Mr. Marian Mandache is a dedicated human rights lawyer with extensive international experience, specializing in anti-Roma racism and civil rights litigation. His legal career spans over two decades, beginning in Romania with his admission to the Bucharest Bar in 2005. Recently, in 2024, Mr. Mandache was admitted to the Bar in Massachusetts and ranked in the top 5% across 36 UBE States. He holds an LL.M. from Columbia University (2010), where he served as a teaching assistant to renowned civil rights lawyer Prof. Jack Greenberg. Marian provided critical expert testimonies in groundbreaking U.S. cases, including California’s first-ever racial bias ruling under the Racial Justice Act. The case pertained to a Romanian Roma arrested in California, and it was decided in 2024. Prior to moving to the USA, Marian Mandake served as Executive Director of Romani CRISS (2012–2020), where he led multiple landmark human rights cases. His notable victories include the Lingurar v. Romania case at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which was the first to establish racial profiling by police against Roma in Europe. He also successfully litigated high-profile cases on hate speech (winning three times against the President of Romania) and school segregation, such as the desegregation of School 19 Craiova. Marian has authored six books on Roma human rights, further solidifying his reputation as a leading advocate for justice and equality
By request of Mr. Mandache we are publishing his speech delivered at the “Romani Week” event in Brussels on April 9, 2024 in which calls for a “radical departure from the past” and “a new Roma deal”.
What should the Roma discourse be after the European Parliament elections?
The Roma discourse should be same, before and after the elections.
On examining what is the Roma discourse, our first look at the matter follows an ontological approach.
Who are the Roma?
Amen sam Roma!
The Roma are a population of Indian origin who share a common language, called Romany. Romany is the closest language to Sanskrit that is still being spoken today. Roma also have a common cultural heritage, traditions and customs, generally referred to as the “Romanipen”.
We also have a common history, marred by pervasive discrimination, racial persecution, slavery, and extermination during the Holocaust. Between 500.000 up to 1.5 million Roma were exterminated during the Holocaust.
Was this presentation necessary? Unfortunately, YES!
Contrary to the belief of the ERRC – European Roma Rights Center (see “There is no Roma Nation” article published in Norwich Radical by Jonathan Lee in January 2024) Roma are not merely a socially disadvantaged group. We are not just workers. Having read the so-called article, and reviewed its citations also, I am not surprised to conclude that it was based off of junk science and off of stereotyping and racist sources. Further, there are elementary confusions between basic notions, such nation and state. When a person believes Roma a just a social group in his private statements, but the same person publicly states that Roma face racism due to their nationality and because of “Anti-Gypsism” in his capacity as the Communication Director of the ERRC (and for the latter he is also getting paid a salary), the question that arises in my mind is – when was he lying?
In sum, using the wording of physicist Wolfgang Pauli the article is so incomplete and poorly thought that “it is not even false” as it fails to even meet even the standards under which it would be possible to judge it as false or correct.
That aside, the reduction of Roma to a social group is a clear act of racism as it denies us of our unique cultural, political, historical, linguistic and national identity. I argue that not only are Roma a people, but the Roma national identity is extremely strong. Without a state, without a schooling system, without a religious institution, without any institutions and even without written texts or an alphabet, the Roma identity has resisted. It has endured and thrived. Despite the fact that the world has thrown at us some of the worst possible treatment, pervasive racism, slavery, genocide.
We survived and we are here. At the European Parliament, at the European Commission, in the EU member states, in other states, in cities, and towns and villages. All over the world. Amen sam Roma, We are here as Roma, and we celebrate our International Day as Roma.
Most important, we owe it to our ancestors to speak the truth. To our ancestors who have been persecuted and killed because of their identity, we owe it to them to speak up in defense of our people, to raise our voice to defend our identity, our language, our own culture. We owe it to the men, women and children who fought in the Auschwitz-Birkenau on May 16, 1944 – on the Roma resistance day – against the Nazis and defeated the SS troops with their bare hands and improvised tools. We owe it to the 2897 men, women and children who were killed on August 2, 1944 by the Nazi.
We owe it to them, for they were killed not because they were workers, nor because they belonged to a social group as some may want us to believe, but because they were Roma, because they belonged to our great nation, which we take pride in celebrating today, on the Roma International Day. Amen Sam Roma!
