Awareness of the centuries of discrimination against the Roma—the ethnic group often mistakenly called Gypsies—is on the rise in Eastern Europe, according to a leading scholar.
The people's plight has been one of neglect and discrimination since arriving in Eastern Europe in the 1300s, said Carol Silverman, an anthropologist at the University of Oregon in Eugene who studies the Roma.
Often mischaracterized as free-spirited travelers who lie and steal their way around the world, the Roma have been enslaved, persecuted, and left to fend for themselves on the margins of society, she said.
Though an official count is impossible to determine, at least hundreds of thousands were killed during the Holocaust alongside an estimated six million Jews.
Today most Roma live in shantytowns isolated from education, health care, and secure employment, Silverman said.
But with the fall of Communism in much of Eastern Europe, a new generation of Romani leaders has emerged to advocate social integration and legal protection.
"And the way to do that is to call attention to long patterns of discrimination, lack of access to education, lack of access to jobs, systematic discrimination in jobs, and so on," Silverman said today in broadcast of the Pulse of the Planet radio program.
(This news series and Pulse of the Planet receive funding from the National Science Foundation.)
Voice of Millions
A key agenda for Romani activists is to document the true number of Roma living in Europe.
"Trying to get a full picture of Roma presence and number is very, very hard all across Eastern Europe," Silverman told National Geographic News.
"Official numbers are about half the scholarly estimate."
|
SOURCES AND RELATED WEB SITES
|
