1. Romania Launches Employment Programme for Roma Population
2. BUCHAREST, Romania -- The state employment agency is offering 445 jobs to members of the Roma population. Labour contracts will be signed at a special weeklong job fair that opens Thursday (1 May) in Bucharest. The agency attracted job offers from 26 institutions, mainly in the construction sector. (Rompres - 30/04/03)
3. The Roma Chronology
4. 1989 December 22: Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu is overthrown by the National Salvation Front (NSF), a group of former Communists, dissidents, intellectuals, students and army generals who declare Romania a parliamentary democracy.
1990 January 28: Pro-government demonstrators call opposition demonstrators "provocateurs" and "Gypsies. " Note: The term Gypsy is often used as an insult in Romanian society. This continues throughout the period covered by this chronology and will not be further noted unless otherwise noteworthy.
1990 April 18: Hundreds of Gypsies attend a conference in Bucharest to pick parliamentary candidates for the upcoming May 20 elections. 8 Gypsy parties including the Democratic Union are running in the elections.
1990 April 18: The first Romanian Gypsy newspaper, Satra Libera (Free Camp), begins publication with a startling caricature of a Gypsy slave girl breaking out of her chains on the front page.
1990 May 14: Gypsy chief and Romani representative to the United Nations Ion Cloarba demands compensation from the Romanian government for the families of dozens of Gypsies beaten to death or shot by police during the Ceausescu regime as part of his campaign to appropriate their gold. A recent law decreed that the stolen ancestral gold jewelry can now be reclaimed from the national bank of Romania. Cloarba also claims hundreds of Gypsies were tortured and their houses burned down during the period of systematic persecution. He further states that prejudice against the Roma in Romania is the worst in Europe.
1990 May 16: More than 5,000 Romanians, 80% of them Gypsies, have migrated to East Berlin in the last few weeks in hopes of cashing in on East Germany's pending free-market unification with Germany and due to ethnic persecution.
1990 May 18: The president of the National Peasants' Party is attacked by a band of rock-throwing Gypsies.
1990 May 20: The NSF wins parliamentary elections with an overwhelming majority. None of the Gypsy parties wins any seat but a Gypsy is given one of the seats reserved for Romania's ethnic minorities.
1990 June 13-18: Anti-government protests take place in Bucharest. Many Gypsies participate. The government uses vigilante coal miners to violently suppress the crowd and the miners beat up Gypsy men and women and steal their ancestral gold jewelry as police stand by and watch. A mob of Gypsies later attacks a police station with clubs, knives and hatchets. Gypsy homes are singled out for racially motivated attacks in ethically mixed neighborhoods in what some call ethnic cleansing. Many Gypsies are arrested and held without charge. There are allegations of torture of the Gypsy prisoners by police. The coal miners receive little or no punishment for their actions.
1990 July: Police crack down on black marketeers many of whom are Gypsies. Many of Romania's economic problems are blamed on the Gypsies by the Romanian media in this context. Note: Romanians, including the media and several political parties including the ruling Salvation Front blame many of Romania's problems on the Gypsies. This continues throughout the period covered in this chronology and will not be further noted unless otherwise noteworthy.
1990 October: More than 1,000 Romanian villagers burn a Gypsy village to the ground. Swift flight by the Gypsies prevents casualties. The villagers say they were provoked by unrestrained rampaging, stealing and looting by the Gypsies. The final provocation was when a Romanian tractor driver was stoned by Gypsy youths.
1990 November 26: Some 270,000 Romanians, about 90% of them Gypsies, have crossed the border into Poland in order to earn a living this year. Most are allowed to stay for only 90 days at a time. It is estimated that 39,000 to 70,000 are currently in Poland.
1991: In a poll, 41% of respondents in Romania think that the Roma should be poorly treated.
1991 March 29: The Romanian Gypsy presence in Poland continues.
1991 April 9: After a Gypsy s arrested for the murder of a Romanian villager, about 3,000 villagers burn down the homes of members of his clans. The clan in question, known as "Bear Trainers," was said to be responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime in the village, even compared to other Gypsies (who were not attacked). Note: The purpose attacks such as this one are usually to drive the Gypsies out of town.
