Help for maligned Roma

Here are some notes from the recent Roma Health Forum, because I’m guessing you did not know there was such a thing, or why it might be needed.

The purpose of the forum was to discuss the specific needs of the Roma refugee claimants who are here; we need to know who they are and what they require, just as we need to hear from the social service agencies that serve them.

In attendance: 200 people from 118 agencies.

Here is one compelling reason for such a meeting: a couple of years ago, in one week, some 250 Roma kids registered in our schools, mainly in Parkdale; the school board was, as you might guess, unprepared.

Another reason for the forum: the Toronto Board of Health is tracking the effects of racialization on the health of this city’s residents.

Yet another reason? Canada’s current immigration policies are confusing, punitive and, depending on your point of view, racist.

Gina Csanyi-Robah is executive director of the Roma Community Centre, which is the only centre of its kind anywhere in the world. She began by showing slides to illustrate the usual hysterical and historical stereotypes: the Roma are fortune tellers, psychics, witches, bogeymen and — with a pop cultural nod to Sonny and Cher — gypsies, tramps and thieves.

Ms. Csanyi-Robah also made an elegantly restrained reference to the ignorant, ill-informed, hateinflected anti-Roma tirade recently sputtered by the TV idiot Ezra Levant; you can guess if she thinks Sun Media’s apology was enough. I do not. She dated the diaspora’s start from AD 987 and noted there are Roma settlements in Turkey dating from the 12th century. Yes, people do settle down when they aren’t hounded from pillar to post.

From my own reading: the word “rom” means “man.” If you want a linguistic parallel from the Arctic, the word “Inuk” means “person.”

There is a belief — utterly mistaken — that the Roma come from Egypt; hence that offensive word, gypsy. In fact, the source of the diaspora is India.

There are 15 million Roma worldwide. The French refer to the Roma as tsigane, derived from the Greek word for untouchable. What has this meant, historically? Ostracism, enslavement, expulsion.

In France, at one time, it was permissible to kill Romani boys. In Hungary, it has been illegal for the Roma to speak their language or practise their culture; at one time, Roma children were seized and placed on work farms. The number of Roma who died during the Holocaust is estimated at between half a million and one million people, but some sources suggest as many as two million, or half the population, died.

The situation now, and the reason why the Roma want to come here?

You may wish to consider the rise of the neo-Nazis in Europe; outbreaks of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo; anti-Roma riots in France, Bulgaria and Finland; fingerprinting and racial profiling in Italy; the isolation of Roma women in the maternity wards of some European hospitals.

And here, if you feel yourself shrugging, you may substitute “Jew” or “aboriginal” or “black” for “Roma” and read the above again. The result? For the Roma, it has meant fewer opportunities for education and jobs, and less access to health care; as a result, the life expectancy of the Roma is 10-15 years less than it is for the average European. The situation here? More later. jfiorito@thestar.ca