Posted by Hindus have urged Lithuania to urgently empower and integrate its vulnerable Roma community, who reportedly face blatant discrimination and social exclusion.
Acclaimed Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, said that according to reports Roma still suffered from prejudice and ill-treatment, substandard or inadequate access to education, healthcare, housing, etc.
According to recent Amnesty International Report 2009 on Lithuania: “Unemployment rates among Roma remained several times higher than among ethnic Lithuanians, and living conditions in Roma settlements were sometimes below minimum standards, lacking electricity and heating as well as drinking water and sanitation facilities.”
Human Rights Report 2008 on Lithuania published by US Department of State says that Romani community “continued to experience problems; including discrimination in access to education, housing, healthcare and other services; in employment (an unemployment rate of 50 percent); and in contacts with police.”
Zed pointed out that effective implementation, firm commitment and strong political will was needed to address the multiple dimensions of their social exclusion and poverty. Roma inclusion and integration programs needed to immediately take off the ground providing them with better health and education avenues, higher economic opportunities, sources of empowerment and participation, etc., Zed added.
It was moral obligation of Lithuania to improve the plight of its disadvantaged Roma population, Rajan Zed said and added that all religious groups of Lithuania should also come out in support of the cause of this distinct ethnic and cultural group of Roma, because religion taught us to help the helpless.
Zed urged that Lithuania, the country with a colorful history whose empire once stretched from the Baltic to Black Sea, one of the fastest growing economies in the European Union, and with abundant natural treasures like enchanting Curonian Spit, should do more to uplift its Roma brothers/sisters.
Hinduism is oldest and third largest religion of the world with about one billion adherents and moksha (liberation) is its ultimate goal.
Lithuanian Roma: between History and Memory
by Aušra Simoniukštytė
The article purposes to overview historical investigations of the Roma community in Lithuania, covering the period from 15th till the middle of the 20th century. Also, on the basis of the Roma’s life stories collected in different regions of Lithuania, it intends to uncover Roma perspective on historical events of the 20th century.
Historical and linguistic evidence, as well as field research data, call into question the popular image of the Roma as unrooted wanderers, strangers alien to Lithuanian culture. At least one Roma group calling itself litóvska romį (or pólska romį in the Vilnius region) could be considered a historical ethnic minority of Lithuania living in the country since the 15th century. The Polish romologist Lech Mróz has discovered the use of the ethnonyms “Lithuanian”, “Polish”, “Hungarian” and “Wallachian” Roma in historical documents of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the 17th century. Mróz argues that historical documents give enough evidence of early ethnic and social differentiation among the Roma in Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Russian romologist N. Demeter also suggests that the territory of roaming of one Roma group usually rarely exceeds 300-500 square kilometers, and only some very exceptional circumstances may induce them to leave their accustomed locality. This explains the relatively slow rate of historical migration of Roma from India to Europe and ethnic diversification of Roma all over Europe. Roaming within the accustomed territory was a form of adaptation strategy in societies, usually unfriendly towards Roma.
Interviews with litóvska as well as pólska romį done by the author reveal strong attachment of the informants towards their “homeland”, i.e. roaming territories of their family. According to the informants, the interwar period, every family used to travel within these territories that were considered “their own”. Informants easily enumerate in detail the names of towns and villages covered by their “homeland” territories, sometimes several localities were listed as the informant’s “place of birth”. Specifically, these territories were chosen for settling down during the period of forceful sedentarization started by the Soviets in 1956. Dead relatives were usually buried in the cemeteries situated on the family’s wandering territory.
The 2001 census estimates the Roma population in Lithuania at 2571. However, this figure could be inaccurate to some extent. According to the author’s field research data, Roma population in Lithuania consists of three ethnic groups: litóvska (litoucka, litovķcka) romį (Lithuanian Roma), lotfķtka romį (Latvian Roma) and kotliįry. Specifically, the Roma group calling itself pólska romį (Polish Roma) lives in the Vilnius region, but the dialect they speak, the same set of customary laws and the way of living allows us to bracket them in the category of Roma living in other regions of Lithuania and calling themselves litóvska romį. Litóvska romį and lotfķtka romį are catholics, but kotliįry that have arrived to Lithuania, mostly from Moldova, just after the WWII, are ortodox. There are also some families that call themselves fliśki („German Roma“), however, during the interviews they were given to say that fliśki is a family name or the nįcija (Roma group with distinct ethnic identity). The author suggests that fliśki could be the last survivors of the Roma ethnic group that had been living in borderland with Germany and Koenisberg (nowadays Kaliningrad) region. Fliśki were almost exterminated during the WWII. However, there are still too few investigations done on Roma genocide to check this assumption.
