Roma from around the world will celebrate their history and identity in an international event called The River Ceremony on April 8, the day known as Gypsy People Worldwide Day since its conception in 1971. In commemoration of the Roma exodus from the Punjab region of India 1,000 years ago, Roma will gather at the banks of major rivers across the world -- including the Volga, the Danube, the Seine, the Arno, the Jordan, the Rio de la Plata, and the Ganges, among others. The symbolism of the river as an entity that flows on eternally across countries and man-made borders represents to the Roma a metaphor for the vital transnational aspect of their identity. In tribute to the collective hardships endured by Roma people worldwide -- past and present -- participants will send thousands of flowers and burning candles floating down the world’s greatest waterways.
The six million Roma residing throughout Europe today have plenty of hardships to remember. In almost every European country, they represent one of the poorest and most discriminated groups of the population. In France, 90 percent of Roma children under the age of 18 are illiterate; in the Czech Republic, 70 percent of the adult Roma population is unemployed; in Belgium, the infant mortality rate for Roma is 20 percent higher than the national average; in Italy over 70 percent of Roma families interviewed report they have lost children due to respiratory or digestive illnesses; and in Spain the average life span for Roma is 43 years. Roma are severely discriminated against in the realms of law, social service, employment, and education, and are often victims of public prejudice and violence as well. Statistics show in the Czech Republic 75 percent of Roma children are channeled into “special schools” for the mentally handicapped. In Spain, although Roma comprise less than 2 percent of the total population, more than 25 percent of the females in Spanish prisons are Roma. In many states, sentences will be longer and more severe for Roma offenders than for other citizens charged with the same crime, and legal authorities do often not address charges brought by Roma against perpetrators of violence and anti-Roma crimes.
One recent case of a Roma family who burned to death in their Ukrainian home has yet to be investigated by officials. This despite the evidence of arson submitted by a local fire department, and the testimony by witnesses that police officers had previously threatened to “set them all on fire” following the family’s inability to pay a fine. The only survivor of the incident attests that the doorways had been blocked from the outside to prevent the family members from escaping, and neighbors witnessed three men in uniform running from the site after an initial explosion. The survivor’s 21-year-old daughter was killed in the blaze alongside her husband and their three small children. Five months later, the European Roma Rights Center is still pressing Ukraine’s chief prosecutor to investigate the issue and prosecute those responsible, but little has been done.
Unfortunately, these types of incidents are not uncommon. Roma are easily segregated from mainstream European society due to their distinctive appearances, cohesive communities, and semi-nomadic lifestyles. They have maintained their traditional language and social organization systems for over a millennia, across nations and continents, despite systematic persecution from the Middle Ages through WWII to the present day. Increasingly, representative political movements are being developed by Romani to address the discrimination they suffer throughout Europe.
