Ricochet politics, Romanian style - after electing a German president, a Turkish lady gets a key cabinet position in Bucharest

[Stavroforos]

No, they are not.
They are Romanian by citizenship but in Romania we identify people by their ethnicity so for example ethnic Roma are Roma, ethnic Hungarians are Hungarians, ethnic Germans are Germans...etc.

Unlike other countries we don't fancy the habit of equating nationality and citizenship to ethnicity and culture so we don't automatically impose our beliefs on everyone born here

Well, one of you must be wrong.

[diegis]

There are around 1 million Gypsies/Roma, how you want to call them, in Romania.

Official census from couple years ago said they are around 600,000+. Some say they are more, just that some declare themselves as Romanians (or in some regions Hungarians). They can't be much more however compared with the official census, and probably at least half of them (whatever their number is) are already gone through Europe and only few are returning or plan to do so. They are still migratory people after all

On the other side there are others who said that various NGO and such like to pretend they are more (even if they don't have any means to know the real number) and artificially inflate their number and promote such idea in mass media.
The reason is that such NGO are dealing with "human rights" and "integration of Gypsies (Roma is another artificial name as an attempt of rebranding and get rid of some bad reputation)", "development of poor areas" etc etc and get EU grants and EU moneys for their activities. So they need to show how important they are and how much money they need because how many people they need to help and so on.

[Bethrezen]

Well, one of you must be wrong.

Easy. Simple minded Romanians (perhaps 90% of the population) can't differentiate between ethnicity and nationality.

This means Romanians, in general, don't give a damn about citizenship; they judge you by your ethnicity, religious confession, sexual preferences etc. Just like in Middle Ages.
I don't know if it's really different than in any other country on the Earth, though.

[Dromikaites]

Easy. Simple minded Romanians (perhaps 90% of the population) can't differentiate between ethnicity and nationality.

Logical fail is strong in you, young padawan.

This means Romanians, in general, don't give a damn about citizenship; they judge you by your ethnicity, religious confession, sexual preferences etc. Just like in Middle Ages.

Actually we diferentiate based on ethnicity precisely because that is the way to ensure the cultural survival of the ethnic minorities.

If for instance we would have not differentiated between Gypsies and Romanians we would not have trained teachers and social workers who speak Gypsy, we would not have printed textbooks in Gypsy language and would not have had Gypsy language programs on the national TV, etc.

[Sir Adrian]

Well, one of you must be wrong.

Why? We're both saying the same thing. Unlike France or Greece or Serbia, where if you are a citizen you are also french or greek or serbian, we recognize everybody's ethnicity as is and we don't impose our ethnicity and beliefs upon you

[Stavroforos]

Why? We're both saying the same thing.

Really? Because one of you is saying that they're Romanian and one is saying that they're not.

[Sir Adrian]

No. We're both saying they're not Romanian unless they want to become romanians. Citizenship =/= ethnicity. You can't be romanian or greek if you do nto ascribe to Romanian or greek culture and customs, can you?

That's not what I am saying - happy to clarify this for you.

Nah, I'm fairly certain that's exactly what you were saying. 90% of your posts in this thread are in the "my country is better than yours" category and in the middle of one such argument you pull the gypsy figures right out of the blue.

Irish Travellers are not the same as Roma and both groups can be called gypsies in the UK. Your source is a number of both groups combined. Do please read your own links before posting them.

Between you and the Brittish government I trust the Brittish government, and they say 300000

[Stavroforos]

No. We're both saying they're not Romanian unless they want to become romanians. Citizenship =/= ethnicity.

If they're Romanian citizens, they're Romanians. They might not be ethnic Romanians, but that doesn't matter to anyone besides those people who think they're descended from Romans and Dacians.

[Dromikaites]

If they're Romanian citizens, they're Romanians. They might not be ethnic Romanians, but that doesn't matter to anyone besides those people who think they're descended from Romans and Dacians.

You do not understand the issue yet you have strong opinions about it.

In Romania we have 18 ethnic minorities, even though all together they account for 15% of the total population. Out of those 15%, the Hungarians make 6% and the Gypsies another 3%. That means the other 16 ethnic minorities together represent only 6% of the population.

Without treating the ethnic minorities distinct from the general population, their culture would not have survived. For instance, even though the Turkish minority totals some 30k people out of 20 million, the largest mosque in the whole region was built with government money and with the donations from the Christian majority. And that has happened in...1911, some 100 years before Romania would join the EU.

