The term antiziganism means hostility or racism towards gypsies. They are often looked upon as thieves who are largely uneducated, lazy and dirty lot. As a result of their semi-nomadic lifestyle, as well as the differences in their culture, their language and the way they look, gypsies are often eyes with mistrust. The Romani population in countries have been facing discrimination for long. And there the history of gypsies are oral based even today the culture is a mystery for most people. Here are going to list down 10 such anti-gypsy countries where they face antiziganism:
10. Poland
Donald Niewyk and Frances Nicosia said a number of dead people were at least 130 000 from about one million Romani people who lived in Europe controlled by Nazi. Michael Berenbaum writes researchers estimates are from 90 000 to 220 000. A detailed research of Sybil Milton, ex-historian at USHMM, counted from 220 000 to 500 000 victims. Poland is among the most anti-gypsy countries. Ian Hancock, the manager of Romani Research Program and Romani Documents Center Archive at Texas University from Austin, said the number of victims is higher than 1 million. Hancock writes: “the number of dead is higher than the number of Jews killed at Auschwitz”.
Before to be sent to concentration camp, the victims were crowded into ghettos, as happened to hundreds of thousands of people at Warsaw ghetto. Einsatzgruppen teams have searched the Romani camps and killed trace less many of the people. Romani people were the targeted also by puppet regimes which collaborated with Nazi, like Croatian Ustaše regime which killed a huge number of Romani at Jasenovac concentration camp.
9. Romania
The Romani situation isn’t any better since, this country too is among the most anti-gypsy countries. In 1942, the general Antonescu ordered the deportation of 24.617 Romanians of Roma ethnicity to Transnistria, among which more than 11000 were missing and only half of them succeed to return to Romania. The entire community was labeled as nomad and “dangerous for public order”. The deportation was executed by Romanian Gendarmerie under the order of generals Constantin (Piki) Vasiliu and Constantin Tobescu and was carried out in two parts: 11441 nomad gypsies evacuated between June 1st and 15th August 1942,and 13 176 stable gypsies and dangerous for public order, evacuated between 12th-20th September 1942.
One of the Romanian researchers, Viorel Achim talks in his lectures about the conditions which lead to the extermination of this community, such as hunger, coldness, epidemics etc.
8. Bulgaria
In 2011 in Bulgaria, the general antiziganism completed in anti-Roma demonstrations in response to the killing of Angel Petrov on the orders of Kiril Rashkov, a Roma head in the village of Katunitsa. In the following case, the killer, Simeon Yosifov, was condemned to 17 years in jail. As of May 2012, an application was under way.
Demonstrations continued on 1 October in Sofia, with 2000 Bulgarians marching against the Romani and what they observed to be the “impunity and the crime” of the political elite in the country. Volen Siderov, the head of the far-right Ataka electorate and presidential aspirant, spoke to a meet at the Presidential Palace in Sofia, asking for the death penalty to be returned as well as Romani ghettos to be destroyed.
Many of the planned demonstrations were followed by ethnic disputes and racist violence against Romani. The demonstrators shouted racist mottoes like “Gypsies into soap” and “Slaughter the Turks!” Many demonstrators were jailed for public order attacks. The news media named the protests as anti-Romani Murders.
Moreover, in 2009, Bulgarian Prime Minister Borisov mentioned to Roma as “bad human bodies” making it pretty clear that the country is among anti-gypsy countries. The vice-president of the Party of European Socialists, Jan Marinus Wiersma claimed that he “has already passed the invisible border between right-wing populism and extremism”.
7. France
In the summer of 2010, the French authorities destroyed at least 51 illegal Roma campsites and began the process of banish the occupants to their mother countries. The French government was balmed for carrying out these actions as a part of their political agenda. In 2013, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a far-right politician and founder of the Front national, was dragged to court because he declared France’s Roma community “smelly” and “rash-inducing”. His remarks violated French law on instigating racial hatred. A case against him was filed by the European Roma and Travellers Forum, SOS Racisme and the French Union of Travellers Association. But justice is yet to come.
6. Ireland
In 2008 Marioara Rostas, an adolescent Roma girl was kidnapped in Dublin city market, reportedly by members of a famous local crime group. Over the next week, she was raped many times, injured, including having her teeth removed, and murdered. Her body was found in the Wicklow Mountains four years later in a crime that astounds the Irish Garda Representative Association (GRA) on detachment to the crime within Irish society and why had there been no “outpourings of hatred that such depravity could be done here”.
