Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic and the EU-bound country's ombudsman on Friday slammed a recent protest against Roma families as shameful and discriminatory.
Earlier this week some 100 people protested in Skabrnje, a village near the coastal town of Zadar, against the arrival of two Roma families. The families wanted to settle in the village after they bought some 5,000 square metres (53,820 square feet) of land there.
The protesters told local media they worried the Roma would “steal and collect garbage”.
“As long as one can remember there were no Serbs or Romas in Skabrnje and it will remain that way in future,” one of the protestors was quoted as saying.
“There is no room for such statements in 21st century Croatia,” ombudsman Jurica Malcic said in a statement on Friday.
He slammed both the protest and the offer of Skabrnje's mayor to “buy off the Romas' land only that they could leave” as discriminatory.
Some 17 members of the two Roma families, who were under police protection, left the village late Thursday saying they feared for their lives, national television reported.
33 comments
The above is an excerpt from an article in the South African IOL News, because that was the only reporting of the event in English that I could find.
Anyway, I'd like to raise a glass to this sad occasion - my country (Croatia)'s debut on the FSTDT site.
And then they wonder why "those people" don't settle down and live "normal" lives like everyone else.
Also, it's clear the Ustaše lives on, after all.
God, Vman, I'm sorry. If there's any consolation, Croatia isn't the only country where this is going on. I suppose if I were a Gypsy (Roma still sounds like a long tomato to me), I might rather come to the Western Hemisphere, where most folks have other groups to maltreat.
"Gypsy" wasn't a slur until recently, since people I knew admitted to the affiliation. Use and abuse has doubtless tainted the term. The problem with "Roma" is that too many people think it refers to: 1. Romans; 2. Romanians; 3. Long tomatoes.
Those from Iberia sometimes denominate themselves "caló", clearly from the Hindostani "kalú", Dravidian. That word isn't free of taint, either, and as long as the underlying definition isn't free of taint, neither will any name remain so.
Being a non-land-holding group in Europe has had sad consequences for the Roma for centuries. They were more or less forced into the stereotypical professions most people associate with them, and lack of a way to earn money made them more likely to steal. Having lived in various parts of Europe for 6 years, I can say that the Roma are still widely disliked for begging, pickpocketing, and even pimping their own children. Nothing's going to change until they find better ways to earn a living.
Landlessness is a large part of it. If the appelation, "caló", indeed derives from "kalú" (Dravidian), the ancestors of these people were dispossessed from their soil in India by Indo-Iranian speaking invaders over three thousand years ago, and have had no homeland since. Such people are always marginalized, as the Jews were, and assimilation is no defense until idenity becomes untraceable. "Gypsy" is a name given them by Europeans who thought they were Egyptian; by modern times, many believed it themselves. As with Jews and Moriscos, they were viewed as heretics. People forced to live as outlaws often become outlaws. The confusian of Roma and Romanian is doubly unfortunate because of the murderous level of prejudice against them in Romania, where the nobles once kept them as chained slaves (even though the average Romanian would never disdain the great composer Dinicu, who came of that stock)
@Nicole
Eastern Europe needs to move on. Unfortunately there are parts that never learned that the Holocaust was an evil thing. Some people in former Yugoslavian states have unfortunately held onto their murderous xenophobia all the way through the Tito years until they had a chance to machine-gun the local minorities.
Not that I like or approve of xenophobia in any way, but it's kind of refreshing to see that it doesn't just happen in the United States. Sure, we have quite a bit of hatred of people who are different, but it's not just an American thing. Looks like the entire world could use some education.
*sigh* 21st Century. You'd think we'd 'all' have gotten over the 'racist dumbfuck' stage by now..
@Doubting Thomas
@Vman
@ whatever:
"Eastern Europe needs to move on. Unfortunately there are parts that never learned that the Holocaust was an evil thing. Some people in former Yugoslavian states have unfortunately held onto their murderous xenophobia all the way through the Tito years until they had a chance to machine-gun the local minorities."
-> true, though as I said to Colgate in another thread, our Jews generally weren't bothered after WWII (which got most of them murdered). The Ustaše racial laws against Jews were just a consequence of being subordinated to the Germans AFAIK.
But the extermination of Serbs (which was entirely the Ustaše's own initiative!) and Roma was backed by genuine hatred among our extreme nationalists. Most of this Serb-hate was a result of 20 years of political violence and authoritarianism by the Serb ruling elite that dominated pre-WWII Yugoslavia, though some of it (mutual) even predated Yugoslavia.
{continued}
{continuation}
As you might imagine, the events of WWII in turn stoked the hatred of Croats among a number of Serbs.
Also, note that Ustaše and Chetnik extremist ideologies weren't a response to each other, but rather came to power in parallel, with the fall of Yugoslavia to Germany & Italy. And, being on the same Axis side, the two movements ironically never fought except IIRC one local skirmish towards the end of the war. What's more, Chetniks even had treatment in hospitals in the NDH (Ustaše Croatia), and could receive pensions from the NDH state if they died in combat against Partisans!
That's a simplified account of what happened, but it should do :)
I am reminded of the episode of the Simpsons where they banned sugar in Springfield.
That aside, it is really messed up to print sugar with pictures of Hitler on it.
Also folks, there's one more thing I should say about the context of the quote in the OP. You'll notice that the place of the event is kabrnje (or as we usually call the village, kabrnja).
That such a thing would happen in this village didn't surprise me, as it's pretty much known as one of the most nationalistic places in Croatia.
The main reason this is the case is a single event from the start of the '90s war in Croatia (known as the Homeland War here).
On 18 Nov 1991, coincidentally the exact same day as the fall of Vukovar, Serb paramilitary and military forces entered kabrnja and massacred several dozen people, nearly all of them civilians. Those who survived... are understandably rather bitter about the whole thing. It in no way justifies some of them being hateful bigots, but does explain that quy in the quote bashing the Serbs.
It has a wikipedia article you can read if you wish:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0kabrnja_massacre
@Doubting Thomas:
I've seen some of what the world has to offer when idiots gather.
That, people, was something to remember.
Seriously, it's like half of the people in that thread were criminally insane. I had never seen such a concentration of idiotic national posturing coupled with pure, undiluted hate. I kind of wish I knew where that comment thread was xD
@Vman , regarding Hitler sugar
Considering the comments here, it's probably best if those aren't made. Almost nobody would get the joke.
And, indeed, one of the few memories I have of my very early youth in Poland is my grandmother warning me to behave or the Gypsies will kidnap me. I wouldn't be surprised if grandmothers there are still saying that, 30 years later. Pretty sad that an entire culture can be literally transformed into a boogeyman, even in this modern world.
Flah> wouldn't get the joke? Sorry, but what joke? O.O
Do you mean the 'Hitler ate sugar' trope, or am I missing something completely?
The word gypsy has probably fallen out of use because it is inaccurate and applied widely to different groups of people which are not connected. In my area there were people called gypsies, who were not of Roma blood, but simply had no home, and lived itinerant lives by buying and selling. They may have bought into the gypsy identity by adopting "gypsy" traits to identify themselves as a distinct group... possibly to alleviate any inferiority complex they were goven by mainstream society. This probably happened in a lot of places.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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