Reporting on marginalized communities- the Romani

5 min readDec 5, 2021

Codrin Ghidiu

I come from Romania, a country where one in ten people belongs to the Romani (gypsy) ethnicity. We hear and see so much of them that we all think we know who they are and what they represent. I wonder, however, if that’s really the case. Some years ago in my hometown, two Romani men engaged in an axe fight over a woman they both wanted to marry. Four people died that night. The story circulated in my hometown, and I started to realize how little I actually know about these people.

Despite being one of the largest minority groups, the Romani public presence is close to nonexistent. They are almost exclusively heard of as part of inflammatory hate speech or in press releases about criminal behavior. Many Romanis never attend any form of education and are illiterate. Girls marry in their early teens and are conditioned to a life of domestic servitude. One often sees them walking around, carrying large bags of items collected from street trash cans. They sew their own dresses: bright, colorful, ankle-long, adorned with fake golden jewelry. They don’t wash their hair and wear it in long braids. Eastern European parents scare their misbehaving children with the nightmare-inducing threat of “selling them to the gypsies’’. Growing up, everyone seems to reinforce the stereotype of the lazy, criminal, uncivilized Romani. Common phrases include: “you’re so gross, don’t act like a gypsy” or “I’d never do that. What am I, a gypsy?”. Encounters with the Romani don’t help improve their image: many of them engage in antisocial behaviors and harass passerbys. They are often accused of littering wherever they go and are considered loud and rude. Today, tens of thousand Romanis are not registered with the local authorities: they have no birth certificates or ID cards. They live, but don’t officially exist. The neighborhoods they inhabit are marked by underdevelopment, poor health services and violence. They live in close-knit, conservative social groups. They attend their own churches and ascribe to a different sect of Christianity than the majority of the communities they live in.

The Romani constitute relatively large minority groups (more than 8%) in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia, North Macedonia, but they’re present in almost all European countries as well as many places across the Americas. They are portrayed widely in literature (Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame or Ion Budai-Deleanu’s The Gypsy Camp), movies (Gypsies Are Found Near Heaven, 1975), TV series (Netflix’s Suburra, 2017, Gypsy Heart, 2007 or Arpad, the Gypsy, 1973–74) and songs (A Gypsy Camp is Passing by, Costel Ciofu). Manele, a Romanian music genre strongly associated with the Romani, is both incredibly popular and widely criticized by posh audiences. People despise the Romani but also exoticize their perceived bohemian lifestyle (in fact, the word bohemian, of French origin, was used to refer to the Romani). Gypsy caravans, love, passion, deep, black eyes, fortune-telling for brides-to-be: these elements give people a very particular perception of the Romani that shrouds the community’s real wishes and needs.

In spite of their old presence in Europe, no studies to date have managed to establish the exact origin of the Romani. For the longest time, it was wrongly assumed that they originated in Egypt (hence the word gypsy or the old Romanian word faraon, “pharaon”), but research has traced their ancestry to Northern India. Common traditional occupations included fortune-telling, music, metallurgy and sorcery. Famously, many Romanis would wander Europe’s towns with their trained dancing bears. In Romania, these were the free gypsies. However, until 1856, when slavery was abolished in Romania, vast numbers of gypsies were the property of the local nobility, the Church, and monasteries. Testamentary dispositions were found that included the infamous phrase: “I leave to X [insert figure] gypsy souls [sic!].” Up to this day, the Romanian Orthodox Church refuses to acknowledge its historical role in the perpetration of Romani slavery. Millions of Romanis were exterminated by fascist regimes during World War II and hate persists to this day.

Romani hate, also known as antiziganism, is almost omnipresent wherever these communities live. One government-incentivized campaign of forced sterilization of as many as 90,000 Romani women took place in the ’80s Czechoslovakia. A 2012 report of the European Commission acknowledges the widespread discrimination that the Romani are subjected to and urges national governments to intensify their efforts in combatting their discrimination.

In response, Romania adopted a law that allocates a mandatory minimum number of places for Romani students in all educational institutions. Additionally, as a recognized representative of a national minority, the Romani Party enjoys constitutional representation in the Romanian Parliament even if they don’t manage to pass the votes threshold to enter the legislative body. Further appropriate government action must be taken to provide education and opportunities to the Romani, as this seems to be the only realistic way of breaking the cycle. Yet, nowhere are there currently legal frameworks in place that do enough to address the injustices to which the Romani are subjected to, now or historically. Nowhere do the Romani enjoy equal treatment. If anything, voluntary police ignorance and brutality make the Romani reluctant to resort to public authorities for protection. States must acknowledge the facts and introduce coherent legislation that specifically provides protection mechanisms for the Romani. History books must include stories of the people who have been living by our side for centuries.

But this is not enough. Romani voices must be heard. So far, a number of World Romani Congresses have taken place for decades. Their decisions must be included in any prospective national legislation on the topic. Present Romani cultural events must be supported as times of celebration for the culturally ignored and silenced. Education in the various Romani languages should be guaranteed by the responsible local and national authorities. In the end, no legal framework will be legitimate until it acknowledges and accounts for the voices and wishes of the Romani.

Reporting on marginalized communities- the Romani

Written by SIA NYUAD