Free Tribe in a New Melting Pot

Our newspaper was told about this terrible - and largely unknown - problem by Kyiv Gypsies.

Boryslav MARKOVSKY, head of the Young Roma Association:

"We learned of the real genocide of Yugoslavian Gypsies when we were in Budapest. On coming back to Ukraine, we started to search for ways of getting in touch with Roma communities in Serbia. Telephone lines have been disrupted. Human-rights organizations told us that Gypsies' houses were standing empty, for their inhabitants had "moved away." The Roma are not allowed onto Ukraine-bound trains, nor can they "break through" Hungary: they are being denied entry and abusively called terrorists, though it is common knowledge that the Roma are pacifists. The first thing that suffered from this conflict was the Gypsy University, with huge archives, in Sarajevo. We applied to the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and Hungary to give the Roma shelter in this country. But we were told: 'Ukraine has enough Gypsies of its own.' All we need is that the state should make a decision to grant the Roma refugee status. There are many international, including religious, organizations prepared to offer them material aid. But, to start with, the state has to make some decision. For, when the bombs are falling on your heads, few people think about passports. And they will find it very hard here without the necessary papers."

Tetiana KOZIMYRENKO, hairdresser:

"I've got a daughter, a son, and two grandchildren. We are ready to squeeze and take in children and women to give them shelter. We have never been afraid of overcrowding, and all children are the same for us, both from close and distant families. Life in Ukraine is hard, but there is no war here. We could help the Serbian Gypsies whether Muslim or Orthodox to quickly learn Ukrainian and Russian, we would search for their relatives by means of our 'Gypsy telegraph.'"

Raisa NABARANCHUK, poetess writing in the Serv dialect of the Gypsy language:

"I've got a 19-year-old son and an apartment of my own. My family does not mind taking in people from Yugoslavia. Our women's club could prepare kids to go to school even this fall and involve women in work under our cultural program. If only the state gave permission!

"Europe settles the Gypsies, eternal travelers who do not recognize borders, in 'their places of compact residence.' This free tribe, adopting the religion of the country of residence, in fact remains a minority everywhere, often looked down upon and deprived of civil rights both on the levels of everyday life and officially. For the Gypsies do their best to preserve the image of a people that lives by its specific and exclusive laws. This is why they provoke enmity by or against their own will. They live dispersed, gather for their unofficial holidays, migrate irrespective of reservations, condemn mixed marriages as a breach of faith, and, begging on the street, very seldom turn to the authorities for help. In this country, too, their problems strike a chord with very many people. But can these problems be solved at all?

"Take, for example, the fear of Gypsy cheats. As far as I can judge by what my ingenuous children tell me, the former are still being used in kindergartens, along with the ogre, the policeman, the witch, and the wolf, to frighten. This fear arises not only due to a prejudiced horror at the Gypsies' hypnotic and spell-binding abilities but also due to certain disgust with their way of life. No help from the tear-jerking soap operas Yeseniya and The Gypsy or the endless interpretations of the story about a passionate Carmen or the rare stage adaptations of Pushkin's poem. Though there are monuments to Gypsies at Buchenwald and Babyn Yar (the Nazis subjected them to genocide along with the Jews), but the staid stereotype still remains. The Gypsies are really 'different,' for it is impossible to explain their actions either by the norms of culture or the customs of a civilized cohabitation. This is why almost all countries including our own try not to call them by their own name, Roma."

 Mistrust on the everyday-life level also engenders more complex problems. First of all, in the law. This is what we heard from Svitlana DAVYDA, a lawyer who has dealt with Roma problems for many years:

"Witch-hunting still exists, albeit invisibly, in our society. The Roma are also among the witches. They are hazed and sneered at in schools and sometimes have their grades reduced, they are often denied admission to state-run and fee-paying commercial universities and colleges, their job applications may be turned down even if they come with a lawyer. Our internal passport system does not comply with international norms and standards, so people without domicile registration, which the Roma often are, cannot seek to defend their civil and legal rights or engage in private business. And in the past few years, they have often fallen victim to legal fraud, signing, due to ignorance, various fake documents about Roma property.

"Under the Council of Europe definition (Resolution No, 563 of 1969), the Roma enjoy the status of nomads. Our state, however, finds it disadvantageous to recognize them as such, for in that case it would have to resettle them, build stationary camps, and open schools. Our police simply drive them out and away. Verkhovna Rada has never dealt with this problem, although what is needed from the state is not so much funding as a fixed status.

"Now there are four camps around Kyiv, which did not want to hand over their children to city Roma families even during severe frosts, for they think that the children must share the fate of their parents. Born in the forest, without any birth certificates, they at once find themselves in orphanages, which the Gypsies fear more than death itself. The child-custody bodies to which I turned on such occasions often reply, 'The Gypsies are unable to give children a normal upbringing.' Negative stereotypes are also fostered by the media. For instance, police criminal updates never mention the ethnicity of people except for the Roma. On the street, too, we see primarily the Gypsies who beg or tell fortunes for a living, and their number has been on the rise of late. There are many more Ukrainians who do the same, but they largely go unnoticed. However, there are also Roma intellectuals. Not only singers and actors, like the Roma Theater, but also second-generation higher educated people. They are not so many. There is also a middle class, those who want to study and not beg on the street. There are far more people like this.

"In Ukraine, most Roma live a sedentary life. However, a reverse process is now unfolding, caused by impoverishment. The majority of them reside dispersed, but there are also large settlements in Transcarpathia, Izmail, and Soroky. The Roma live there in a compact fashion, in the same district, which makes it possible to set up Roma schools. Uzhhorod also has a Roma school and has recently seen the first Roma newspaper published. But this does not save all of them. Ukraine does not have manuals of the Roma language which incorporates four dialects and three argots, while imported ones are very expensive, 50-60 hryvnias. Now, together with the Finnish National Directorate of Education, we are working on the translation of methods to teach the Roma language.

"The worst thing is mutual mistrust. The Roma will never tell anybody, even the people they have been working with for years, the whole truth about their problems. And they are sure to keep silent about some things for a long time."

PS. In spite of such a bouquet of their own problems, Ukrainian Gypsies are ready to take in Roma refugees from Yugoslavia. So far, they have been officially told, "Not desirable,"

Few if any are optimistic about the future of separated Roma communities. Will the Gypsies themselves accept integration into society, will they manage to stand up for their rights in generally-accepted ways, will they create material values? No doubt, the Gypsies must gradually win the affection of the peoples among whom they live. But our society is also burdened with serious problems, so will it be able to give a chance to ethnic minorities by recognizing their right to an atypical model of development? Perhaps if certain steps are taken, there will be fewer scowls and malicious whispers at a people who look so different.