1991 April 16: A human rights organization reports that the Gypsy community of Romania was the target of 15 documented incidents of violence in 1990.
1991 May 8: Riot police rescue 34 Gypsies from a Romanian village after peasants threatened to lynch them. The incident occurs when a clan or Gypsies who had been expelled from the village a month ago try to return.
1991 May 17-18: Rural Romanians and Gypsies clash in the village of Ogreseni, northeast of Bucharest. The violence spreads to several surrounding villages the next day. Peasants clash with riot police who are trying to prevent them from burning Gypsy houses. By the end of the riots at least 40 Gypsy homes are destroyed.
1991 June 13: About 300 villagers in Romania's Translvania region burn down 26 Gypsy homes after a stabbing. Note: Thus far, no one has been penalized by the government for the continuous and often violent efforts by villagers to run the Gypsies out of town. In part, official action is due to a powerlessness by the police to stop these efforts as well as the erosion of their authority when they try to do so.
1991 July: A government report on racial tensions in the Romanian countryside says that "the majority of the population has often had to endure for long periods the aggressiveness of a minority group [the Gypsies] which does not respect the norms of social cohabitation. " The report also notes that Romanians are "exasperated by the wealth of many unemployed Gypsies. "
1991 July: The Democratic Union of Romani calls for the government to educate Gypsies in their own language. Note: This demand is made throughout the period covered by this chronology and will not be further noted unless otherwise noteworthy.
1991 September 71: Several hundred Gypsies hold a conference in Hungary on the current situation of the Gypsies in Romania and Hungary.
1991 November 24: Helsinki Watch, a human rights organization, reports that Gypsies in Romania have been the target of increasingly violent attacks since the 1989 revolution. It claims that Gypsies have lost their property, their security and any hope for a better future after the overthrow of the Communist regime. They also face discrimination in housing, employment and education.
1992 February: The US State Department's Report on Human Rights in Romania for 1991 states that there exists both direct and indirect discrimination against Gypsies in the workplace. Gypsies tend to be given the most menial and low paying jobs and are excluded from educational and work opportunities that can lead to higher paying jobs. However, the report notes that the government has begun job training programs and experimental classes in the Romani language.
1992 September: Germany plans to deport the large number of Romanians, about 60% of whom are Gypsies (reports of the actual number of Romanians in Germany range from 43,000 to 135,000). It later signs an accord with Romania to facilitate this deportation and actually begins deporting Romanians in November.
Survey for 1992: Several incidents of racially motivated violence against Gypsies are reported this year.
1993 March 18: Romania deploys riot police to the Argentinean embassy in Bucharest to prevent thousands of Gypsies from storming the embassy in hopes of gaining visa forms because of an immigration opportunity.
1993 March 31: Following an anti-Gypsy attack, Gypsy leaders threaten to establish their own army if the government is unable to protect them.
1993 April: The Romanian government creates the Council for Ethnic Minorities to tackle the problems of the country's 14 minority groups.
1993 April 28: In response to the problems caused by Romanians, many of them Gypsies, using Poland as a transit rout for illegal immigration into Western European countries, Poland tightens entry rules for Romanians.
1993 May 2: Romanian Gypsy leaders call on the government to take a tougher stand against persecution against Gypsies and become more involved in supporting their economic and social integration. Note: Demands similar to this one are made throughout the period covered by this chronology and will not be further noted unless they are otherwise noteworthy.
1993 June 3: After a World Cup soccer loss, angry Romanians riot in Bucharest targeting Gypsies and Arabs.
1993 June 24: An extremist group called "the Organization to Fight the Gypsies" is formed and plans a crackdown on Romania's Gypsy population.
1993 August 9: Ivlian Radulescu is crowned "emperor" of the Gypsies which puts him in contention with Ion Cioaba who claims to be "king" of the Gypsies.
1993 September 20: Two Gypsies who are accused of killing a Romanian are lynched and another Gypsy and a Romanian are killed when 500 angry Romanians and Hungarians riot against Gypsies in Transylvania and burn down 13 Gypsy houses.
