The eternal nomads
18/8/10 21:49![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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talkpoliticsEv'ning, my fave bunch of xenophobic bigots tolerant fellows who care about their neighbor as if he were thy cousin! Here's some curious issue which I'm sure many of our US audience would instantly recognize to bear striking similarities to a certain situation down there around the border (and not only). See, France has taken a controversial decision about its Roma population, particularly those who have arrived there in recent years, mostly from Eastern European countries (mainly Romania and Bulgaria, but also Slovakia, Hungary, etc). Sarkozy has ordered the immediate dismantlement of their Gypsy camps and the extradition of their inhabitants back to their countries of origin. Being the obedient puppies that we are, both Sofia and Bucharest instantly bent their tails (claiming they're true to their Frankophone solidarity, being members of the international Frankophony community and all; long story), and they've expressed their readiness to accept the expelled Gypsies back as soon as possible. Romania and Bulgaria are even going to send their own cops to assist with the extradition. The European Commission, through its spokesperson of the Commisar of Justice and Human Rights (Viviane Reding), has expressed support for the tough actions of the French government.
Everything is ready for the most large-scale deportation in Europe since WW2, as this will directly involve tens of thousands of people.
So what, I ask? I can tell you what will happen. The Roma will return here, they'll meet their relatives who've remained back home, then they'll set off to the west again, because they already know the way, and because there's much more work and better salaries in Western Europe compared to the two poorest countries within EU. The only victim of the whole thing would be the reputation of the EU which claims to be a champion of human rights. Instead of living up to that PR image, it'll have provided yet another proof that all this "the values that we stand for" hype is just pure BS, and those EU poodles in Brussels are nothing else but the epitome of hypocrisy.
Notice that I haven't even discussed on the Roma themselves yet. "They're lazy and they steal and don't work, and do crime most of the time, and they refuse to integrate" is the meme I keep hearing, and indeed it'd have some grounds if we're to solely scratch the surface and not go any futher. It's a fact that the Roma have a nomadic tradition dating centuries back, and they find it difficult to adapt, and only some particular groups of them are used to settled lifestyle. Most of them have in one form or another continued the way of their North Indian ancestors which my part of the world became familiar with about 5 centuries ago - and let's face it, that process has hardly finished yet. Speaking of the Balkans, the relatively larger Gypsy concentration has two reasons - the Ottoman Empire whose re-settling policies facilitated the spread of the Gypsy population on this side of the Straits, but only within its own limits; and communism in the second half of the 20th century, which blocked their further inroads into Western Europe because of the Iron Curtain. Let's face it, Western Europe has its own share in this too, including France itself, which in the 17th century started putting its Roma population to persecution because of their "other-ness", which policy culminated during the Vichy regime, in Nazi Germany and the concentration camps (yes, there were not only Jews in the camps). The insinuations in the West now accusing Romania and Bulgaria of using segregation policies against their Roma and thus encouraging them to emigrate westwards are not just shameful - because historically, in fact both countries have long served as refuge for the Roma from the wide-spread hostility elsewhere in Europe in general. It's especially disingenuous and absurd to hear such remarks from representatives of countries like Holland for instance, which was the only country in the 18-19th century to achieve a "zero solution" of the "Roma question" - by either gradually expelling or exterminating its entire Roma population.
The geography of the Roma settlement across Europe clearly indicates who has been tolerant through the centuries and who hasn't. Out of 10-12 million Roma in Europe, which has about 500 million altogether, 2.5 million are in Romania, and 700 thousand in Bulgaria (official data points at 300 thousand). A simple calculation shows that their share in these two countries is about 10% of the population, while in Western Europe it's 2%. Spain should be mentioned too, its Gypsies came through Morocco and had a bit different history. Anyone who's familiar enough with this culture would acknowledge that there's nothing more natural for such people without a permanent settled lifestyle to move from the regions with larger concentration to other areas, especially when the latter provide more opportunities for a livelihood. Bulgaria and Romania could hardly be accused of deliberately staying poor just to get rid of their Roma through not being attractive enough economically, right?
Europe will never reach a sensible long-term solution of its issues with the Roma, unless it quits being hypocrite about it. Currently, it's waving the flag of human rights and shamelessly preaching to us and accusing Bulgaria and Romania of violating them by "refusing to integrate the Roma". And meanwhile Italy and France claim that they're expelling their Romanian and Bulgarian Roma not because they're officially intolerant to them or anything like that, but because they don't want any "aliens", whatever their origin, who are violating their laws. But they don't have the same approach to the millions of people coming from North and West Africa. You see, they have nothing against the "good Roma". But who decides which of them are welcome to stay and which aren't? What if all of them are staying there long after their tourist visas have expired and then they have no means to finance their stay legally? In practice all of them are illegal, and they're all subject to deportation, right?
