On reporting the Roma

“Local residents up in arms at gypsy camp”. Thus began my first Roma story, a baby journalist reporting from a land of shrunken hopes and varied and variegated prejudices.

We didn’t mean it. We didn’t know any better. For us, these people were gypsies; people who seemed to delight in occupying the nearest piece of waste ground and burning tyres to their heart’s content. It wasn’t so long back that pubs had put out signs “No Blacks, Irish, Travellers or Dogs”. They’d managed to let the Irish and the Blacks in by then, and there were definitely a lot more mongrels hanging around their owners’ knees in the hope of a stale crisp or two. But the “travellers”? No, not welcome anywhere.

Nothing much changes. These past few months have felt like a wormhole into the past as I work with my colleagues to put paid to that old racism. The reason: Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to send Roma back from France to Romania and Bulgaria; swiftly followed by a huge debate that has raged on in all corners of Europe.

One thing has changed though. My total, appalling, ignorance.

I can date it exactly. Kosovo 2001, just after the war. Spokesperson for the mission of an international organisation during the first Assembly election, I accompanied a team to the Roma camp about 30 minutes away from the capital Pristina. It looked somewhat like a run down schoolyard in a Castleford back lot, groups of kids running around prefab blocks. In reality, it was a virtual prison for the Roma community, ostracised by the war from the rest of the community. Families of 20 were living in rooms as big as an average bathroom. Each man, woman and child was given 50 pfennigs of a deutschmarks’ worth of food – that’s 25 cents of a Euro. Infant mortality was high; and a death meant getting permission from KFOR, the UN military force, to bury the body. Since permission often took a week or so to come, many families simply sneaked out of the camps to carry out those sad last rites where their custom prescribed.

Because Roma traditions are the bedrock of their community. As a reporter looking for an interview, you’d do well to make yourself familiar with those customs and to work with them. The camps look dirty to our eyes because inside the living quarters are clean and sacred. Cover your head and wear a skirt if you are a woman. Bring a gift into the camp when you arrive, a small token will do. Seek the Elders and speak to them first.

It might seem like a lot of work, but it is the basis of reporting ethically – and well – on Roma issues. A well-advised and thoughtful media can make all the difference in turning around the lives of these people. What’s more, the Roma have a lot to tell. They are not just that music loving, colourful and vibrant tribe that sentimentalists love. They are a people who have faced huge amounts of discrimination, whose children have been made to attend special schools despite being as bright as any other child, whose women have been forcibly sterilised without their knowledge – a double blow when they are rejected from their own community as barren.

So who are the Roma? Charlie Chaplin, Yul Brynner, Cervantes, poets, teachers, lawyers, journalists, architects, academics, engineers………people who want a chance to live their lives.

Click on the Web TV link below for a debate show I presented on the topic and view the photofile.