Words that kill - article first published in Index of Censorship

by Valeriu Nicolae

Gypsies are the only group about which anything

could be said without challenge or demurral.

Edward Said

F… you and your dead ones, you, mother f… stinky nomad. Go back to your f…Indians. You [Gypsyies] are a nation of stinky thieves, beggars and cons; if I could I would gather you all and light you up.

You [Gypsyies] are the scum of all societies. Damned be the one who brought you in Europe and those who didn’t kill you in time, you bloody parasites of the human race.

Your people are not only useless but also damaging for any society which makes the mistake to host you. As any other carcinoma you need to be extirpated and destroyed. If you [Gypsies] would disappear tomorrow the world would make a step forward.

These are fragments from 104 similar letters I received during two days in September 2005, following UEFA’s suspension of the Romanian team Steaua Bucuresti on grounds of racism in the stadium, and my public statement against racism in football in Romanian stadiums.[1] The language in most of the letters was to offensive to quote here. These letters were mostly written by people with undergraduate or graduate university degrees, who took considerable time and effort, first to find my e-mail address, and second, to write letters which were on average over 600 words long.

Unfortunately, often when I use such materials as examples of racist or hate speech, the non-Roma audience becomes defensive and explains that these are exceptional cases of lunatics and right-wing extremists, or simply lies. They seem more concerned about exposing my bias than about the blatant hate speech, and the potential for incitation to violence of the materials.

While many non-Roma describe such examples as isolated incidents, unrelated to the majority opinion, in fact, hate letters delivered via e-mail are simply the latest manifestation of historical prejudice and the dehumanization of Roma. Whether the majority population denies, ignores, accepts or supports them, such materials have the power to incite, and in a modern development, to justify violence against Roma.

Statistics

A Gallup poll[2] following research conducted at the end of 2004 in Romania found that from 1004 young people interviewed (18 to 35 years old, around 20% of them undergraduate or graduate students), 91% were not ready to accept Roma in their families. In September 2005 the results of research by IRSOP Romania were published in a communication[3] of the European Commission Delegation in Romania. This research revealed that 46% of Romanians believed that there are superior and inferior races. 42% of those interviewed considered that the relationship between Romanians and Gypsies is irreconcilable. The report, produced by a Romania polling company (IRSOP), didn’t even bother to use the politically correct term Roma.

Public Authorities

The worst is not the polls,[4] which demonstrate that anti-Gypsyism[5] is wide-spread in Europe and that Roma are the most hated ethnic group, but rather the fact that public hate speech on any level goes without criticism or punishment.Declarations suggesting burning the Roma, presenting Roma as animals or dangerous for the health of the majority, and linking them with the most heinous crimes are not espoused by lunatics, but also by public personalities. Such declaration make blatant human rights violations of Roma seem acceptable in the eyes of the mainstream public.

A few examples:

Residents are ready to start setting the gypsies' houses on fire, and I want to head this process. (Russian municipal legislator Sergei Krivnyuk, for Volgainform, November 17, 2004.)

Nomads, they are animals. (Councilman Pierpaolo Fanton on TV news is Treviso, Italy, in 2005. He went on to suggest a vaccine for Roma children who, with their saliva and spit, might “infect” Italian children attending the same schools.)  

Roma steal children and then sell them, sometimes in parts. (Pietro Zocconali, President of the National Association of Sociologists of Italy, February 2005, according to the Italian press.)

Politicians

Since the early 1990s, similar talk was deployed by politicians aiming to boost their electoral support:

If we don't deal with them now, they will deal with us in time. (Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar of Slovakia, in 1993. He also described Roma as “mentally handicapped” and “breeding machines”.)

[I will] ...isolate the Roma criminals in special colonies… [in order to] …stop the transformation of Romania in a Gypsy camp. (A 1997 election promise from Romanian senator Corneliu Vadim Tudor.)

At the present time, I believe that the Roma of Zámoly have no place among human beings. Just as in the animal world, parasites must be expelled. (Dezső Csete, mayor of Csór, Hungary, on April 27, 2000.)

If you don’t want Gypsies, Moroccans and delinquents in your house, be the master of your own home in a livable city and vote Lega Nord. (A 2002 electoral message of Italian political leader Umberto Bosi.)

None of these politicians were fined, sued or prosecuted for their statements. I argue that the general acceptance and tolerance of such statements is one reason that anti-Gypsyism and ethnically motivated violence against Roma are increasing in Europe.

The European Level

Recent European Commission and European Union Monitoring Center (EUMC) reports have found Roma to be the most discriminated ethnic minority in Europe. However, in practice, Roma are disregarded, as a subhuman species, or viewed as unable to defend their own point of view therefore “requiring” the paternalism of everybody from decision-makers to journalists. Public authorities tend to speak for or about Roma without asking Roma for their opinion. Even high level officials within European institutions have made statements at the limit of racism, without a Roma representative available for comment.

