Roma refugees from Romania

[horseshoe7 269]

All the talking is to appease a politically correct conscience. Why should the EU bend over backwards to a group of people who don't seem to care but rather just want to do their own thing?

 

...but you can't eradicate a people and their culture, so they keep discussing it to act like they are doing something about it, but really, what do the Roma want?

 

I dunno. This is just a casual forum, and this is a fairly uneducated opinion. You tend to get the respect you command, and therefore the Roma seem to want to be treated like vermin since they don't seem to mind their way of life. but they shouldn't object to the countries in which they live in trying to apply the law to them.

 

sure, you can't paint all people with the same brush, but where are the "good apples", and why aren't they speaking up for their people??

 

I say again, I know very little about the subject and am basing this only on what I have seen and experienced in Berlin.

[pontifex 6]

This is an interesting thread, full of all the usual polarised opinions. It seems to me that the longstanding Roma culture of living at the fringes of society is a problem that won't go away overnight, or even in a generation. It has been the same for centuries. The culture of fringe-dwelling is one that must necessarily be broken in order to end the self-predicted discrimination against Romany people through suspicion of a real and persistent Romany culture which has evolved over centuries. The same culture that has evolved because of discrimination over generations and in response to it reinforces that discrimination. Anti-social behaviour is clearly transmitted from generation to generation, and just as that anti-social behaviour is entrenched in a transmitted culture, so the discriminatory reactions are predicted in that transmission. It is human nature to suspect people from a certain group when your only contact with that group is negative - there is no way around that.

 

The solution is clearly that the transmission of a culture of anti-social behaviour needs to be broken, but this solution engenders the further problem of cultural cleansing - something which was crudely attempted with the Australian Aborigines in the 1950s and 60s. The difference with the situation of Australian Aborigines, is that there is no culture of criminality, just one that does not fit well with Western Capitalism. In the climate of human rights which most of us hold dear, it seems that the only way to break the culture of criminality without also violating our own principles is to be generous and patient. The alternative solutions are unpalateable and hypocritical, particularly here in Germany. I don't mean that we should give to beggars - that only reinforces and rewards anti-social behaviour - but if we accept that Roma are going to be here, which seems to be tacitly enshrined in the EU constitution, then you need to offer them respect which they have perhaps not yet earned. In Germany. And then, going to the source of the problem in Eastern Europe, you need to aggressively prosecute a plan to deal with the problem in the source countries.

 

You cannot persecute the Roma - particularly children - without an unthinkable violation of your own principles. What you need to do instead is ensure that the source countries are made to adhere to those same principles in relation to Romany people (after all, that's what the EU is about - adherence to common principles, economic and moral). That is not simply throwing money at the Romany - that doesn't work - it involves educating Roma AND other Eastern Europeans through schooling and public awareness campaigns. And it involves accepting that the social problems are not going to go away overnight, in five or even ten years. There may be some progress in a generation, more in two, but centuries of culture and history doesn't get wiped away overnight. Unless, of course, it does.

[d4n 17]

I think I told this in the past too on this thread: you cannot educate roma people as long as the roma men don't let their daughters go to school once they are 12-13 year old because of the fear of them getting stolen by other roma... Instead they sell them for marriage.

 

BTW, the new business practice of roma in Romania: form a company in the wife's name, start shopping around, then "forget" to pay. The judges sentence the business owner, but because she has young children in her care she does not serve jail time. I can already anticipate the French hypocrits complaining of how more and more of those evil eastern europeans refuse to do business with companies owned by roma women unless it's cash first.

[d4n 17]

 

it involves educating Roma AND other Eastern Europeans through schooling and public awareness campaigns.

 

Do you think that Eastern Europeans are not aware of them? Do you think that roma problem needs awareness campaigns?

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqJVN37NuEc

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AJlwSTXxFY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdXC_JWbzRE

 

 

There you go. Enough awareness campaigns? It's weird how the sh*t didn't hit the fan yet.