The French and Italian ambassadors in Sofia made a series of initiatives for raising awareness about the problems of the Roma here, which is admirable I suppose. Of course they didn't miss the opportunity to beat more democracy and civilization into our heads because you see, they know so much better about life in a poor country, you know, they've seen it all on the TV and they've read it in their political-science journals and even developed a thesis or two while in the diplomatic high school. One of these epochal events was a seminar in May, which was rather unfortunate to make the ingenious conclusion that you just can't force someone to "integrate" (whatever that is supposed to mean). For instance the results of one of their researches unexpectedly demonstrated that most Roma themselves refuse to adopt the compulsory non-segregation policy in schools, and you see, turns out many of them prefer their children to study separately from the rest, because the Roma kids feel uncomfortable in the general group as they'd tend to lag behind in the education process (for cultural reasons; it has nothing to do with intelligence, so they at least avoided making racist conclusions, I'll give you that). But the top of the cake was a round table discussion entitled "What Kind of Integration Does the Roma Population Need In The Era of Free Movement Within EU?". The summary which could be found on the website of the French embassy, explains that a number of "Roma representatives at a EU level" (I wonder who they are, there have been only a couple of Roma EMPs as far as I'm aware), had reached a conclusion that "nomadic life is inherent to the Roma (no shit!?) and it derives from their historical exclusion, which in practice puts a brake to their further integration even today". Pure genius. They needed a million Euros research to find that out? Really? Further, the summary adds that "from this perspective, the recently observed re-nomadization of some Roma communities in Eastern Europe is something that causes concerns". This is the place you're welcome to facepalm. "Oh No You Din'nt" is the first reaction that comes to mind. Such a perverted way of thinking couldn't possibly be a result of anything but a paid errand. I want to believe it's forged, otherwise I'd have to make some disturbing conclusions about the mentality of most of our fellow Europeans. So let's just assume they basically wrote what they were told, and indeed this makes more sense, because let's not forget who sponsored the research as well as the entire event - yes, it was the French embassy of course.
Why don't the West Europeans just tell us "We just don't want any Roma here, you have to stop them from coming here even if you need to use force". Instead of twisting and turning and writhing between pseudo-scientific debates and semantic rope-dancing? By the way the French minister of the European issues finally spit it all out a couple of weeks ago. While being far away from Europe, in Colombia (I wonder what he was doing there if he's a minister of the European issues, but I digress), where in an interview in Bogota he admitted that France "has the moral obligation to accept 2.5 million Romanian Gypsies" if she were to remain consistent with her widely proclaimed principles and values, and he insisted that EU "should pull itself together" and really start working on this issue instead of using it for political party (read: election) games.
Reminds me of the way UK welcomed hundreds of thousands of Poles (the "Polish plumber" has become a wide-spread meme there), only to use the "threat" of a couple thousand Bulgarians and Romanians several years later, mostly the Tories using the "Balkan Card" (hordes of Romanians and Bulgarians are on the horizon!) to get more votes (and it was damn successful tactic as you can see).
But it doesn't matter that a few sober voices of reason would try to tell the rest to "gather themselves" and actually address the issue. It's obvious that these countries have reached a point where a forceful solution of the issue is being sought, and the aim now is to push the Roma back towards "ghetto-countries", the general sense being that they should be "dumped" in there and these countries be left to further deal with this on their own. Protocol #4 of the European Convention of Human Rights and all EU directives regarding the free movement of people are clear that every person has the freedom to leave any country within the Union and move elsewhere within the Union, without being persecuted. Bulgaria and Romania could fulfill their assigned mission of becoming ghetto-countries only if communism is reinstalled, and with it, entry visas. That's exactly the sentiment which the then Secretary at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, now-turned-Prime-Minister, Super-Boyko "Batman" Borisov expressed back in 2002, threatening that since Holland had repatriated a group of Bulgarian Gypsies, our country could probably resort to the old restrictive regime of entry visas. Back then he was booed by human rights activists, and he never ever dared to express his idea again. Now he looks as obedient to the directives of Brussels as any Bulgarian or Romanian PM is supposed to be.