For the last 200 years (that is from the beginning of modern Romania) the State has covered the costs of functioning of the Greek, Armenian, Turkish, Bulgarian, Russian etc schools and religious services. During all that time France, for instance, was insisting everybody is French and therefore should only study in French, the Langue d'Oil version of it.

As a result of "everybody in France is French" the Breton, Provencal, Gascon and Basque languages were almost wiped out. Those languages managed to barely survive only because those populations were some 100 times larger than the Greek or Turkish minority in Romania.

Also, unlike say, France or Greece, the Romanian Constitution guarantees at least 1 seat in the Parliament even if the political organization representing that minority cannot get the minimum amount of votes needed for being elected. How can you prevent those reserved seats aren't taken by ethnic Romanians? Precisely by reserving them for those who are not Romanians.

So you see, we have excellent reasons to avoid the "every Romanian citizen is Romanian" line. That is the only way to truly preserve the cultural diversity and to ensure all those citizens have a saying in how the country is run.

[Stavroforos]

You do not understand the issue yet you have strong opinions about it.

In Romania we have 18 ethnic minorities, even though all together they account for 15% of the total population. Out of those 15%, the Hungarians make 6% and the Gypsies another 3%. That means the other 16 ethnic minorities together represent only 6% of the population.

Without treating the ethnic minorities distinct from the general population, their culture would not have survived. For instance, even though the Turkish minority totals some 30k people out of 20 million, the largest mosque in the whole region was built with government money and with the donations from the Christian majority. And that has happened in...1911, some 100 years before Romania would join the EU.

For the last 200 years (that is from the beginning of modern Romania) the State has covered the costs of functioning of the Greek, Armenian, Turkish, Bulgarian, Russian etc schools and religious services. During all that time France, for instance, was insisting everybody is French and therefore should only study in French, the Langue d'Oil version of it.

As a result of "everybody in France is French" the Breton, Provencal, Gascon and Basque languages were almost wiped out. Those languages managed to barely survive only because those populations were some 100 times larger than the Greek or Turkish minority in Romania.

Also, unlike say, France or Greece, the Romanian Constitution guarantees at least 1 seat in the Parliament even if the political organization representing that minority cannot get the minimum amount of votes needed for being elected. How can you prevent those reserved seats aren't taken by ethnic Romanians? Precisely by reserving them for those who are not Romanians.

So you see, we have excellent reasons to avoid the "every Romanian citizen is Romanian" line. That is the only way to truly preserve the cultural diversity and to ensure all those citizens have a saying in how the country is run.

So, when a Romanian travels abroad, do they give this whole spiel when they're asking them what country they're coming from? Or do they just show their Romanian passport and enter as a Romanian?

[Dromikaites]

So, when a Romanian travels abroad, do they give this whole spiel when they're asking them what country they're coming from? Or do they just show their Romanian passport and enter as a Romanian?

Huh?!

As Romanian citizens they are treated by foreigners the way the foreigners decide to.

For instance, the Romanian Gypsies in France, UK or say Greece aren't offered the possibility to send their children to Gypsy language schools. They can however do that if they live in Romania. There are even a certain number of places reserved for them in the state-funded universities in Romania.

Until Romania becomes as powerful as the Roman Empire was, we won't be able to force Greece or France to open Gypsy language schools on their territories and to reserve a certain amount of places for them in the government-funded Greek or French universities, distinct from the places for Greek or French students.

So as long as we haven't imposed the Roman[ian] will over the rest of Europe, we won't be able to prevent the foreigners from treating our minorities badly. Rest assured though that when time comes, you will have Gypsy language schools in Greece, just like there are in Romania.

[Stavroforos]

Huh?!

As Romanian citizens they are treated by foreigners the way the foreigners decide to.

For instance, the Romanian Gypsies in France, UK or say Greece aren't offered the possibility to send their children to Gypsy language schools. They can however do that if they live in Romania. There are even a certain number of places reserved for them in the state-funded universities in Romania.

Until Romania becomes as powerful as the Roman Empire was, we won't be able to force Greece or France to open Gypsy language schools on their territories and to reserve a certain amount of places for them in the government-funded Greek or French universities, distinct from the places for Greek or French students.

So as long as we haven't imposed the Roman[ian] will over the rest of Europe, we won't be able to prevent the foreigners from treating our minorities badly. Rest assured though that when time comes, you will have Gypsy language schools in Greece, just like there are in Romania.

