Romania. A country in a full process of development, recently entered in the EU family has always confronted considerable racism issues. Even though, there are many organizations which try to stop this dishonorable phenomenon, its erroneous premises are inoculated to people even by the President of the state and other top politicians.
The trend of hating gypsies
The main category of discriminated individuals is the one of the gypsies, a large group in the Romanian society, generally, yet unofficially, considered to be responsible for most of the crimes. It is true, there are some over-mediated exponents who seem rather different from the rest of the people (not only law-breakers, but also unexplainably rich gypsies who build flamboyant castles, or parents who arrange their children’s weddings at the age of twelve), but applying this pattern, as a unanimously valid one is the biggest mistake people tend to make.
As a inequitable fact, gypsies’ wages are way below other people’s salaries, their life expectancy is ten years smaller but the most dramatic concern is the way the society refers to them: gypsy-children are always marginalized in schools or play-grounds, while the Romanian children are usually taught by their parents not to talk to gypsies, and even threatened-when they misbehave- with a popular saying: “I’m gonna give you to the gypsies”.
Racism (the president’s example) vs. Tolerance (the schools’ efforts)
Even though teachers struggle to eliminate any echoes of racism, by educating young people in the spirit of equality and acceptance in order to have a future open-minded generation, these labors can turn into dust when imprudence like the one of the president’s Train Basescu occur. The short version of this outrageous event is that, this summer, in a very important day for the president of Romania (the day when a referendum concerning his remaining the first person in the state was organized) one female journalist stopped him in a public place(!),a hypermarket, to ask his opinion about the hypothetical result of the referendum. Visibly disturbed by her questions, the president seized the woman’s mobile phone and called her “A stinky gypsy” with the intention to offend her. His reaction was videotaped and made the subject of many TV journals, encountered a huge wave of disapprobation from the anti-racism and media organizations, but president Traian Basescu found it appropriate to excuse himself only by sending the journalist a big bouquet of flowers. The sad part was that the problem had already become a general one, involving not only the journalist as an individual but also the gypsies as a discriminated minority, and the citizens who took the president as a role-model. This social impact was actually shocking, as numerous emails approving Traian Basescu’s behaviour were received at television stations, from people all over the country. The president’s popularity was that big that any gesture he made was considered to be the right one by his followers. What examples are children and teenagers supposed to follow? How are mistaken mentalities supposed to change and become European in this kind of a socio-political climate?!
Homophobia-an electoral strategy
Despite the fact that, at an official level, homosexual people have equal rights with the rest of the citizens, they are still denigrated and mocked by people who should be an example of tolerance. The same president Traian Basescu, once again bothered by the question of one male journalist, “baptized” the reporter with the insulting, pejorative “fag” (the Romanian word used, was “gaozar”).
Other politicians aspiring to become presidents openly admitted their abhorrence towards homosexual people and even came up with strategies that would limit this minority’s rights. Corneliu Vadim Tudor, president of an extremist party frequently refers to his political opponents as “queers” while, Gigi Becali, the leader of a Christian party asserted that as a president he would destroy all gay clubs and build special isolated ghettos for gay people to live in.
All these, happen in an EU country, in the year of 2007, when apparently the slogan “United in diversity” has extended to “United in a diversity of discriminating methods”.
By Marius George Pancu
