The Price of Roma Identity

Be my friend!

AIM Sarajevo, July 26, 2001

Using letters she learned only when she was 14, H.S., a Sarajevo Roma girl wrote: "A month ago my brother enrolled me in school. My brother told me to stand in front of the school entrance. I went. When the teacher saw me he asked: 'Would you like to go to school?' I said I would. The teacher told me to go inside. I went inside and sat down. I felt good. Now I am happy and doing fine in school." A year prior to this, she occasionally attended a workshop hosted by a Sarajevo non-government organization bringing together Roma children who are not going to school and trying to teach them to read and write. H.S. did not come very often because her mother thought this "job" was not bringing the family anything and was taking her away from her regular chores -- cleaning, begging etc. H.S. started going to school only after her much younger brothers (6 and 10 years old) enrolled in the first grade at the same time.

A Roma boy, two years her senior, recently said that now when he is aware of the Declaration of Children's Rights and its meaning he knows that he could have achieved much more had he finished school. But, he added: "Had I spent 10 years in school, my mother, my father and my five brothers and sisters would have starved to death. As it is, I begged, and occasionally stole something, really nothing big, and we all survived."

A single Roma mother says her greatest desire is for her 11-year old daughter "to go to school and live in normal, clean surroundings." She is unemployed, and her daughter is blind. They often have nothing to eat, and no one is assisting them. On the other hand a 19-year old Roma boy (he is, in fact, from a mixed marriage -- his father is Roma and his mother is not) who is a student at the Sarajevo School of Law and receives a scholarship from an international organization assisting exclusively Roma law students, doesn't like to be referred to as a Roma, or to accept work in an organization involved in facilitating the social adjustment of Roma: "My friends are my fellow students, and boys and girls from my neighborhood; I have nothing to do with the Roma, I am not one of them," he used to say until about half a year ago. But when certain non-Roma offered him some literature on the Roma, on their customs and unwritten laws which explain to a great extent their currents habits and their way of life -- he became a Roma!

Who are the Roma, then? Are they truly different or is it just prejudice? As a rule they have no regular place of residence, live in improvised shelters, have no steady job or regular income... They live in isolation which some claim they chose themselves in order to avoid assimilation. Research and surveys show that non-Roma, to a lesser or a greater extent, say they "are biased in relation with Roma people," that they "know nothing of their culture," but almost 98 percent of those polled said they would like to learn more. At the same time, very few Roma can explain why traveling Roma living in towns are untidy and uneducated. The story is that according to an unwritten rule Roma are not supposed to bathe in water that is not running, because it would mean bathing in their own filth. Moving from one camp to another when they happen to run into a river, traveling Roma drink from it at its source, take the water for cooking a bit downstream, and even farther down they do their dishes. Still farther they use the water to do their laundry, then to let their horses drink, and finally to let their women bathe. Experts on their way of life say that the high percentage of illiteracy among them is due to frequent changes of residence, but also to attempts to avoid assimilation. This manner of "preserving one's identity" is frequently the cause of their downfall or very poor quality of living.

As of recently, a trend of Roma self-awareness has become noticeable in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as their wish to change their way of life. First of all, many mothers would like to send their children to school. Unfortunately, they can rarely afford that because Roma families already have trouble making ends meet and can hardly afford to educate their children. The number of Roma associations in the country, however, is growing (there are seven in Tuzla, three in Bihac, two in Banjaluka and Bijeljina, one in Mostar, Gorazde, Modrica, Travnik...) which are establishing mutual links, as well as links with other such associations in the former Yugoslavia and even the wider region. Save for rare exceptions, however, such as in the case of the Zenica Roma association which this year took a group of children for a vacation in Croatia, these organizations are mostly powerless, being led by untrained people who cannot explain to their "brothers" why such associations are so important. According to the 1991 census, some sources said there were about 9,000 Roma in Bosnia, and according to another, there were between 30,000 and 60,000. According to the Bosnian Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees, there were even 300,000, which made them the most numerous minority in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is believed that during the war some 100,000 Roma left the country, and many changed their places of residence. There is no data on the number of killed and wounded. It is believed that about 6,000 of them now live in Sarajevo, that there are 108 Roma families in the region of Kakanj, or 700 individuals, and another 200 in the municipality of Travnik. A number of them does not want to be considered Roma. All this data is quoted from a paper compiled by the Bosnian Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees, which has also prepared a bill on the minority rights. The bill, which is in the second stage of review, stipulates that minority groups which account for less than 3 percent of the population have the right to elect two representatives (one from each entity) to the Bosnian Parliament's House of Representatives. But who is going to accurately register all the Roma?