France knows very well what the solution of the problem is on a selfish level (and France has been known for not being too unfamiliar to egoism at a state level), and it's now actively implementing this solution on a national scale, but it still lacks the diplomatic imagination and political courage to propose it on an European level. It has given its own 400 thousand Roma (0.7% of its population) the statute of "gens du voyage" (literally: traveling people), and through the Becon Law from 1990 (amended in 2000, 2003 and 2007) it obliges all its municipalities with over 5000 inhabitants to build autonomous water supplied and electrified parking camps for the caravans of the traveling Roma clans. This way it claims to be avoiding the mixing of the Roma with the settled local population, and to kindof "partially civilize" the Gypsy community by attaching a camping character to it. Usually the Roma remain in one place until the end of the school year, then move during summer to some vacant parking area next to some other town, where they stay for the winter. This pretty much eases the tensions and avoids the use of forceful "integration" which the Roma don't seem to want either.
It's clear that Europe shouldn't invest into the creation of slightly modernized Roma concentration camps in countries like Bulgaria and Romania which have been turned into a huge ghetto nonetheless, but instead they should focus on providing better opportunities for the Roma to follow their preferred way of life without putting artificial obstacles to it. And if past experience and anecdotal data is to be trusted, this seems to have worked somewhat better for their gradual and natural integration into the respective host society as well. They should provide more allocated spaces for their caravans, as the large chunks of the Roma community do indeed live on wheels, whether we like it or not; they should also try to provide better facilities and basic working opportunities and education, unless they'd like to see even more Roma beggars, pickpockets and prostitutes on the streets and highways, more homeless people living in carboard boxes in the parks or cut off in vast "junk-villes" in the city outskirts, or more stolen copper cables and truncated power lines in the countryside. It's not even necessary to grant a French, Italian, Dutch or whatever citizenship to them as they're already EU citizens anyway and this concern is irrelevant, enough is to just treat them as the full members of the Union that they are, with all the civil and human rights that are applied to any EU citizen. These people have been part of Europe for centuries and no matter how much you kick and toss them around and treat them like dirt, they won't go back to Northern India, so deal with it and let's just move on already, shall we?
Everything is ready for the most large-scale deportation in Europe since WW2, as this will directly involve tens of thousands of people.
So what, I ask? I can tell you what will happen. The Roma will return here, they'll meet their relatives who've remained back home, then they'll set off to the west again, because they already know the way, and because there's much more work and better salaries in Western Europe compared to the two poorest countries within EU. The only victim of the whole thing would be the reputation of the EU which claims to be a champion of human rights. Instead of living up to that PR image, it'll have provided yet another proof that all this "the values that we stand for" hype is just pure BS, and those EU poodles in Brussels are nothing else but the epitome of hypocrisy.
Notice that I haven't even discussed on the Roma themselves yet. "They're lazy and they steal and don't work, and do crime most of the time, and they refuse to integrate" is the meme I keep hearing, and indeed it'd have some grounds if we're to solely scratch the surface and not go any futher. It's a fact that the Roma have a nomadic tradition dating centuries back, and they find it difficult to adapt, and only some particular groups of them are used to settled lifestyle. Most of them have in one form or another continued the way of their North Indian ancestors which my part of the world became familiar with about 5 centuries ago - and let's face it, that process has hardly finished yet. Speaking of the Balkans, the relatively larger Gypsy concentration has two reasons - the Ottoman Empire whose re-settling policies facilitated the spread of the Gypsy population on this side of the Straits, but only within its own limits; and communism in the second half of the 20th century, which blocked their further inroads into Western Europe because of the Iron Curtain. Let's face it, Western Europe has its own share in this too, including France itself, which in the 17th century started putting its Roma population to persecution because of their "other-ness", which policy culminated during the Vichy regime, in Nazi Germany and the concentration camps (yes, there were not only Jews in the camps). The insinuations in the West now accusing Romania and Bulgaria of using segregation policies against their Roma and thus encouraging them to emigrate westwards are not just shameful - because historically, in fact both countries have long served as refuge for the Roma from the wide-spread hostility elsewhere in Europe in general. It's especially disingenuous and absurd to hear such remarks from representatives of countries like Holland for instance, which was the only country in the 18-19th century to achieve a "zero solution" of the "Roma question" - by either gradually expelling or exterminating its entire Roma population.
