The Genocide of the Roma (Gypsy) People
English version of the preceding article:
In August 1749, the Roma (also known as Gypsy) people of Europe experienced the first attempt to exterminate them. It occurred in Spain. The monarchy and the Catholic Church planned and carried out what has been called the Great Raid. They ordered the army to imprison all Roma, and they separated the women (with small children) from the men in order to prevent reproduction.
They justified these actions by blaming the Roma people for an increase in crime. In fact, the imperialist policies and continuous wars were generating misery and discontent, the actual cause of crime.
Up to twelve thousand Roma were imprisoned or forced to live under harsh conditions—hunger, physical torture, and humiliation. There was overcrowding. There were not enough buildings to convert into prisons. Roma ghettos were formed in some city neighborhoods. Roma were enslaved and forced to work in factories and arsenals. The government stole their material possessions, hunted them, and forced into hiding those who escaped.
There were rebellions, riots, and escapes. It was difficult to maintain mass imprisonment because the Roma were often integrated into and had strong ties to communities in towns and cities. There were people who supported the Roma and sometimes managed to free them, but often the Roma people were imprisoned again once they were in a different place.
It was a chaotic situation, so the ruling powers decided to annul the decree and release everyone who had been locked up.
The targeting of the Roma people has been constant up to the present day. It reached an extreme when the Nazi empire exterminated most of the European Roma.
The systematic discrimination and persecution over time has led the majority culture to despise the Roma people. They are portrayed as dangerous and problematic in cultural stereotypes, the media, movies, and schools.
For centuries the Roma community has instructed each new generation to stay away from the rest of the population, to be prepared to defend themselves, and to remember that they are victims of an injustice that has never been redressed. Non-Roma people have been told, generation after generation, that it is safer to stay away from the Roma, that they need to be ready to defend themselves against them, and that they are victims of the Roma’s “problematic and dangerous” behavior.
The relationship between non-Roma and Roma people has thus been painful and tense for centuries, and the separation and confusion continue to this day. Ending this situation and healing from the emotional damage will benefit us all, whether we are Roma or not. It will advance humanity in profound ways.
(Present Time 202, January 2021)