For example, in an interview broadcast on Dutch TV[6] on May 1, 2004, Eric Van der Linden, EU Commission Ambassador to Slovakia, proposed to remove Romani children from their parents and put them into boarding schools. “It may sound simplistic,” he said, “but it is, I think in the root of the cause that we need to strengthen education and organise the educational system in a way that we may have to start to, I’ll say it in quotation marks, ‘force’ Romani children to stay in a kind of boarding school from Monday morning until Friday afternoon, where they will continuously be subjected to a system of values which is dominant (“vigerend”) in our society.”

When the journalist present objected that Roma might be opposed to such a measure, Van der Linden said “we do live here in a democracy, so you cannot force it, but you can of course try to let it develop more smoothly through giving financial incentives.” He expected that Roma families would accept the “financial incentives” and send their children to schools were they “…will be educated then and at the same time raised” and in that way “… will fit better in the dominant society” and “co-operate in a productive way in the growth of the economy.”

Media

The news, in general, focuses on problem areas and has a clear tendency to reinforce stereotypes. Roma victims of racist attacks receive very little media coverage. Exceptionally, there is some media interest, often in cases where the Roma are saved or helped by non-Roma[7], reinforcing the positive stereotype of a tolerant and helpful majority and accentuating the half-human half-beast image of Roma.

On February 27, 2004, Radio Prague broadcast a program focused on measures needed in “stopping the exodus of Roma” into the Czech Republic. The Minister of the Interior, Stanislav Gross, was interviewed and affirmed his strong stand against Roma migrants from Slovakia . The broadcast focused on the “violent riots and looting” carried out by Eastern Slovakian Roma during social unrest in Slovakia. The reporter failed to mention the reason for the unrest in Slovakia, focussing strictly on the restrictive measures against a “possible Roma invasion.”

At the beginning of 2004 a racist campaign against Roma was initiated by the UK tabloid press,[8] appearing to respond to and play on fears related to the enlargement of the European Union. A similar campaign occurred in 2005, in the run-up to the general election in the UK. There was a close fit between the anti-Roma discourse in the media and the hostile rhetoric of politicians from both the Conservative and Labour parties. Tabloid headlines talking about “incoming hordes” and the incredible “Stamp on the Camps” campaign launched by The Sun dehumanize Roma. Once Roma have been dehumanized, it is a natural step to the perception that we are not morally entitled to human rights. Violence against us, thus, is not only excusable, but justifiable or even called for, as in the campaign of The Sun.

Progress?

Between 1990 and 1993 both left- and right-wing political leaders of the new Romanian democracy were quick to blame the Roma for almost everything which went wrong. A series of ethnically motivated incidents[9] culminated with the pogrom in Hadareni where 13 Roma houses were burned to ashes and three Roma men were killed. One of the victims died as a result of 89 stabs.

Since then, the situation does not seem to have improved much in Romania. Recent events point to an increased and more acute anti-Gypsyism. On May 4, 2005, the Mayor of Craiova (one of the largest cities in Romania ) said publicly “I pee on them, those mother f… Gypsy jerks and hooligans.”[10] A local politician elected on the lists of the ruling Social Democrat Party made it clear in less than four hundred words what he thinks of Roma: “stinky ugly gypsies,” “shits,” “jerks,” “dirty,” “hooligans.” He described a “war” against gypsies and his wish to deport them from his city.

On October 25, 2005, in Romania , the police found over a hundred pieces of what had been the body of an 11-year-old Roma girl, raped and afterwards killed, in the flat of an ethnic Romanian. The Romanian newspaper Adevarul published the news on October 26, 2005. If the case had involved an ethnic Romanian girl raped and brutally murdered by a Roma man, it would likely have triggered another anti-Roma pogrom as in Hadareni. The same evening, a regular talk show on the Romanian TV station OTV featured two segments concerning Roma: one about the brutal murder mentioned above, and the other about a fight between Roma. The main reaction of the audience regarding the murdered Roma girl was that Roma parents are unable to take care of their children. The other subject brought in a caller who said, without hesitation, that “Gypsies should be shot dead.”

Legislation seems ineffective, perhaps because the overwhelming majority of lawyers and judges are part of the majority population and therefore hold to some degree the same stereotypes about Roma. The anti-discrimination legislation adopted by the European Union in 2000 and at the national levels in 2003 and 2004 is considered by the self-congratulatory European Commission “a quantum leap” in the protection of human rights. The Race directive 43/2000/EC, which should protect the rights of Roma, has been implemented in all states mentioned in this article except one (Russia). Considering what is actually happening in these countries, it looks like the anti-discrimination legislation was such a big leap that nobody believes it actually happened.