That's not at all the point I was making, which is why I used that specific example. If Romanian Roma goes abroad, he's from Romania, not from Roma-nia. He's treated as a Romanian because he's a Romanian. What ethnic discrimination goes on inside Romania is irrelevant, and doesn't make them any less Romanian than you or your German President.

[Sir Adrian]

When you travel abroad nobody asks you about your ethnicity. They only care about citizenship, and only for administrative reasons. When I got off the airplane in the Hague or Lisbon nobody asked me what I am, they only cared for my citizenship to and my reasons of visiting. No idea why you are so obsessed with the ethnicity of people visiting other countries but your example is moot since nobody care about it in the manner you put it in.

If they're Romanian citizens, they're Romanians.

Yeah, I think UNESCO might want to have a chat with you about acceptence and tolerance of other people because borderline xenophobic ideas like that (all people in country x are x solely because they were born in country x) are what's causing all the problems in France and Britain at the moment and royally screwing over Sweden. You go right ahead and treat people like that if you think the ghettos around Paris, full of angry maghrebs violently resisting assimilation, the Yugoslav war, the trouble in Ukraine or the plague of rebellions the Autro-Hungarian and Russian empires faced are acceptable situations and good ideas, we on there other hand will refrain from on other people's culture just because there's more of us and try to live peacefully with them rather than above them. Strength in diversity and all that. It's worth nothing though that the only people who promote ideas simmilar to the above are Jobbik, Fidesz and the Golden Dawn.


For somebody admiring the US so much you sure fail to see the one thing which made it a superpower.

[Stavroforos]

Yeah, I think UNESCO might want to have a chat with you about acceptence and tolerance of other people because borderline xenophobic ideas like that (all people in country x are x solely because they were born in country x) are what's causing all the problems in France and Britain at the moment and royally screwing over Sweden. You go right ahead and treat people like that if you think the angry maghreb ghettos around Paris are such a good idea, we on there other hand will refrain from on other people's culture just because there's more of us and try to live peacefully. Strength in diversity and all that.

For somebody admirign the US you sure fail to see the one thing which made it a superpower.

Off topic but because you clearly know little on the subject, the US wasn't made strong in diversity, it's not Canada. It was made strong because it assimilated all cultures and made them all equally American regardless of their background.

Back on subject, you're the one that seems to be stuck on this concept of ethnicity. A Romanian is someone who is a citizen of Romania, so gypsies are Romanians, so are the German minority, and whatever other minority lives in Romania that has Romanian citizenship. Just because they may not pretend that their ethnic ancestors are Dacians and Romans, doesn't mean they're not Romanian.

[removeduser_487563287433]

Nah, I'm fairly certain that's exactly what you were saying. 90% of your posts in this thread are in the "my country is better than yours" category and in the middle of one such argument you pull the gypsy figures right out of the blue.

I am happy to explain to you, like a toddler, terrified and blinking, that is not what my post meant.

Between you and the Brittish government I trust the Brittish government, and they say 300000

Your source is not the British Government, it is the Guardian, and the Guardian explicitly says there is a combination of Irish Travellers and Roma in the UK, which makes a total of 300,000. They even explain the difference for people like you who can't be expected to know any better.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandst...ler-life-women

"There are around 300,000 Gypsy Roma and Irish Travellers in the UK – Roma Gypsies are originally from northern India, whereas Travellers are of Irish origin – and both groups are nomadic."

Until Romania becomes as powerful as the Roman Empire was, we won't be able to force Greece or France to open Gypsy language schools on their territories and to reserve a certain amount of places for them in the government-funded Greek or French universities, distinct from the places for Greek or French students.

So as long as we haven't imposed the Roman[ian] will over the rest of Europe, we won't be able to prevent the foreigners from treating our minorities badly. Rest assured though that when time comes, you will have Gypsy language schools in Greece, just like there are in Romania.

