"We have no Martin Luther King": Eastern Europe's Roma minority

World Policy Journal

Volumn 18, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 69-78

  Cooper, Belinda ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0039782329     PISSN: 07402775     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/07402775-2002-1001     Document Type: Article

References (11)

1. Though there are no exact figures, independent estimates put the number of Roma at around 2.5 million in Romania, 700,000-800,000 in Bulgaria, 500,000 in Slovakia, around 250,000 in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (or up to 10 percent of their total populations), 550,000-600,000 in Hungary, and 250,000-300,000 in the Czech Republic. Some of the larger concentrations of Roma in Western Europe are to be found in Spain, 700,000-800,000, France, 300,000, Greece, 160,000-200,000, and Italy, 100,000. Turkey's Roma population is estimated at between 300,000 and 500,000. See European Roma Rights Center fact sheet, at http://errc.org/publications/factsheets/numbers.
2. Quoted in David M. Crowe, A History of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia (New York: St. Martin's, 1996), pp. 36-37.
3. Because of the unreliability of statistics on the Roma, it is difficult to estimate the percentage of the population this represents. See Donald Kenrick and Grattan Puxon, Gypsies under the Swastika (U.K.: University of Hertfordshire Press, 1995), p. 150; Guenter Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of Gypsies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 221-22.
4. Because of the unreliability of statistics on the Roma, it is difficult to estimate the percentage of the population this represents. See Donald Kenrick and Grattan Puxon, Gypsies under the Swastika (U.K.: University of Hertfordshire Press, 1995), p. 150; Guenter Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of Gypsies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 221-22.
5. Roma rights organizations and international and European organs have extensively documented official and unofficial violence and the difficulty for Roma of achieving justice. For a comprehensive recent report on the overall situation of Roma that includes information on violence, see High Commissioner on National Minorities, Report on the Situation of Roma and Sinti in the OSCE Area (The Hague: Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, 2000). See also the numerous country reports issued by the European Roma Rights Center, available at its website, http://errc.org, particularly the most recent report on Romania, State of Impunity: Human Rights Abuse Against Roma in Romania. Local legal defense organizations such as NEKI (Legal Defense Bureau for National and Ethnic Minorities) in Hungary and the Human Rights Project in Bulgaria, as well as national Helsinki committees, also document these and other abuses.
6. Roma rights organizations and international and European organs have extensively documented official and unofficial violence and the difficulty for Roma of achieving justice. For a comprehensive recent report on the overall situation of Roma that includes information on violence, see High Commissioner on National Minorities, Report on the Situation of Roma and Sinti in the OSCE Area (The Hague: Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, 2000). See also the numerous country reports issued by the European Roma Rights Center, available at its website, http://errc.org, particularly the most recent report on Romania, State of Impunity: Human Rights Abuse Against Roma in Romania. Local legal defense organizations such as NEKI (Legal Defense Bureau for National and Ethnic Minorities) in Hungary and the Human Rights Project in Bulgaria, as well as national Helsinki committees, also document these and other abuses.
7. Quoted in Brigitte Mihok, "Fremdstereotypen in der rümänischen Öffentlichkeit (1990-1999). Versprachlichte Bildkonstrucktion von den Roma," in Im Dialog: Rumänische Kultur und Literatur, ed. Mircea Anghelescu and Larisa Schippel (Leipzig: Liepziger Universitätsverlag GmbH, 2000), p. 80 (the translation from the German is mine).
8. For a discussion of cultural differences - for example those currounding concepts of cleanliness and ritual purity - in a legal context, including the criminalization of some of these differences by majority societies, see the essays in Walter O. Weyrauch, ed., Gypsy Law: Romani Legal Traditions and Culture, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
9. Reseearch on Selected Roma Education Programs in Central and Eastern Europe (Budapest: Institute for Educational Policy of the Open Society Institute, 2001), pp. 16-17, available at www.osi.hu/iep/resources.htm.
10. "Europe's Spectral Nation," The Economist, May 12, 2001, p. 30.
11. James A. Goldston, "A Future for Roma Rights?" November 1, 2001, available at www. eumap.org/articles/content/20/204.