It is usually assumed that Roma entered the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from Poland. When the Roma made their first appearance in ethnic Lithuania it is not known exactly, but investigators assume that it happened not later than the middle of the 15th century. Authors surveying the history of the Roma in the Grand Duchy usually cite, as the first piece of direct evidence for the presence of Roma in this country, a privilege issued on May 25, 1501 in Vilnius by the Polish King and Lithuanian Grand Duke Alexander, legally regulating the situation of the Roma in the Lithuanian State. However, on May 25, 1501, the date of signature of the privilege, Alexander was not yet the King of Poland. The Polish investigator of Romani history and culture, Lech Mróz, conjectures that the privilege must have been forged by some group of Roma. Extorting written guarantees of safety and even forging royal safeguards were a few of the strategies that were used by the Roma in Western and Central Europe. But even allowing for the fact that Alexander’s privilege was a forgery, we must still accept that, by the 16th century, the Roma had already established themselves in the Grand Duchy.
Many investigators emphasise that on their arrival in the Grand Duchy, the Roma found the general climate in this country very favorable. Quite liberal legislation of the Grand Duchy, in comparison with other European countries and the tolerant attitude of society at large, with regard to the Roma, were the outcome of several factors. The Grand Duchy was in itself a multinational, multicultural and multidenominational country. The addition of one more ethnic group to this medley was not as noticeable or exceptional an event as it was in other, culturally more homogeneous countries. A circumstance of no small significance for the situation of the Roma in the Grand Duchy was the political structure of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. From the 16th century onward, the nobility and the gentry gained more and more influence on the public life of the country. In the course of time, the gentry began to view itself as the true leader of the country, to be restrained by nobody. The power of the central authorities was virtually hamstrung, and the resulting situation was profitable rather than harmful to the Roma.
Formally, strict equality reigned among the gentry, irrespective of rank and wealth. This ‘gentry democracy’ allowed the Romani leaders, endowed with privileges, to achieve a status almost equal to that of the landless gentry, at least in the early 16th century. The situation began to change after 1557, when the first decree outlawing the Roma was issued in Poland. The Second Lithuanian Statute (1566) made a clear distinction between settled and vagrant Roma. The latter were insistently urged to give up their itinerant way of life and to settle down on the lands of the ‘good squires’. They were threatened, in case of non-compliance, with expulsion from the country. This double state policy towards settled and vagrant Roma, legislated also in the Third Lithuanian Statute (1588), most likely had encouraged inner stratification of Roma community reflected in the documents of the 17th-18th centuries. Many a Roma had, by then, given up his vagrant way of life to settle down in some townlet and to take up a handicraft.
In the 17th century, in an attempt to improve the efficiency of tax collection from the Gyspies and to establish at least some minimal degree of control over the Romani community in the Polish-Lithuanian State, the authorities instituted the office of ‘Gypsy King’. The first two ‘kings’ appointed by the Royal Chancery between 1624 and 1652 were probably Roma, but in later times this office was reserved for Polish flives or Lithuanian nobles. Unlike that of the ‘Gypsy King’, the office of ‘elder of the Gypsies’, instituted by the local nobility, existed only in Lithuania. ‘Elder of the Gypsies’ were all of Romani descent.
The state policy towards the Roma had changed after the demise of the Polish-Lithuanian State in 1795, when almost all the lands of the Grand Duchy fell to Russia. The Roma of Lithuania were declared state peasants of the Russian Empire, with all the duties incumbent on this class. Compulsory registration of all Roma, throughout the empire, wherever they were located, was also prescribed.
In the independent Republic of Lithuania (1918–1940) most Roma acquired Lithuanian citizenship and were issued Lithuanian passports as a guarantee of their civil rights. No administrative measures were taken to interfere with the traditional way of life of the Roma: possibly this was the cause of quite positive memories of that period in the life stories of the Roma informants.
During World War II, the Roma were one of the population groups that suffered most from Nazi occupation. Vytautas Toleikis, who has done research on the holocaust of the Roma in Lithuania, estimates the number of persons of Romani descent murdered during the occupation at about 500, which means that one out of every three Roma was killed. The data of the author’s field research do not contradict the suggested figure of the Roma war victims. The Nazi occupation is remembered very clearly by the informants. All the informants, with no exception, told stories about relatives that had been killed or deported to concentration or extermination camps, and spoke of compulsory labor in the war industry in Germany and France. Some of the informants had themselves experienced deportation and imprisoment. Since the informants rarely used historical events as chronological markers, it is difficult to figure out when the described episode took place. It seems that the most severe persecution of the Roma started in spring 1942. Threatened by rumors about persecuted vagrant Roma, people started to settle down and to get a job.
After WW II, a partisan war started in Lithuania. Roma usually did not take any particular political position in those years, trying to keep as much away from any of the fighting sides as possible. Possibly because of the post-war turbulence, some informants did not really realize when the war was over. For some informants the WWII lasted approximately until the end of the partisan war in 1953.
Roma life stories supplement sufficiently documentary sources scant on Roma history in Lithuania, providing a Roma perspective on the framework of the historical events.
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