White-washing. Amnesty International's latest human rights report accuses Romania of discrimination against Roma as a matter of Government policy.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents.../0001/2015/en/

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

DISCRIMINATION – ROMA
Roma continued to face systemic
discrimination. Public officials used
discriminatory and stigmatizing speech
against Roma. In February, President
Traian Băsescu was fined for the second
time by the National Council for Combating
Discrimination. During an official visit to
Slovenia in November 2010, he stated that
“among nomad Roma, very few want to work
and many of them, traditionally, live off what
they steal.” In July, the Cluj-Napoca Court
of Appeal found that the government had
failed to implement measures promised in the
wake of attacks against Roma communities in
Hădăreni, including community development
projects to improve living conditions and interethnic
relations. The Hădăreni events were
among some 30 incidents of mob violence
directed at Romani communities throughout
Romania in the early 1990s.
In September 2013, the High Court
of Cassation and Justice upheld the
2011 decision of the National Council for
Combating Discrimination that the concrete
wall erected in Baia Mare to separate
blocks of houses inhabited by Roma from
the rest of the residential area amounted to
discrimination.
HOUSING RIGHTS – FORCED EVICTIONS
The concluding observations of the UN
Committee on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights called on the government
to ensure access to adequate housing for
disadvantaged and marginalized groups,
including Roma, and to amend the legislation
to prohibit forced evictions.1
Local authorities continued to forcibly evict
Romani communities. Some were relocated
to inadequate and segregated housing, while
others were effectively made homeless.
Romani families living for over 40 years
in an informal settlement in Eforie Sud,
Constanţa county, were repeatedly forcibly
evicted from their homes. In September 2013,
101 people, including 55 children, were
made homeless in severe weather conditions
when their homes were demolished following
a municipal order. Some of the families were
subsequently offered temporary shelter in
two abandoned school buildings in highly
inadequate living conditions.2 In July 2014,
seven of the 10 families living in one of the
former schools were relocated to segregated
and inadequate containers on the outskirts
of Eforie Sud, while the remaining three were
left homeless. None of the families were
provided with remedy or compensation for the
304 Amnesty International Report 2014/15
violations suffered and for loss or damage to
their possessions.
By the end of 2014, Romani families
forcibly evicted in August 2013 from the
Craica settlement in Baia Mare in connection
with a waterworks project co-funded by the
Romanian Ministry of Environment, the EU
and the European Bank for Reconstruction
and Development, had not been provided
with adequate alternative housing.3 The
families continued to live in the improvised
housing they built after the 2013 demolitions.
In December 2013, the Cluj-Napoca
County Court ruled unlawful the Mayor’s
decision to forcibly evict around 300 Roma
in December 2010 from the centre of the city
and resettle them at a site adjacent to a waste
dump. The court ordered the municipality to
pay damages to the applicants and provide
them with adequate housing. In October
2014, following the municipality’s appeal, the
Cluj Court of Appeal decided to remit the case
to the Cluj District Court on the grounds that
the case was a matter of private – rather than
administrative – law, as the municipality had
acted in its capacity of landlord/landowner
rather than as a public authority. The case
was still pending at the end of the year

Yeah, I think UNESCO might want to have a chat with you about acceptence and tolerance of other people because borderline xenophobic ideas like that (all people in country x are x solely because they were born in country x) are what's causing all the problems in France and Britain at the moment and royally screwing over Sweden.

Um... that's not what UNESCO really does. I think you were aiming for UNHRC and missed. Anyway, what are you talking about with Britain? The Office for National Statistics recommends recording multiple ethnic categories and including "other" options for self-determinism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classi...ity_categories

[trance]

Yeah, I think UNESCO might want to have a chat with you about acceptence and tolerance of other people because borderline xenophobic ideas like that (all people in country x are x solely because they were born in country x) are what's causing all the problems in France and Britain at the moment and royally screwing over Sweden.

Lol, stop talking .

Sweden is getting screwed by political correctness leading to over 40% of the population being suppressed. There's a very wide resistance to the extreme immigration policy yet there's basically only one party that explicitly opposes it. It's the result of the established parties boards mercilessly trying to squash a very large minority (and occasionally majority within the party).

The 's that really is screwing Sweden over is however that the environmentalist party and the leftist party is exercising disproportional power over the government.

[Dromikaites]

White-washing. Amnesty International's latest human rights report accuses Romania of discrimination against Roma as a matter of Government policy.

You didn't actually read what you've referenced or else I will have to conclude you are experiencing difficulties comprehending English.

The anti-discrimination cases Amnesty International mentions were won in the Romanian courts of law.

It may be news to you but anti-discrimination cases are won every year in every civilized country around the world, UK included. Sometimes they are won against individuals (including politicians), sometimes they are won against the local administration, sometimes they are won against companies.

Discrimination would be a matter of government policy if it would happen and there would be no possibility of redress in the said country. You know, like during the time of Apartheid in South Africa.

