President chastised for remarks

Human right groups sent an open letter to Romanian President Traian Basescu condemning his remarks on Roma people.

On a visit to Slovenia November 3, Romanian President Basescu said: “There is a problem that makes it difficult to integrate the nomad Roma: very few of them are willing to work and many of them live traditionally on what they steal.”

The following is an open letter signed by 59 activists and organisations sent to the President:

The signatory organisations and people strongly protest against the misinformed and discriminatory content of the Romanian President Traian Basescu’s declarations made during his official visit in Slovenia, on November 3, 2010. The president talked about Nomad Roma and presented them difficult to be integrated, unwilling to work and delinquents, by tradition.

This recentracist declaration of the President Basescu is not something new, only just another episode of a permanent reality: Roma being stigmatised by high representatives of Romanian State. In 2007 the President used a sexist and racist manner of addressing to a journalist. Other politicians were examples of racist declarations: Prime Minister Tariceanu, MPs Vasile Dancu and Ludovic Orban, Foreign Affairs Minister Baconschi, just to name a few.

Therefore, the racist speech of high level politicians in Romania has a long history and, unfortunately, it has been partially and inefficiently sanctioned by the competent authorities. This type of message, supported by partial or fake information regarding the Roma, reveals a lack of responsibility towards the contents and deeply-rooted prejudice and also enforces generalised hatred and negative stereotypical perception of the Roma ethnicity. Acceptance and tacitly approval of such speech is inadmissible. Association of crimes with an ethnic group is a sever violation of domestic and international law provisions and fuels a new wave of extremism and intolerance against the Roma in many European countries. A recent study shows that 38% of the Romanians fear for their safety now that the Roma are coming back from other EU countries and 67% of Romanians would not accept a Roma member in their family.  

The continuous and sustained declarations of the president that Roma in Romania are nomads are not true. In Romania (and, generally, in the Eastern Europe), the Roma were forcibly settled down during the communist period. Numerous studies and reports show these facts, including a report endorsed by President Basescu, namely the Presidential Commission Report for studying the communist dictatorship. Contrary to President’s declarations, the Roma that exercise their right to free movement and go from Romania to the Western Europe do not lead a nomadic life. The causes of Roma mobility are described by EU Fundamental Rights Agency in a 2009 research as classified in two categories: „push and pull factors“ – on one hand, poverty and marginalisation push people away in search for a life even a little bit better than what they have home and, on the other hand, the ones with a better social-economic level are pulled in by further development; and those are exactly the same factors that determined millions of Romanian citizens to migrate to the West.

The fact that the President of Romania has strong prejudice against the Roma and, in the same time, he is misinformed and fundaments his opinions on personal experience unverified by a fact documentation show how grounded reasons are to believe that Romanian state would strengthen the Roma integration policies.

We urge that such discourse is sanctioned by the competent institutions, including political sanctioning of people who promote a denigrating and stigmatising discourse. To this end, we recommend Romanian parties to adopt the Charter of European Political Parties for a non-racist society.

We also urge that the Romanian state to undertake, in reality, its commitments and policies aiming on social inclusion of Roma people, on combating Roma discrimination and on ensuring rights and equal opportunities to Romanian citizens of Roma ethnicity, in their capacity of fully citizens.