While one might have hoped that Anti-Gypsy-ism would by now be a thing of the past this is, unfortunately, not so.
Anti-Gypsy-ism is alive and well in the European Union, and here not just in the new member states, as well as in the United States.
A child, for example, vanishes, while on vacation with her parents in Portugal, in May 2007, and immediately everyone, especially the media, and here especially the gutter press, accuses Gypsies of having abducted the little four-year-old blond girl from Britain.
Why? For what reason?
Well, because the Gadje actually do believe the concocted fairy stories that Gypsies steal children, that’s why. And doesn’t everyone – so at least the media presents the case – know that the favorite ones that Gypsies like to steal are little blond boys and girls?
It is and was exactly the same when the selfsame gutter press screams about hordes of Gypsies coming into the country, as soon as the countries of their residence would be member states of the European Union. Well, that did not actually happen. The gullible Gadje, however, do believe all those stories and many still believe that thousands upon thousands of Rom from Bulgaria, Romania, and such places have come to Britain. Well, there are a few here who, unfortunately, engage in begging and, possibly, pick pocketing, but as for thousands; well, no.
Attacks on Romani in Eastern Europe, even in European Union member states, are common place, with even politicians of such countries being involved in the attacks, on a verbal level at least, and the “crowning glory” must be Volen Siderov of Bulgaria, a presidential candidate apparently even no less, who openly called for Gypsies to me made into soap, in a style that smacked of Nazi extermination policies. One would have hoped that such sentiments and the like had disappeared with the demise of Hitler's Third Reich but, as we can all see, this is not the case, unfortunately, and was rather wishful thinking and no such thing has happened as far as the Gypsy, the Rom, are concerned.
In truth, despite of the very fact that Siderov made such statements, and that the official government of Bulgaria called for the sterilization of all Gypsy women, Bulgaria was still admitted into the folds of the European Union, no questions asked. This shows that the EU has the same disregard for the Rom, as all those other countries that breach the human rights of the Romani People, and pays nothing but lip service to equal rights for the Gypsy.
We, as a People, must stand up now against this trend of Anti-Gypsy-ism and be counted but I also know that I am wasting my breath to call for such a thing and action.
Why? Because most of our People fall into one of two categories: those that wish to hide their ethnicity, their origins, and then those who, while doing the first or not, could care less and could not be bothered as to what is happening to our People as long as it does not affect them and theirs.
Here we will do well to recall the words of the poem by Pastor Dietrich Bonnhoefer and heed the call that if we do not speak out now and stand up and be counted when they come for us there may be no one left to speak out and fight on our behalf.
Think about it...
© M V Smith, June 2007