For two and a half years the Be My Friend organization has been operating in Sarajevo, supported by various international institutions -- currently the European Union -- realizing a program of strengthening "the menagerial skills of the Roma associations." "We are helping them to learn to operate their associations, to prepare projects and lobby for financial support. Sometimes the associations are headed by illiterate people, who could change something if they knew how. No one is backing them, no one is lobbying in their favor, they are not creating a network inside Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it is much easier for them to establish ties with associations in other countries, which are on a much higher level of organization. For the time being the associations are mostly powerless, but we should work and engage young people," says director Nedzida Sljivo. She adds that the organization's activists did research on Roma communities, asking their members to point out urgent problems themselves as well as ways to resolve them, to say what they themselves could do and what the Be My Friend organization, and for what purposes the assistance of donors should be sought... The priority is education, say Sljivo and explains that the next step is to determine who is going to give what -- first mothers should free their children of household chores and begging, the BPM will find teachers, clothing, textbooks and school supplies, and then they will embark on searching the donors for the beginners' reading and writing course... "But there has to be a will to do it," she says, and AIM's reporter got the impression that such a concrete campaign was much more useful than the numerous fruitless seminars, round tables and studies on minority rights held throughout the world several years back.

The BMP has organized several workshops and preparatory classes for children of various age groups not attending school -- for reading, writing, conversation about children's rights... The coordinators monitoring the workshops believe that the children would do much better if their parents would let them attend more regularly, that is, free them of their "household chores." But they all believe that the awakening of the desire to learn will help bring a change of consciousness, as was the case with the young man we mentioned in this report. There already are Roma representatives who want parents who refuse to let their children go to school punished, and many parents are changing their views as well. Nadzida Sljivo says that the state should show good will to save this minority group, even if that means introducing quotas in education. Due to many factors, little Roma can hardly do better in elementary school; thus the state should set aside 20 percent, or at least 2 percent of places in secondary schools, even in colleges, for them. The same could be done in companies creating new jobs -- a certain number of jobs should be reserved for minorities, primarily for Roma people as the most vulnerable.

Not only is the Roma right to education endangered: their ownership rights are almost non-existent. In Bijeljina, for example, some 80 Roma families who were quite well-off before the war, cannot restore their property even six years after the signing of the Dayton agreement. Their large and beautiful houses are occupied by other people, or some institutions. The owners have been pleading in vain with the local authorities for the return of their property. At the end of June, in Mostar, according to eyewitnesses, a bulldozer covered a three-year old child with earth! The machine was used to level the Roma Bisce Polje settlement. Jugoistok municipality, which controls the lot on which the Roma have been living for who knows how long, sold it to an entrepreneur who wants to build a supermarket. The municipality promised the Roma to allow them to use another site for their shackles -- a swampy region where the soil is damp all year long. Simultaneously in Sarajevo the construction of a Roma settlement at the Crni Vrh location, where they have been living from time immemorial, is constantly delayed. In Zenica, the local Roma association says that the authorities simply support begging, because they do not even intend to arrest the organizers of child begging rings. They say the authorities and police are well aware of the identities of the people who every morning load a number of children in vans, deploy them throughout the town, or, over the weekend, in other larger cities in Bosnia, to beg.

It is said that the degree of civilization of a society is measured by the extent to which it upholds minority rights. The lack of such respect in Bosnia and Herzegovina is not a novelty: one should also think of the number of refugees in the country. But the Roma are not numerous and no one ever asks them for anything. They make it into the newspapers only when their children steal and are caught. Does anyone care about the dreams of the little Roma girl waiting for a coin or two to be slipped into her palm? Or about the Roma twins who play accordions in the Sarajevo trams for their meager rewards?

Rubina Cengic (AIM)