21Jan2015

Havel’s litmus test on Anty-Gypsyism in Europe

Twenty-five years after the fall of communism, it still hasn't sunk in that racism and exclusion is not a ‘Gypsy problem’ but a 'Europe problem'.

Back in the early 1990s Vaclav Havel famously called the ‘Gypsy problem’ a litmus test of civil society and described driving out manifestations of intolerance as the biggest challenge of our times. Twenty-five years after the fall of communism, it still hasn't sunk in that racism and exclusion is not a ‘Gypsy problem’ - but it is abundantly clear from developments in 2014 that Europe has failed its ‘litmus test’. 

On 25 September 2014, the European Commission, after years of prodding from non-governmental organisations, finally initiated infringement proceedings against the Czech Republic over its failure to end systemic discrimination and segregation in education. The decision to launch the proceedings followed a complaint to the Commission filed 18 months earlier by the Open Society Justice Initiative, Amnesty International and the European Roma Rights Centre, and came six years after the judgment of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in the case D.H. and Others v. the Czech Republic.

How do we read such signs in 2014 - to resort to the well-worn cliché: is the glass half-full or half-empty? Without a doubt it would have seemed inconceivable a quarter of a century ago, that the so-called Roma issue could have excited substantial and regular international media coverage; held the attention of policy makers across Europe; and generated such a voluminous mass of reports, analyses, and scholarly investigations.

Back in the early 1990s, Vaclav Havel reckoned that the exclusion and violence faced by Eastern Europe’s Roma populations were rooted in the lack of preparation by people to assume the responsibilities of freedom after living under repressive governments for so long: "They find themselves in a state of uncertainty, in which they tend to look for pseudo-certainties…One of those might be submerging themselves in a crowd, a community, and defining themselves in contrast to other communities.” The search for pseudo-certainties and scapegoats has long outlived the bumpy transitions from state-socialism, and anti-Gypsyism goes wider and deeper, and disfigures democracies old and new.

As for linking the spike in racist words and deeds to Europe’s economic crises, this is simplistic and misleading, for anti-Gypsyism has long thrived in good and bad times alike.

The acts of violence against Roma by state and non-state actors, the coarsening of public discourse coloured by inflammatory racist rhetoric and the increase in broad public hostility towards Roma, predate the economic downturn and form part of a wider populist assault on the liberal content of contemporary democracy. Prejudice has become a mobilising force, and unabashed and uninhibited anti-Roma prejudice has taken centre stage with crude ultra-nationalism as the core ingredients in a wider radical populist assault on the so-called liberal consensus.

In an idealistic vein, and somewhat at odds with the venal reality of contemporary practice, Hanna Arendt described the task of politics in all times and in all places to shed light upon and dispel prejudices. She stressed that the power and danger of prejudices is that something of the past is always hidden within them. Prejudices dragged through time without being examined or dispelled block judgment, obscure wisdom and corrode the fabric of democracy. When it comes to the situation of Roma in the European Union, the very real consequences of prejudice unchallenged are becoming all too apparent.

Without a doubt there are signs of progress, but nothing on the scale needed to make a difference to the lives of 10-12 million people. More worryingly we have seen anti-Roma prejudice contaminate mainstream politics, as politicians of both left and right scramble to outflank the neo-fascists and assorted extremist hate-mongers. Continued failure to deliver on the promise of inclusion to Europe’s largest ethnic minority could precipitate catastrophe. There is, however, nothing inevitable about this coming to pass.

Havel described the main challenge of the new democracies was to promote a climate where people would “act as citizens in the best sense of the word and drive out manifestations of intolerance.” Today this challenge remains as acute as ever for the entire European Union. The threat posed by a politics of hate needs to be faced and countered in every democratic polity. The task of progressive politics to shed light upon and to dispel prejudices has acquired a new urgency if Romani communities are to be spared another century of exclusion.

Full article from the OpenDemocracy was included in our weekly newsletter. If you want to recieve weekly news about public policy issues, Roma and minority groups, LGBT, security and more, you may subscribe to our newsletter PublicPolicySerbiaWeekly.