Beside, how would your brain reconcile the fact there are 100% State-funded education in Gypsy language, 100% State-funded programs for training Gypsy-speaking social workers, places reserved exclusively for Gypsy students in all the top State-funded universities, Gypsy language programs on the public TV and public radio with an alleged "discrimination as a matter of Government policy"? And guess what? All those programs were implemented in the early '90s, long before joining the EU. The first textbooks in Gypsy language were printed in 1991, before even the breakup of the Soviet Union, at a time when nobody was imagining the EU would expand eastward.

Does the UK government provide Gypsy-language education for those 200,000 Gypsies? (I assume the Irish Travelers speak English but if they don't, does the public education system support education in their maternal language?) Do they have Gypsy-language programs on BBC like we have here on TVR? By our standards, if you don't have such things you are oppressing those Gypsies, as a matter of government policy.

[removeduser_487563287433]

You didn't actually read what you've referenced or else I will have to conclude you are experiencing difficulties comprehending English.

The anti-discrimination cases Amnesty International mentions were won in the Romanian courts of law.

It specifies that a single Romanian case found the Romanian Government's actions to amount to discrimination. At that point you apparently stopped reading, because it goes on to talk about how Romanian law permits Roma to be forcibly evicted, to make them homeless, and that some of them are given inadequate housing.

Does the UK government provide Gypsy-language education for those 200,000 Gypsies? (I assume the Irish Travelers speak English but if they don't, does the public education system support education in their maternal language?) Do they have Gypsy-language programs on BBC like we have here on TVR? By our standards, if you don't have such things you are oppressing those Gypsies, as a matter of government policy.

It doesn't, but then again since Roma (and not all Romani speak the same language) are only 0.14% of the British population, if we were going through the rankings we would need to first set up schools for Polish, Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Yoruba, Arabic, French, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Tamil, Turkish and Italian - again this is assuming all 90,000 Roma in the UK speak a language other than English as their mother tongue, and all speak the same language, both of which are untrue. This compares to Romania where Roma are 3.3% of the population, the third largest group in the country, after Hungarians.

Basically, it's an absurd comparison to make.

[Dromikaites]

It specifies that a single Romanian case found the Romanian Government's actions to amount to discrimination. At that point you apparently stopped reading, because it goes on to talk about how Romanian law permits Roma to be forcibly evicted, to make them homeless, and that some of them are given inadequate housing.

The Romanian law permits to forcibly evict anybody and everybody. And then in most of the cases inadequate housing is provided. The most recent cases happened in the capitol city, Bucharest, when the city council decided to tear down some old buildings in order to enlarge some boulevards. In spite of massive ONG protests, the city went ahead, kicked everybody out with the help of the military police, bulldozed the buildings down and poured asphalt on top of the cleared place.

Of course the city would end up paying several millions euros in compensation, after it loses those cases in court. Because there's no doubt about what the verdict would be. The mayor himself might end up behind bars, since he supervised those evictions in person, and some of those evictions happened in winter time and before the sunrise (which is totally against the law, even though the law itself is pro-eviction).

It doesn't, but then again since Roma (and not all Romani speak the same language) are only 0.14% of the British population, if we were going through the rankings we would need to first set up schools for Polish, Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Yoruba, Arabic, French, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Tamil, Turkish and Italian. This compares to Romania where Roma are 3.3% of the population, the third largest group in the country, after Hungarians.

Basically, it's an absurd comparison to make.

No it is not.

We also have state-funded public education (including religious education) and TV programs for the Turkish minority, in spite of the fact they represent...0.0016% of the total population. Yes, that's indeed 0 followed by two more zeros after the decimal point.

Or for the Bulgarians, who represent a quarter of the total Turkish population. There's a Bulgarian language high school in Bucharest, not very far from where I live. The Bulgarian minority has in total...8,000 people.

So you see, UK is far behind Romania when it comes to State support for the preservation of the cultural identity.

If Romania, which has a GDP 14 times lower than UK can afford to build and fund a high school for the Bulgarian minority, which represents 0.0004% of the population then for sure the UK can afford to build a Gypsy language high school for its 0.14% Gypsy minority.

[ShockBlast]

That's not at all the point I was making, which is why I used that specific example. If Romanian Roma goes abroad, he's from Romania, not from Roma-nia. He's treated as a Romanian because he's a Romanian. What ethnic discrimination goes on inside Romania is irrelevant, and doesn't make them any less Romanian than you or your German President.

So Romanians discriminates against other minorities because it doesn`t call them....Romanians ?

I live in an are with a lot of minorities and they identify themselves by their ethnicity, we should "educate" them that they are only Romanians ?