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A State Ashamed Of Its Citizens: Romania 20/12/2010

Romanian government didn't defend its citizens with Gypsy origin about the problems which exist in conjuction with hard life conditions Roma Gypsy face in the other EU member countries since 2007. On the contrary, Romanian officials show that they are ashamed of being confusing with Roma Gypsy because of name similarity.

On the top of it, a member of Romanian ruling party, Liberal Democrat Party, brought in a strange bill. It's being offered Roma Gypsy to define officially as Tigan according to the bill. Altough president Traian Basescu emphasized that he won't confirm the bill even it's accepted in the parliament, it's already a terrible situation that the bill was brought in. Because law's preamble is that citizens of EU confuse Roma Gypsy with Romanians.

Too many Roma Gypsy have started to migrate to western countries of EU in the hope of reaching a better life after being a member of European Union of Romania. During this process, some politicians prefered to make Roma scapegoat to evade the responsibility of economic crisis. Roma Gypsy migrated from Bulgaria and Romania were shown as a threat by the politicians in conjuction with raising rate of criminal events as a result of economic crisis. At the end, French government started to deport immigrant Roma Gypsies...

Response of Romanian goverment to this events were too poor. They have almost done nothing to improve life confitions of Roma Gypsies who were deported from France. It's funny that the only serious efforts of Romanian government about Roma Gypsy have been the shamefull law draft in the period.

May well be Romanian goverment is ashamed of the situation. So they want to sever all ties with Roma Gypsy with name changing policy. Name of Romanian is related with Roma Empire according to official historian of Romania. On the one hand, authorities and some citizens of Romania are ashamed of having same name Roma Gypsy. On the other hand, they are proud of bearing the name of Great Roman Empire. They believe that name similarity between Roma Gypsy and name of Romania casts a slur on "great history of Romania".

This approach is clearly racist. Roma Gypsy have the right to protest the racist bill of these people who are ashamed of being confused with Roma Gypsy. Because nobody has the right to change name of an ethnic group. People define themselves. People can change their name with only their own wish.

It's also not a scientifical offer to use "Tigan" instead of Roma. As we emphasized in our web page many times, the term Tigan / Cigan / Çingene is an umbrella generic term defining many different ethnic groups. Roma is a district ethnic group with its own language, Romanes, and its own history. Roma are also defined by others as Tigani and in some cases they defined themselves as Tigan. However Roma are only one branch of Tigani. The term Tigan / Cigan / Çingene is the name of peripatetic and late-peripatetic societies living in a wide geography. Using Tigan / Cigan / Çingene which is the name of a social category instead of Roma which is the name of a district ethnic group is illogical.

We have to defend the right of Roma Gypsies to define themselves under all circumstances. We, as Çingeneyiz.org family, are supporting our brothers and sisters living in Romania under difficult life conditions and we condemn the racist law draft. However our approach is different from the ones who are ashamed of their Tigan / Cigan / Çingene social origin and who want to make their ancestors' lifestyle forget using Roma ethnic name as a camouflage. We are not agree with the entellectuals who think the only problem of our peoples is name changing. We are happy with both our Tigan / Cigan / Çingene social origin and our Roma ethnic culture. We never refuse our Ciganipe and we never forget our Romanipe.

Source: Cingeneyiz International