Roma Nation Day - 8th April; celebrations worldwide

[tliouk]

Subject: "8 APRIL" CANDLES LIGHT PATH TO UNITY< 
Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 12:09:17 +0000 
From: "ustiben.2" <ustiben.2 at ntlworld.com> 
Organization: BAH 
To: Roma_daily_news at yahoogroups.com, eli-ari at zahav.net.il, patrin-
roma-culture at igc.topica.com, traveller-net at jiscmai.ac.uk, 

"8 APRIL" CANDLES LIGHT PATH FORWARD
Roma Nation Day celebrations worldwide 

By Grattan Puxon 

Roma Nation Day this year will be marked by the lighting of up to a 
million candles in Romani communities across sixty countries around 
the globe, a collective-event of growing solidarity and a message of 
peace in troubled times. 
 
Torch-lit processions and candle-lighting gatherings in ancient 
motherland India, across Europe, in North and South America, and for 
the first time in countries of the Middle East, including Turkey, 
Iran, Jordan and Israel, promise to make this by far the biggest yet 
celebration of "8 April". 
 
Already major Roma Nation Day events have the endorsement of the 
International Romani Union, members of the Roma National Congress, 
the newly-formed Association of Roma in the CIS and Baltic States, 
the All India Banjara Seva Sangh, the Trans-European Roma Federation 
and hundreds of smaller organizations and groups. 

NATION BUILDING 

The process of nation-building, started 70 years ago, depends upon 
increased utilization and expansion of the institutions created 
todate; chief among them Roma Nation Day, the World Romani Congress, 
and the flag and anthem, and our international NGOs and single-state 
assemblies, to be crowned soon by the establishment of the Council of 
Europe-sponsored European Roma Forum. 

The combination of leadership-endorsement and mass grass-roots 
participation will hopefully prove a powerful prelude to next year's 
scheduled meeting of the World Romani Congress, on which many 
activists are focusing their aspirations for new common purpose and 
renewed unity within the Romani movement. The sixth Congress since 
l971, which could be hosted in London, is already being billed as a 
much-needed "unification congress". 
 
As manifest by the 33rd Roma Nation Day, the movement has grown wider 
and more diverse over the decades. But key aims and aspirations have 
remained steady and unaltered. The original London Congress 
proclaimed the right of Roma to recognition as a national minority of 
Indian ancestory - a demand targeted at the then communist states of 
Eastern Europe. At the same time, delegates at that Congress 
expressed a conviction that Roma were now set on the path 
towards "nationhood". In the currency of Slav-terms prelevant at the 
time, leading spokesman from Jugoslavia and Czechoslovakia spoke of 
their desire to see Roma move progressively up the ladder 
from "etnicka grupa" to "narodnost" (national minority) and 
eventually "narod" or nation status. 
 
Today, numbers alone require that Roma, an entity of eight million in 
Europe and perhaps l5 million outside India, be awarded something 
more than "national minority" recognition. The V World Romani 
Congress in Prague sought status for the Romani people as a "nation 
without territory. The IRU, headed by Emil Scuka, has pursued this 
aim with consistency and scored some diplomatic successes while doing 
so, notably his meeting with UN General Secretary Kofi Annan. 
 
Durban, where some 60 Roma delegates attended the UN conference 
against racism, was an achievement for the movement as a whole. 
Despite eventual frustration on the issue of slavery, caused primarly 
by the US and other western delegations, much was gained and learnt 
about the need - and the way - to operate collectively on the 
international stage. 

The involvement this year in Roma Nation Day by the All India Banjara 
Seva Sangh, as well as participation in Chandigarh and Delhi by 
friends and colleagues of the late Dr W.R.Rishi, brings us back once 
more to our roots and starting point - India. Last year, Dr Rishi 
inaugurated the 'One Thousand Year Jubilee' of the departure of 
Romani ancestors from North India with the casting of flowers into 
the Punjab's Ghaghar river - a ceremony duplicted on the banks of 40 
rivers around the world, from the mighty Volga to the Danube, from 
the fast flowing Vardar to the placid Rio de la Plata in Argentina. 

But what can be achieved by our Congress-mandated spokesmen depends 
essentially on the size of that mandate; and the size of that mandate 
is be measured by two simple criteria, the number and validity of 
Congress delegates and the size of their constituencies or grass-root 
support. Once a year, Roma have an opportunity to manifest their will 
to be seen not as a "social problem" but as an emerging nation. And 
in doing so can enlarge, by annual increments, the size and strength 
of the mandate available to an elected leadership. 

Eighth April, 'O Baro Dives' in the Romani political calender, is a 
unifying force which continues to wax. Before the new Millennium, 
increase in observance occurred mostly in isolation within single 
countries and was often restricted to cultural and folkloristic 
events. Since the end of the Cold War, Romani political aspirations 
have become overt and passionately enflamed by mounting racism and " 
human rights abuses" ; the last a polite term for beatings, rape and 
murder not only by neo-facists skinheads but by "officers of the law" 
themselves. 

Add to these the still-scarcely vailed policies which deliver 
inferior education, poor housing and medical care and almost no jobs, 
to bitterly excluded Romani ghettoes, and you have a of a mounting 
crisis.In Britain, activists see no difference between eviction from 
roadside camps and privately-purchased land and mass deportations of 
recently-arrived Roma refugees. Covered only by the figleaf of one of 
set of regulations or another, all are experienced as acts of ethnic-
cleansing which, short of genocide, is a brutal form of persecution 
surpassed only by forced and deception-led sterilization, as now 
suffered in Slovakia. 

In consequence of all this brutality and deprivation, 8th April will 
witness more demonstrations and "strikes" this year by refugees and 
asylum-seekers; and the tens of thousands "displaced" from Kosovo , 
who are unable to return to their homes - looted and burned by 
racially-motivated neighbours. 
 
Perhaps the candle is but a feeble "weapon" to seize upon in these 
highly provocative circumstances. But let us see if the flames of a 
million candles combined, starting at dawn with a jumbo rally of our 
brothers and sisters of the Banjara tandras and taken up country by 
country, in one continent after another, across the globe, will 
inspire new recognition and greater concern for our situation. And 
let us be encouraged by the sure knowledge that such a manifestation, 
the greatest yet, will bring with it the prize of a truly multi-
million mandate and 'YES VOTE' for increased Romani activism and 
political participation as the means and way forward towards national 
and indivual emancipation. 
 
We know that no rights, however well written and chartered, will be 
handed to us on a plate; and that the plate will remain ever empty if 
displayed only as a begging bowl. This year, we are urged to set a 
candle upon it and light that candle so that it can shine on the road 
ahead. 

>From the 'March of 100,00', that marked the first Ustiben on the 
occasion of the 30-year Jubilee of the First World Romani Congress in 
2001, through last year's 'River Ceremonies', Roma Nation Day has 
grown and matured as the defining event of the world Romani movement. 
Both protest and message of peace, this year's "8 April" will again 
serve to set down a marker - nudging history another step along the 
road in the direction the Roma nation is choosing to go.