The lack of public complaint in Ireland led journalist Cormac O’Keeffe of the Irish Examiner to write: “Kidnapped, gang raped, tortured, shot and dumped, but no one cares” in March 2012. There were feelings of anti-Roma sentiment made in the comments section of the newspaper’s website and some follow-up article commenting on the country’s position on east European Roma immigration. Succeeding articles called “We must fight Irish prejudice” highlighting an insinuation of racism in Ireland.
The Integration Centre in Dublin stated that Roma people were “routinely demonized and dehumanized.” It is possible that this dehumanization was a factor in the crime of the girl. The Irish Travellers’ March said they would send out a “strong message that no one deserves to die so young and in such a horrific brutal way”. Alan Wilson was accused of her killing on 5 April 2012, but in 2014 was found not guilty of the killing.
5. Italy
In 2007 and 2008, following an abduction and murder of a woman in Rome by a gypsy man, the Italian government began a crackdown on unauthorized Roma and Sinti campsites in the country. Also, in May 2008, Romani campsites in Naples were attacked and set on fire by the local residents. In 2001, a high court in Italy For example, transferring local authorities’ responsibility to give sites leaves the travelers with no choice but to obtain unregistered new sites themselves. Some reacted saying that the actions taken by the gypsies “increasingly resemble those of an authoritarian regime”. No wonder Italy has winded up among the most anti-gypsy countries on our planet.
4. United Kingdom
According to the LGB rights association and charity Stonewall, antiziganism is widespread in the UK. They are called “travelers modern Gypsies” in the UK. A survey done back in 2008 reveal that the English gypsy population face a high amount of discrimination and one particular poll shows that that a third of UK residents told openly to being discrimination against Gypsies.
Many blame the government for not taking enough steps to ensure their safety. Some even say that the laws passed by the previous Conservative government had completely criminalized their community. For instance, transferring local authorities’ responsibility to give sites leaves the travelers with no choice but to obtain unregistered new sites themselves.
3. Kosovo
From the end of the Kosovo War, about 80% of Kosovo’s Romanis were expelled, summing to approximately 100,000 expelled. For the 1999–2006 period, the European Roma Rights Centre reported numerous crimes committed by Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians with the plan to purge the region of its Romani population along with other non-Albanian ethnic populations.
These crimes included murder, abduction and illegal detention, torture, rape, confiscation of houses and other assets and forced work. Whole Romani villages were burned to the ground by Albanians. Romanis remaining in Kosovo are published to be systematically denied fundamental human rights. They “live in an environment of pervasive fear” and are frequently threatened, verbally harassed and periodically assaulted on racist territories by Albanians. The Romani population of Kosovo is considered to be, for the most part, exterminated. The country ranks third in our list of anti-gypsy countries.
2. Switzerland
A Swiss right-wing magazine, Weltwoche, published a photograph of a gun-wielding Roma child on its cover in 2012, with the title “The Roma are appearing: Plundering in Switzerland”. They declared in a range of articles of an increasing trend in the country of “criminal tourism for which eastern European Roma clans are guilty”, with expert gangs specializing in robberies, thefts, organized begging and street prostitution. It isn’t particularly surprising since the country is among the most anti-gypsy countries.
The publication quickly came under criticism for its links to the right-wing populist People’s Party (SVP), as being intentionally provocative and promoted racist regulating by linking ethnic origin and criminality. Switzerland’s Federal Commission against Racism is recognizing legal action after complaints in Switzerland, Austria and Germany that the cover violation anti-racism laws.
The Berlin publication Tagesspiegel examined the origins of the photograph taken in the slums of Gjakova, Kosovo, where Roma populations were removed during the Kosovo War to hovels constructed on a poisonous landfill. The Italian photographer, Livio Mancini, exposed the abuse of his photograph, which was first taken to manifest the difficulty of Roma families in Europe.
1. Canada
Canada is a first world country and claims to one of the most progressive countries in the world. So it’s pretty surprising to see Canada ranking number one among the anti-gypsy countries. In 1997 the Canadian government permitted Romanian immigrant to come over and live in the country, several groups of neo-Nazis protest and demonstrated against them. They occupied streets outside motel where the emigrants were staying. They held up sign boards like “Honk if you hate Gypsies”, “Canada is not a Trash Can,” and “G.S.T. – Gypsies Suck Tax.”
In September 2012, famous Canadian conservative commentator Ezra Levant transmitted a commentary “The Jew vs. the Gypsies” on The Source in which he blamed the Romani people of being a group of criminals: “These are gypsies, a culture synonymous with thieves… Too many have arrived here as false refugees. And they come here to gyp us again and steal us hidden as they have done in Europe for so many times.… They’re gypsies. And one of the basic characteristics of that culture is that their main economy is theft and begging.”