The geography of the Roma settlement across Europe clearly indicates who has been tolerant through the centuries and who hasn't. Out of 10-12 million Roma in Europe, which has about 500 million altogether, 2.5 million are in Romania, and 700 thousand in Bulgaria (official data points at 300 thousand). A simple calculation shows that their share in these two countries is about 10% of the population, while in Western Europe it's 2%. Spain should be mentioned too, its Gypsies came through Morocco and had a bit different history. Anyone who's familiar enough with this culture would acknowledge that there's nothing more natural for such people without a permanent settled lifestyle to move from the regions with larger concentration to other areas, especially when the latter provide more opportunities for a livelihood. Bulgaria and Romania could hardly be accused of deliberately staying poor just to get rid of their Roma through not being attractive enough economically, right?
Europe will never reach a sensible long-term solution of its issues with the Roma, unless it quits being hypocrite about it. Currently, it's waving the flag of human rights and shamelessly preaching to us and accusing Bulgaria and Romania of violating them by "refusing to integrate the Roma". And meanwhile Italy and France claim that they're expelling their Romanian and Bulgarian Roma not because they're officially intolerant to them or anything like that, but because they don't want any "aliens", whatever their origin, who are violating their laws. But they don't have the same approach to the millions of people coming from North and West Africa. You see, they have nothing against the "good Roma". But who decides which of them are welcome to stay and which aren't? What if all of them are staying there long after their tourist visas have expired and then they have no means to finance their stay legally? In practice all of them are illegal, and they're all subject to deportation, right?
The French and Italian ambassadors in Sofia made a series of initiatives for raising awareness about the problems of the Roma here, which is admirable I suppose. Of course they didn't miss the opportunity to beat more democracy and civilization into our heads because you see, they know so much better about life in a poor country, you know, they've seen it all on the TV and they've read it in their political-science journals and even developed a thesis or two while in the diplomatic high school. One of these epochal events was a seminar in May, which was rather unfortunate to make the ingenious conclusion that you just can't force someone to "integrate" (whatever that is supposed to mean). For instance the results of one of their researches unexpectedly demonstrated that most Roma themselves refuse to adopt the compulsory non-segregation policy in schools, and you see, turns out many of them prefer their children to study separately from the rest, because the Roma kids feel uncomfortable in the general group as they'd tend to lag behind in the education process (for cultural reasons; it has nothing to do with intelligence, so they at least avoided making racist conclusions, I'll give you that). But the top of the cake was a round table discussion entitled "What Kind of Integration Does the Roma Population Need In The Era of Free Movement Within EU?". The summary which could be found on the website of the French embassy, explains that a number of "Roma representatives at a EU level" (I wonder who they are, there have been only a couple of Roma EMPs as far as I'm aware), had reached a conclusion that "nomadic life is inherent to the Roma (no shit!?) and it derives from their historical exclusion, which in practice puts a brake to their further integration even today". Pure genius. They needed a million Euros research to find that out? Really? Further, the summary adds that "from this perspective, the recently observed re-nomadization of some Roma communities in Eastern Europe is something that causes concerns". This is the place you're welcome to facepalm. "Oh No You Din'nt" is the first reaction that comes to mind. Such a perverted way of thinking couldn't possibly be a result of anything but a paid errand. I want to believe it's forged, otherwise I'd have to make some disturbing conclusions about the mentality of most of our fellow Europeans. So let's just assume they basically wrote what they were told, and indeed this makes more sense, because let's not forget who sponsored the research as well as the entire event - yes, it was the French embassy of course.
Why don't the West Europeans just tell us "We just don't want any Roma here, you have to stop them from coming here even if you need to use force". Instead of twisting and turning and writhing between pseudo-scientific debates and semantic rope-dancing? By the way the French minister of the European issues finally spit it all out a couple of weeks ago. While being far away from Europe, in Colombia (I wonder what he was doing there if he's a minister of the European issues, but I digress), where in an interview in Bogota he admitted that France "has the moral obligation to accept 2.5 million Romanian Gypsies" if she were to remain consistent with her widely proclaimed principles and values, and he insisted that EU "should pull itself together" and really start working on this issue instead of using it for political party (read: election) games.
Reminds me of the way UK welcomed hundreds of thousands of Poles (the "Polish plumber" has become a wide-spread meme there), only to use the "threat" of a couple thousand Bulgarians and Romanians several years later, mostly the Tories using the "Balkan Card" (hordes of Romanians and Bulgarians are on the horizon!) to get more votes (and it was damn successful tactic as you can see).
