizens....

Again, for those of you who disagree with me.... France's dragnet approach at rounding up Romani who have illegally immigrated to France has been used to deport Roma who have lived and were born in France. It was an inevitable consequence of actions that originated in the radical right wing of France's government. And it continues even as a left wing socialist rules as president.

None the less the West is setting up all the right conditions for another genocide of the Romani people. When we allow people to be loaded up on planes (or cattle cars) and be sent away we condone the first part of ethnic cleansing. When we allow politicians or political parties (Jobbik for example) to publicly push for violence in any manner against a group of people we condone the final solution.

This post isn't meant to blindly accuse any one government. It is meant to blame all the Western world of once again failing to uphold our pledge of "NEVER AGAIN". It is time to wake up. It is time to uphold the rights of all mankind; regardless of their ethnicity, religion, or livelihoods. It is time to start working to set right all the areas of civil rights in which our parents generation and their parents generation failed.

Romanian Ghettos

The Call for Roma "Segregation"
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It is hard to imagine any modern state using ghettos as a method of control or in the name of "safety" these days. After the lessons learned in Warsaw it seems unthinkable that any politician in any European country would think this was a good idea. But it is happening once again. And the idea is spreading slowly but surely.
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In February of 2010 The Times on London reported that a Slovak town had begun building a 2.2 meter tall wall that was meant to segregate the two-thirds of the town's population. That wall still is in use today. And the Roma are still being segregated in Bulgaria as this article is being written.
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Just as they were in 2010 the walls are still being constructed. The ghettos are still being assembled. And the Roma are now being forced out of "civilized society".
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Their neighbors claim the isolation is for their own protection. A slogan used before. A message proclaimed by similar socialist societies of the past.
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Today the Romanians join the ranks of the Eastern Europeans willing to use ghettos to isolate the Romani population. In Baia Mare, a city in northwestern Romania, the locals are ready to build a concrete wall that will encircle the Roma area of town. This is an area the Roma were "deported" to and are now being held captive in. And once again the isolated area soon to be walled off is being said to be "for the Romas' protection".
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In past articles I have asked without remorse what would happen if places like Auschwitz were allowed to come back online. Today it seems that the old death camps are not far from the current issues facing the Roma population. Like under the old socialist of the past, the Roma of Romania now face a society that is willing to surrender its own humanity for a vain promise of "safety". And the promise of "safety" once again is not being promised to the Roma themselves.
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The governor of the city claims the deportations of the Roma outside the city limits was a necessary step to rid the city of its' "poverty hotbeds". In a way he was correct. However now the countryside just beyond the city has an issue with forced poverty. It also has an issue with sanitation since the Romani ghetto was built right next to the city's water treatment facility.
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In post World War One Germany the Roma faced similar "concentration" sites. The Nazi regime felt it was somehow fitting to place Roma ghettos near waste sites. This increased the probability of disease or death due to exposure. The Romanian governor has chosen a similar site for similar reasons.
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So the question is this... how much more will the European Union tolerate? How much more human rights violations will they stomach happening right on their door step? And are we seeing the buildup to another genocide on European soil?
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Some Source Documents Not Listed.
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The Sofia Echo
http://sofiaecho.com/2010/02/18/860356_slovak-town-raises-concrete-wall-around-roma-ghetto-report
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SETimes.com
"Roma Community Segregation Still Plaguing Romania"
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