POPULATION-YUGOSLAVIA: Romas Fight For Their Rights after Changes in Serbia

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Feb 23 2001 (IPS) - An exhibition of documents and photographs depicting the life of Serbia’s Roma population all through the last century is drawing to a close here in Belgrade.

Opened earlier this month, the exhibition is an attempt by the Roma or Gypsies as they are commonly known, to open up themselves to the Serbian population in an effort to battle discrimination against them.

The opening of ‘Romas, the Belgradians’, as the exhibition is titled, coincided with a two-day conference on ‘Serbia as a Multicultural Society’, most of which was dedicated to the problem of Romas.

To show that the government supports the integration of Romas into the society, Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica opened the conference and was its honorary chairman.

“The time has come for Romas to obtain their rights in every aspect” the final document coming out of the Belgrade conference said. “Those rights are guaranteed by the constitution of Serbia, but were deliberately neglected by the former government,” it adds.

Official statistics say that there are some 800,000 Romas living among Serbia’s 9.5 million people. But through neglect and discrimination, the Romas have never been integrated into the wider society nor are they economically powerful.

During the decade that Slobodan Milosevic ruled Yugoslavia, the lot of the Roma worsened.

“The decade under Milosevic was the worst part of the history of Gypsies (Romas), except for the German occupation in WW II,” Dragoljub Ackovic, president of the Roma Congress Party told IPS.

“Economically, culturally and politically we became the ethnic group without any rights,” he added.

According to available statistics from groups representing the Roma, 80 percent of all Romas are illiterate. Only four percent of them have managed to finish high school, and a couple of hundred have a university degree.

The Milosevic government “was indifferent towards its own people, so Romas were included too,” says Marina Dokmanovic, one of the organisers of Belgrade exhibition.

“While preparing the exhibition and co-ordinating the work with Roma groups, we found out that in the past decade many Roma children were pushed into the schools for disabled children because they didn’t speak Serbian. Some 80 percent of the pupils in those schools were perfectly normal and healthy Roma children. They ended up leaving school”.

Romas are hoping that with Milosevic gone – he was ousted last October by a popular uprising – that the new government will attempt to redress the wrongs perpetrated against them over the last 10 years.

The history of Romas in Serbia dates back to 1536, when a group of 300 came to live in the capital of Belgrade. They were exempt from taxes by Turkish rulers at that time, as they repaired ships in Belgrade’s shipyard and worked as blacksmiths.

The worst part of Roma history was during the WW II, when thousands of them were exterminated by the occupying German force.

Roma associations say that the younger generation wants to be educated and integrated in the modern Serbian society.

“We have to fight against stereotypes that Romas, olive-tanned and black haired Gypsies, are only able to play wonderful music, smuggle, travel around or do nothing,” says Petar Antic, a Roma rights activist here in Serbia. “In the past, Romas themselves contributed to the picture, but the time has come to end that.”

Within the changes planned for its legal system, the Serbian government is to take an important step. It will include Romas and their rights in the Constitution.

“We have made a comparative analysis of laws in neighbouring countries with large Roma populations, countries like Hungary, Romania and Macedonia,” said Dr Aleksandar Fira, a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences (SANU) and a retired judge of the Constitutional Court.

He said that the statistics show that there are some 10 million Romas in the area of central and south-eastern Europe. “We (Serbia) lag at least a decade behind them and urgent steps have to be taken soon. But laws are one thing and everyday practice is another,” he added.

Surveys have shown that prejudice against Romas remains strong in Serbian society. A SANU study on stereotypes of Romas in Serbia, which was presented at the conference by President Kostunica, showed that 79.5 percent of those surveyed would not marry a Roma, 68 percent thought Romas were lazy and irresponsible, and 57 percent said Romas could not be trusted.

“The population of this country has to fight a long battle against racial prejudice and negative stereotypes that prevail against Romas,” Dr Fira said. “It takes time”.