But it doesn't matter that a few sober voices of reason would try to tell the rest to "gather themselves" and actually address the issue. It's obvious that these countries have reached a point where a forceful solution of the issue is being sought, and the aim now is to push the Roma back towards "ghetto-countries", the general sense being that they should be "dumped" in there and these countries be left to further deal with this on their own. Protocol #4 of the European Convention of Human Rights and all EU directives regarding the free movement of people are clear that every person has the freedom to leave any country within the Union and move elsewhere within the Union, without being persecuted. Bulgaria and Romania could fulfill their assigned mission of becoming ghetto-countries only if communism is reinstalled, and with it, entry visas. That's exactly the sentiment which the then Secretary at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, now-turned-Prime-Minister, Super-Boyko "Batman" Borisov expressed back in 2002, threatening that since Holland had repatriated a group of Bulgarian Gypsies, our country could probably resort to the old restrictive regime of entry visas. Back then he was booed by human rights activists, and he never ever dared to express his idea again. Now he looks as obedient to the directives of Brussels as any Bulgarian or Romanian PM is supposed to be.
France knows very well what the solution of the problem is on a selfish level (and France has been known for not being too unfamiliar to egoism at a state level), and it's now actively implementing this solution on a national scale, but it still lacks the diplomatic imagination and political courage to propose it on an European level. It has given its own 400 thousand Roma (0.7% of its population) the statute of "gens du voyage" (literally: traveling people), and through the Becon Law from 1990 (amended in 2000, 2003 and 2007) it obliges all its municipalities with over 5000 inhabitants to build autonomous water supplied and electrified parking camps for the caravans of the traveling Roma clans. This way it claims to be avoiding the mixing of the Roma with the settled local population, and to kindof "partially civilize" the Gypsy community by attaching a camping character to it. Usually the Roma remain in one place until the end of the school year, then move during summer to some vacant parking area next to some other town, where they stay for the winter. This pretty much eases the tensions and avoids the use of forceful "integration" which the Roma don't seem to want either.
It's clear that Europe shouldn't invest into the creation of slightly modernized Roma concentration camps in countries like Bulgaria and Romania which have been turned into a huge ghetto nonetheless, but instead they should focus on providing better opportunities for the Roma to follow their preferred way of life without putting artificial obstacles to it. And if past experience and anecdotal data is to be trusted, this seems to have worked somewhat better for their gradual and natural integration into the respective host society as well. They should provide more allocated spaces for their caravans, as the large chunks of the Roma community do indeed live on wheels, whether we like it or not; they should also try to provide better facilities and basic working opportunities and education, unless they'd like to see even more Roma beggars, pickpockets and prostitutes on the streets and highways, more homeless people living in carboard boxes in the parks or cut off in vast "junk-villes" in the city outskirts, or more stolen copper cables and truncated power lines in the countryside. It's not even necessary to grant a French, Italian, Dutch or whatever citizenship to them as they're already EU citizens anyway and this concern is irrelevant, enough is to just treat them as the full members of the Union that they are, with all the civil and human rights that are applied to any EU citizen. These people have been part of Europe for centuries and no matter how much you kick and toss them around and treat them like dirt, they won't go back to Northern India, so deal with it and let's just move on already, shall we?
(no subject)
Date: 18/8/10 19:06 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/8/10 19:14 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/8/10 19:18 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/8/10 19:37 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/8/10 19:41 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/8/10 20:00 (UTC)- "I'll screw you up the moment you gimme a chance, because, because, well, because I can. And because I've been pretty screwed up anyway".
and:
- "But don't forget that I'm oh so hospitable! Can you see my hospitality? I'll make you the awesomest salad in the world, and I'll let you drink the best Rakia you've ever tasted, as much as you want. Well, I'll steal your wallet afterwards but come on, nothing is perfect, is it?"
and:
- "Don't gimme no lessons of freedom and democracy-acy-cy... I know what's best for me. You have some nice experiences to share? Haha, you're dumb. I don't care about your experiences, you know nothing. So be so kind to spend your money here at my resorts, but don't fuckin preach to me what I should do with it afterwards".
and:
- "Everyone else is stupid, only I'm smart. Proudly Bulgarian!" (beats self in chest before plunging into the spa pool, spilling half the water outside). -- taken from a popular 1894 novel depicting the typical Balkan type. ;-)
Etc.
(no subject)
Date: 18/8/10 20:07 (UTC).....
Yes, I can see how that would make reform of this sort more problematic than usual.
(no subject)
Date: 18/8/10 20:57 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/8/10 21:04 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/8/10 21:13 (UTC)Same old game, new package. Mostly the same players, with some notable newcomers.
