Anti-Romani hate speech in Romania
12 April 2000
On December 4, 1999, the Romanian daily România Liberă published an interview with Brigadier General Mircea Bot, head of the Bucharest Police Department, in which he made a number of inflammatory remarks about Roma. In the interview, General Bot commented at length about “Gypsy gangs”, as well as on “economic and financial crimes committed by the Gypsies,” explaining that “Gypsy people were used to stealing and robbing.” In the conclusion of the interview, General Bot stated that “there are Gypsies who are born criminals, […] and do not know anything else other than to commit criminal acts.” General Bot also provided România Liberă with information used in an article on “Organised Gypsy Criminality — Prostitution, Pimps and Protection Taxes”, published in the same edition of the daily, along with a “list of the Gypsy gangs in the capital”. According to Romanian daily Ziua of March 25, 2000, General Bot was suspended from active duty for three months, although reportedly not as punishment for the România Liberă interview and articles. Other anti-Romani speech by Romanian officials has recently been reported. According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty of March 21, 2000, Mr Petre Roman, the Romanian Minister for Foreign Affairs, stated that the Romanian government has an obligation to “protect 23 million Romanians against the few thousand Gypsies who are damaging the country’s image abroad and hampering the country’s efforts to get off the EU’s visa blacklist.”
In other news pertaining to anti-Romani hate speech in Romania, on February 8, 2000, the Bucharest-based Roma organisations Romani CRISS, Aven Amentza and the Association of Roma Students filed charges against Marcel Flueraru, journalist of the National daily, for using racist language in an article, according to the Associated Press on that day. In the article, Flueraru called Roma “darkies”, “aggressors”, and compared the relations between Romanians and Roma to “a war” similar to the one “in Kosovo”. The first hearing on the case took place on March 27, 2000.
(ERRC, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Romani CRISS, România Liberă, Ziua)