1993 September 28: Romanian Gypsies blame authorities for encouraging anti-Gypsy hatred and demand legal action against the killers of three Gypsies in last week's ethnic clashes.
1993 September 29: Gypsies withdraw from the Council of National Minorities in protest to last week's killings.
1993 October 15: It is reported that an extremist group called the Gypsy Skinners is planning a campaign of violence against Romania's Gypsies. Romanian police say there is no evidence of the existence of such an organization.
1993 November 12: Amnesty International accuses Romania of preparing to expel Gypsies from the Transylvanian village where 3 Gypsies were killed last September. The Romanian government denies the charges.
1993 December 30: France prepares to deport about 200 Romanian Gypsies.
1994 May 25: The UN committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights accuses the Romanian government of allowing discrimination against the country's population.
1994 May 29: About 300 villagers burn down nine Gypsy houses in northwest Romania after 2 Gypsy youths are charged with the murder of a 69-year-old shepherd.
Update 12/12/95
1995 January 8: About 200 angry farmers in a southwest Romanian village burn down the homes of two Roma after a village brawl in which both villagers and Roma are injured. A 20-member police force summoned from a nearby village is able to prevent attacks on four other homes.
1995 January 16: Dimitru Bidiia, a Roma leader, says that his community will start a "civil war" unless the government takes measures to prevent local conflicts between Roma and villagers.
1995 January 19: UPI reports that since the fall of Romania's Communist government in 1989, there have been 37 inter-ethnic clashes in which six Roma have been killed and dozens of Roma homes burned.
1995 May 12: Romania's Gypsy "Emperor" Iulian Radulescu begins a hunger strike in protest of the government's decision to label Roma in Romania as "Tigan," a term Roma consider racist. The government has done this in order to stop using "Romani" as the official term because it could be confused with "Romanian. "
1995 May 22: Amnesty International reports a nationwide pattern of police failure to protect Romania's Roma minority from racist violence.
1995 May 23: About 100 Roma demonstrate in Bucharest against the government use of the term "Tigan" to describe the Roma. They view the term as racist.
1995 June 8: Minority group leaders in Romania, including some Roma leaders, receive mail bombs.
1995 July 13: The European Parliament approves a resolution condemning discrimination against the Roma in Romania.
Update 7/7/99 by Garth Olcese
1996 January 24: More than 1,000 villagers in southern Romania have threatened to lynch a 200-member gypsy community following the stabbing death of a Romanian. As the angered mob headed for the house of the suspected murderer, police forces took position to defend the gypsy community on the outskirts of the village. The murder suspect and his family fled the town along with 40 other gypsy families. (Source: United Press International, 1/24/96)
1997 February 27: Ion Cioaba, the self-proclaimed King of the Gipsies died at the age of 62. (Source: The Daily Telegraph, 2/27/97)
1997 March 6: The self-proclaimed emperor of the world's Gypsies Iulian Radulesco announced on Thursday the creation of the first gypsy state in Tirgu-Jiu, in southwest Romania. Radulescu, who declared himself "Iulian I" four years ago, told a press conference he has signed a "decree" proclaiming a poor district of Tirgu-Jiu "Cem Romengo," or state of the Romanies. "This state has a symbolic value and does not affect the sovereignty and unity of Romania. It does not have armed forces and does not have borders," Radulescu added. He said he had asked Romanian authorities to recognise the Gypsies' "right of ownership" to this land. (Source: Agence France Presse, 3/6/97)
1997 March 27: Over 50 Romanian Gypsies from the encampment near Szczecin [northwestern Poland] which was dismantled yesterday have been deported to Ukraine. The Romanian Gypsies travelled to Chernovtsy in Ukraine, whence they are to travel to Romania. They were escorted by the Border Guard and policemen throughout the whole of their journey within Poland. Seventy-two Romanians without any documents were left behind in Szczecin. Some children born in Poland are not entered in the documents of their parents. Consequently they could not have crossed the border. The Romanian embassy is, within three months, to clarify all the doubts associated with the identity of those who have been detained. (Source: BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, 3/27/97)