Slovak Romanies do not return to nomadic way of life

Romanies in Slovakia did not return to the nomadic way of life after the ban issued in then Czechoslovakia 50 years ago was lifted four years ago, ethnologist Rene Luzina, from Trnava University, has told CTK.

He said in fact the ban affected only a very small part of Romanies because a majority of them had settled by then.

Luzica said the Romanies’ journeys abroad at present do not follow up their older traditions.

Many Romanies have left Slovakia in the past years mainly for Canada in search of a better life.

Luzica said in the 1950s only about 10 to 12 percent of Romanies, mainly Olah Romanies, were seasonally migrating.

He said state bodies granted the migrating Romanies permanent residence in the villages where they were just staying.

"It was thus easy to register them all. Local authorities issued them with birth certificates, identity cards. Many got civic names," Luzica said.

He said municipalities were obliged to find housing for them and to give them work. A part of the Romanies started to work in agriculture, he said.

The Olah Romanies were poor when they were forced to settle down. But thanks to their business talent they later secured for themselves a priviliged position compared with the other Romanies.

Luzica said the nomadic way of life was forced on Romanies in the past centuries by the majority society that pushed them out of their towns and villages.

According to official statistics, some 90,000 people in Slovakia claim Romany nationality.

But according to some sources, the real number of Romanies is several times higher. The government put the number in 2005 at 320,000, some speak about 400,000 in the five million Slovakia.

Most of the Romanies live in bad social conditions, are jobless and have a low education.

Many live in settlements without the fundamental infrastructure.

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Prague, Nov 9 (CTK) – Romanies in the Czech Republic have forgotten about the nomadic way of life their ancestors led, Ivan Vesely, Dzeno association chairman and deputy chairman of the government council for Romany affairs, has told CTK.

Fifty years ago the former Communist regime in Czechoslovakia issued a law on permanent settlement of migrating persons that took effect on November 11, 1958.

The law as deleted from the valid legal order ten years ago and the lifestyle of present-day Romanies’ ancestors has not been punished since the fall of the Communist regime in late 1989.

"People have already forgotten about the way of life. It no longer threatens that someone in the Czech Republic would buy a horse or a caravan," Vesely said.

He said, however, that Romanies have not lost the travellers’ blood. "A new form of nomadism is migration after work," he said, adding that this is also true of other people, however.

An absolute majority of Romanies on Czech territory lived similarly like the majority society already when the law banning nomadism was issued.

Vesely said maximally 30,000 Romanies, mainly Olah Romanies, lived a nomadic life at that time.

"For them it was a fundamental change that had an immediate completely destructive impact on them," said Karel Holomek, chairman of the Romany Community in Moravia, who experienced the atmosphere of the law implementation.

"They removed wheels from their carts and took away the horses that were probably sent to slaughter houses. People were accommodated at places where they stopped on the day," Holomek remembered.

"All of a sudden they were forced to live in an environment that was unusual for them, among people in villages. They had to accept their rules of game, they were forced to completely change the style of their behaviour," Holomek said.

He said the Romanies often failed to coexist with the locals.

"Their free way of life that offered them a better chance of securing living was definitively broken," he said.

Holomek said the aim of the law authors was to assimilate the Romanies, which, however, often failed.

Romany ghettos were emerging at many places, their inhabitants do not have jobs and they live in much worse conditions than their "white" fellow citizens.

"Besides, prejudices still survive, are generalised and applied to all Romanies," Holomek said.

Yet, he said, the Czech Republic has a much better starting position for improving the living conditions of Romanies and their relations with the majority society than the other European post-communist countries, which is due to the good state of the economy and democracy.

"If politicians really started to press for the fulfilling of the prepared programmes and the atmosphere thus changed, it could be a matter of two generations, or another 50 years," Holomek said.