April 8, 2012

This post comes to us via ERIO's Weekly E-news update. OPES encourages you to consider now how you will celebrate 8 April, 2012. Consider organizing something within your community, organization, or school.

"8 April" Roma Nation Day Protests Against Anti-Gypsy Racism

FORTY YEARS after the lst World Romani Congress anti-Gypsy racism across Europe is at its worst. Not far from the London location of that historic gathering riot police armed with stun-guns recently stormed the barricades of the Dale Farm estate. That violent assault failed to break up the community and a hundred families continue to cling on to the land they own. Dale Farm is being gradulaly re-established through claims for illegal property damage, fresh planning appeals and a high court case which could force Basildon District Council to provide for those made homeless by their pitiless but unsuccessful 20 million euro ethnic-cleansing operation. The London Congress proclaimed the opening date 8 April to be Roma Nation Day. Over past decades it has been celebrated by several thousands of event in sixty countries, including India. They have been both festive and demonstrative. Occasionally they have gone off message by adopting such titles as International Roma Day and even, in the l980s, Cigandan. Most notable include that attended by President Kostunica of Yugoslavia at the junction of the Sava and Danube, when Roma victims of the fascist genocide were remembered. Big demonstrations have been seen over the years in Sibiu, Belgrade, Skopje, Prague and Budapest, and in German and Italian towns following forced deporations and destruction of camps. Attempts to link up the celebrations around the world under the theme of River Ceremonies brough about gatherings beside the Rhein, Adige, Ghaghar, Garonne, Vardar, Volga,Thames and a dozen other major rivers. There was too the 8 April Wave of Light commencing with the lighting of a candle by the Dalai Lama, visited by Prof. Ian Hancock. Another year the Millennium of the Exodus from India was remembered when veteran of the lst Congress Juan Ramirez reminded us: "We have to fight even harder today against injustice and racism." Because of the worsening situation - further murders in Hungary, relentless deportations by Germany and France, and brutal evictions in the UK, Italy and Serbia - the need for united action and protest has become ever more urgent.