Human Rights for the Romani

I spent some time with a Native American friend of mine this summer and learned a great deal about her heritage and theories on life and time. She taught me something that resounded with me, that many Native Americans feel that events in time will always repeat, that life is much like the spiral of a sea shell. As she explained this idea, I began to think about events in history within the past 100 years I'm beginning to think that they have it right.

Take recent news. Over the summer, two ministers who were conducting services were beaten by neo-Nazis who were marching through streets where they knew outdoor worship services occurred. No arrests were made. Families have been burned out of their homes, only to be gunned down in the street when they tried to escape. No charges were filed. Children are being threatened when they've tried to go to school. No police investigation.

Italy stopped its program of fingerprinting and photographing, mostly because the EU decided it should just maybe DO something. France is still deporting, but no one notices now because President Sarkozy has stopped bragging about his policy. Germany is also working on deportations. England is evicting Dale Farm, with one local politician claiming that the Human Rights Act should be repealed so that terrorists and Gypsies couldn't use it to protect themselves.

Does it sound like the 1930s to you? It does to me and, frankly, it frightens me. It should frighten everyone. It should outrage everyone. But, more troubling, it doesn't. Why not?

"If bad things are happening to the Gypsies, then they must have done something to deserve it," is what I've heard most often. They usually have no idea what "they" could have done that "they" should be deprived of their basic human rights, but it must have been something.

Shows like My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding don't help. Perhaps if the producer, who claims to have done her homework (yet doesn't think that Professor Ian Hancock is a "real Gypsy") would title the show appropriately to "My Big Fat Traveller Wedding as Staged by an Outsider", maybe people would understand that what they are viewing is, for the most part, fiction and the rest is staged.

MBFGW is not the first. Criminal Minds, Roadkill, and now, NCIS:LA have really confused the public as to the real identity of a Romani. At least NCIS:LA is using the word Romani as opposed to Gypsy, but that, in my opinion, only adds to the problem. I am Romani. I do not have a red wagon wheel tattoo on my wrist to identify me. I think the SS did that, though.

I ask you to consider what you are watching and then consider what you are not being shown. Challenge what you see and do more research. Ask and challenge. Consider the idea that people feel that it is right and justified to deny a group of people their basic human rights. If you don't like what you discover. Act.

"All that is required for evil to prevail is that good men do nothing." -- Edmund Burke.