[tech71 1,535]

I experieneced some Roma "business pratices"while in Bosnia. Packs of filthy kids begging on the street. They are relentless. A friend was walking down the street and was accosted by a group of kids one of whom was holding a infant. When he refused to give them any money they literally tossed this baby at him. He caught it of course and was fumbling around with it when the pack surrounds him and empties his pockets. The only way to stop them is to drop the baby and start swinging which of course he did not do. They then snatch the baby back and run away before the poor guy knew WTF was going on. They got his wallet and Passport. Once we were indentified as foreigners with money it was impossible to go out alone without being accosted and robbed by groups of begging children or prostitutes with so much cheap makeup on they looked like circus clowns.

[wfettich 10]

@Kommentarlos: you see this very optimistic and I might say "naive".

 

I actually come from Romania. Gypsies are a problem in and for Romania.

 

Yes they are discriminated and persecuted because we (Romania) couldn't integrate them. They don't want to integrate because they feel persecuted. It is a hellish cycle. Our government has failed miserably at integration of the gypsies but not only ours. Many other governments have failed. This is an old problem in my country.

 

Some reasons:

 

These gypsies quite often don't care at all about their host country laws or way of life. They see them as a resource to be exploited. They insist on following their archaic and anarchic laws and their rituals which often clash with our modern laws or basic human rights. In gypsy society women can still be sold or be married at a child age. They do not mid stealing, begging from or extorting those outside of gypsy society.

 

I would _really_ like to see a society capable of integrating the gypsies or at least finding an acceptable way of living together but really "the express wish to integrate in the host country's norms"??

 

I MUST see it to believe it.

 

I may be skeptical but still very curious.

 

Oh and to the organizers: If anyone needs help with translating to and from romanian to talk to these people than I will gladly help.

[Jacksonentzulo 18]

I haven#t seen them recently, maybe polizei rounded them all up for a state visit?

[Geza 1]

So first, hi everyone! first post here..

 

@ HALL 9000

 

duude you are most probably full of shit... i live also in Neukolln, have many friends living in this neighbourhood and never have i heard even slightly similar stories as you have told. I see Romas everyday just when i go out of my place, sometimes they are begging , sometimes not, but i never been harrased in any way by them.. they integrate in the kind of landscape of my block, along with the german sax player who is asking also for coins, the (german) junkies in herman platz, turkisch people or the all kinds of people going thru.. is nice to see there are some thinking people also in this forum ( monk ) , cause is great to just put blame on people , but nobody is actually thinking on why things happen.

 

greets from berlin

[Bonaparte 3]

I am so interested in the Roma issue...I want to become a Journalist and perhaps in the future I would like to do a documentary about the Roma.Would any kind person like to inform me up to date,about where the Roma in Berlin are stationed and what kind of issues are dealing with ?

 

 

 

Thank you

 

 

All the Best

[circuits 187]

 

I experieneced some Roma "business pratices"while in Bosnia. Packs of filthy kids begging on the street. They are relentless. A friend was walking down the street and was accosted by a group of kids one of whom was holding a infant. When he refused to give them any money they literally tossed this baby at him. He caught it of course and was fumbling around with it when the pack surrounds him and empties his pockets. The only way to stop them is to drop the baby and start swinging which of course he did not do. They then snatch the baby back and run away before the poor guy knew WTF was going on. They got his wallet and Passport. Once we were indentified as foreigners with money it was impossible to go out alone without being accosted and robbed by groups of begging children or prostitutes with so much cheap makeup on they looked like circus clowns.

 

 

I lived in Bosnia 5 months last year and have been visiting the country for 5 years - not once have I seen anything like what you described. All the Roma I saw just did their own thing and never seemed to hassle anyone.

 

I just asked my Bosnian friends about "gangs of children" in Bosnia and none of them has heard of it or saw it.

 

What city/town were you in?

[featherlight 1,367]

There is of course no smoke without fire. Roma get their reputation from somewhere.

 

What I find really scary is that the language and propaganda (words such as vermin and parasites) used by the Nazis against the Jews (incredibly when you think of the prominence many took in society owing to their often high education, commercial enterprise, banking, media influence, etc.) really can be applied to the Roma who on the whole contribute so little to the rest of society.

 

The Roma do present a real problem (who wants them down the back of their garden?) and I for one can see no solution. Other sections of society (e.g. criminals, the mentally and physically afflicted) are taken care of (up to a point), but the Roma?? I think this Europe-wide problem has the potential to go places we never thought we'd revisit. The Roma themselves have to participate actively through change in any solutions proposed by the authorities. How likely is that?