(no subject)
Date: 18/8/10 21:15 (UTC)Litmus test of the ages
Date: 18/8/10 23:57 (UTC)Re: Litmus test of the ages
Date: 19/8/10 01:45 (UTC)Yeah, you are free to settle in the UK, so long as you stay put, get a house, join the rat race and stop being itinerate casual labourers. we prefer students to pick our apples and distrust people who are not like us, see?
The roma/ gypsies/ travellers , whatever you want to call them, just want to live according to their own values. their way of life is threatened, not just by non Romany wandereres taking to the roads and being antisocial in ways that the Roma wouldn't dream of, but also the cheap plastic stuff that is replacing the items that Roma would carve out of wood and sell door to door.
This is another reason not to like the French in my book - or at least, the French guvvermint.
(no subject)
Date: 19/8/10 03:22 (UTC)you can guess which this one is
(but hey, at least those categories are better than the two which my posts fall into)
(no subject)
Date: 19/8/10 06:57 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 19/8/10 19:38 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 19/8/10 21:01 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 20/8/10 18:00 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 20/8/10 19:44 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/8/10 17:13 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/8/10 17:15 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/8/10 17:52 (UTC)But before that, Roma had no connotations for me except something to do with Rome. "Roma", e.g. in verses like Yunan, Misra, Roma, sab mit gaye... refers to "Rome", i.e. the Roman civilization (Yunan is Greece, Misra is Egypt)
I don't know what to say, I feel really embarrassed :'-(
(no subject)
Date: 21/8/10 18:11 (UTC)We call them Tsigani. Other versions of the word are Tsigane, Cingare, etc. The Roma, Romi, Romani only entered our vocabulary recently, and I suppose it's a polite term for the Tsigani. I agree that Gypsies is a bit too vague and general, and might refer to people leading a nomadic lifestyle in general, without necessarily being of this ethnic group. Btw the word Gypsy comes from an old misconception that they came from Egypt (some of them still claim they came from Egypt, but recent DNA and linguistic studies have pinned their place of origin in Punjab, Rajastan, Gujarat and Sindh).
(no subject)
Date: 21/8/10 18:38 (UTC)To be frank, I am a little tired of all the linguistic and genetics-based theories, which place the origin of "Aryan invaders" sometimes somewhere in Scythia, sometimes in Mongolia, and at other times near some lake in Sweden. Also this is the first time I'm hearing accounts of any group of people moving OUT of the Indian subcontinent, rather than anyone and everyone entering/invading and settling; so I might have some sort of cognitive bias :P But this story is very interesting and I'd look forward to hearing more on it from you :)
(no subject)
Date: 21/8/10 18:46 (UTC)It was long thought that the proto-Bulgars were one of the many Turkic tribes coming along with the Huns, but now linguistic and genetic evidence points that they were actually of Indo-European stock, coming from Persia and Afghanistan and mixing with the Turkic tribes of Eurasia in the process. Indeed, some of their vocabulary, belief system, toponyms and the fact they built large walled cities rather than living on horseback might provide further proof, added to some place names that indicate their route (lake BALH-ash, BALHara, etc).
As for the Tsigani/Gypsies/Romani, I agree with you that the version they moved along with Alexander's armies is not very trustable. They were rather re-settled by the Persian rulers and then moved further westwards, and when the Ottomans stepped on the Balkans in the 15th century, they further re-settled them at this side of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, as they did with many other ethnic groups within their empire.
Either way, the Tsigani are now here, and we have to face this fact, and all the related issues that come with it. Instead of tossing them around and using them as a tool for this or that political purpose. It's been one of the most abused and misunderstood communities in the world, and unfortunately still is.
Truth be told, they should do some efforts to live in harmony with the host societies as well, but that's an entirely separate, and enormous topic on its own.
(no subject)
Date: 21/8/10 19:09 (UTC)than living on horseback might...
No, not the horse, please don't talk about the horse! Ok, just kidding, but the "horse debate" has been beaten to ridiculous proportions now - such as whether a certain drawing is actually horse, or a cow, or something else.
I personally am comfortable living with disparate theories of this kind, and I don't have much emotional investment in the origin of my ancestors, but several people do, and hence things get contentious. For example casting doubts on a Jat's theories of their origin, or on their uncontaminated lineage, might turn out to be a Jat equivalent of "suicide by cop". Or if you are particularly in the mood for being verbally abused, editing the "Jat people" page on Wikipedia would be the way to go ;D
(no subject)
Date: 20/8/10 17:29 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 20/8/10 19:43 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 20/8/10 17:39 (UTC)Cher had this covered decades ago.