From the time they entered Europe from India
a thousand years ago, the Roma were targets of
discrimination.
Countries passed laws to suppress their culture and
keep them out of the mainstream -- and sometimes
went much further. Roma were enslaved in Hungary
and Romania in the 15th century and targeted for
extermination by Nazi Germany 500 years later.
Opinion: Europe's Roma discrimination shame
Estimates of Romani deaths in the Holocaust range
from 25% to 70% of the Roma population in Europe.
Many Roma remain on the fringes of
mainstream European society -- a fact
underscored in the current case of a
Romani couple accused of child abduction
in Greece. The fair-skinned child caught
the eyes of authorities when they visited a
Roma community. The couple's attorney
says they adopted the child from the
biological mother but didn't go through a
legal process.
On Thursday, a Bulgarian woman came
forward to say she left the girl in Greece
with a family she worked for in 2009,
Bulgarian Interior Ministry General
Secretary Svetlozar Lazarov said.
Rights groups say the latest case is bound
to shine a harsh spotlight once again on
the Roma.
"The risk of this case is to further put
more stereotype and racism on the
general picture of the Roma community,"
said Dezideriu Gergely, executive director
of European Roma Rights Centre.
"What is important here is to understand that this case
is not one that defines the Roma. It is a case that needs
to be looked at as an individual case and that could
happen in any minority group. Not culturally related to
the Roma minority or ethnically related to the Roma
minority. Criminality is not ethnically related."
Photo gallery: The plight of the Roma
How are the Roma today?
Today, one in three Roma in Europe are unemployed
and 90% live below the poverty line , according to the
European Union Agency for Fundamental Human
Rights.
Many Roma continue to live in camps or caravans, but
it's hard to say how many prefer that lifestyle and how
many simply cannot find a way to settle down.
Advocates say the Roma are denied a fair chance to
secure housing, employment and education. And the
EU human rights agency said governments must act to
stop the "exclusion" of the Roma from mainstream
society.
How many people are Romani?
From 10 million to 12 million in Europe, according to
the EU human rights agency, which said last year that
the Roma are Europe's largest minority. Most live in
southern and eastern Europe, although they can be
found throughout the continent.
What is their language?
The Romani language includes multiple dialects, all
evolved from Sanskrit. The language is largely
unwritten, however, because of the high rates of
illiteracy in most Roma communities, according to
information from Minnesota State University.
What is their religion?
Some are Christian and some are Muslim, having
converted while migrating through Persia and the
Balkans, according to the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum.
Why were they called gypsies?
Because when they entered Europe -- perhaps from the
8th to 10th centuries, although scholars differ on the
timeline -- people mistakenly thought they came from
Egypt. Actually, they originated in the Punjab region of
India. The term "gypsy" is considered pejorative by
some Roma. Romani scholar Ian Hancock, a Romani
raised in Great Britiain, says the term falsely implies
that Roma are not a race -- that they are simply a
group choosing a lifestyle.
Why did the Roma become nomads?
Probably because they were distrusted and
discriminated against by Europeans. Like Jews, the
Roma often were prohibited from buying land or
entering the more stable occupations. At some point,
the nomadic lifestyle became the norm for them. By
the 20th century, the number of truly nomadic Roma
began declining. Some advocates say many Europeans
wrongly assume all Roma still want to be nomads --
and use that belief to justify authorities' failure to
provide housing when they evict Roma from camps.
What kind of discrimination did they face?
Roma were living in Spain, France, England, and large
parts of what is today Russia and Eastern Europe by the
late 1400s. They suffered persecution in those
countries ranging from laws against their language and
dress to expulsion, according to Minnesota State. In the
beginning of the 15th century, many Roma were forced
into slavery by Hungarian and Romanian nobles who
needed laborers for their large estates, according to the
university.
Roma suffered persecution during World War II. The
Nazis judged Roma to be "racially inferior," according
to the Holocaust museum. "Their fate in some ways
paralleled that of the Jews," the museum said. The Nazis
subjected Roma to internment, forced labor, and
murder.
"While exact figures or percentages cannot be
ascertained, historians estimate that the Germans and
their allies killed around 25% of all European Roma,"
the museum says. "Of slightly less than 1 million Roma
believed to have been living in Europe before the war,
the Germans and their Axis partners killed up to
220,000."
Is the modern discrimination just economic?
Amnesty International says European governments
continue to actively discriminate against the Roma.
The organization says the French government, ignoring
court rulings, continues to evict people from Roma
settlements with inadequate provision for other
housing.
Amnesty International is spotlighting segregation of
Romani children in schools in Slovakia.
School segregation also has been an issue in Greece.
The European Court for Human Rights ruled that Greek
authorities discriminated against Roma children in the
town of Aspropyrgos, where non-Roma parents in 2005
blockaded an elementary school to demonstrate against
the admission of Roma children. The Roma children
were placed in a separate building.
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