We owe it to them, we owe it to the 1.5 million of Roma exterminated during the Holocaust, we owe it to the 15+ million Roma facing pervasive discrimination today throughout the world and we owe it to our children who are coming to this world with their wonderful Roma heritage.
To all, I say, you are born Roma, you live Roma, you die Roma!
Saorenghe pehenautumenge: Avas po phuv sar rom, traizas po phuv sar Rom thay meras po phuv sar Rom !
Amen sam Romane Roma. And as Roma, we are humans, equal amongst equals – par inter pares to use the wording of an old friends of ours, the Roma, namely of the Pope of Rome. Pun intended.
That concludes what I had to say about the Roma.
What is discourse ?
That said, we shall now continue our ontological excursion with having a look at the discourse. Discourse is defined, for the purposes of our discussion as
A mode of organizing knowledge, ideas, or experience that is rooted in language and its concrete contexts (See Merriam Webster dictionary).
We shall depart from the restricted Wittgenstein interpretation of language and we shall use a more complex approach. Language is both descriptive and generative.
Under the descriptive function, language is used to express reality. Shakespeare used it wonderfully in his work:
Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet
“What is a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet”!
My modest abilities to perceive, understand and process the language of art, beauty and emotions incapacitate me to contradict the Bard of Avon. And I will go along, for now, with Shakespeare to conclude that that which is, remains what is, regardless of the name you use to define it.
Indeed, a rose would smell as a rose, if we call a rose or a tulip, or an elephant. It blossoms the same and it smells the same. And what a beautiful smell that is !
Shout out here to the true followers of Shakespeare, the Florari Roma (Boldenii), who have been selling flowers for generations in Bucharest and other towns ! Te aven bahtale !
Reverting the functions of language, I posit the following:
● Shakespeare’s stance is true of things.
● I am not contradicting Shakespeare’s stance insofar as it pertains to organisms of limited life, such as flowers, trees etc, for that would exceed the scope of our discussion.
● Shakespeare stance is not valid insofar it would apply to human beings. Indeed, consideration must be paid to the ambivalence of the language functions, namely the impact of the generative function (see below). Insofar as humans are involved, we need language to accurately describe reality and we also need language to accurately shape reality.
To explain, on the one hand, under its descriptive function, language represents facts, events, feelings, thoughts, things etc. It describes reality. It conveys information. Example – there are about 2.5 million Roma in Romania. Yesterday was the International Roma Day.
On the other hand, under it generative function, language creates repercussions, events, feelings, thoughts etc. It creates reality. It shapes reality.
Take for example the term “I will”. When it takes the form of an exchange of promises, it can create a contract. It creates enforceable obligations and rights. It creates a new reality between the two parties which did not exist before the language of the contract was used.
Take also the example of the marriage. You say: “I do”. And the reality of the two persons who use this type of language, changes. Sometimes dramatically. Similarly, words of affirmation can shape reality. For example, verbally expressing someone’s qualities and supporting then will increase their self-esteem. Indeed, our self-esteem can be boosted or destroyed by words alone.
To conclude, Roma discourse, under the descriptive function, describes the reality Roma face. Under its generative function, Roma discourse can shape the reality Roma live in.
Which leads us to have a look at the Roma discourse next. It with a heavy heart I need to state that the Roma discourse, including the language of Roma NGOs, EU institutions and member states fails quite short on both accounts.
Under its descriptive prong, the current language fails to adequately describe the reality of Roma lives. The current language is represented by the reports produced by NGOs and EU (such as FRA reports or NRIS reports) or the Council of Europe, as well as by the present speech, discourse by Roma and non-Roma leaders, politicians, activists and bureaucrats. Whilst we know some things about Roma poverty and anti-Roma racism, we know very little about what Roma want. No reports show in depth what is the opinion of the Roma as to the so-called Roma integration policies. It seems like the descriptive function of the Roma discourse serves more to describe the reality of the EU institutions and that of the member states (and to a lesser extent that of the Roma activists and leaders), rather than that of the Roma communities.
Most importantly, the Roma discourse fails under its generative function. It is too outdated, too weak and essentially inapt to produce substantive change in the lives of the Roma, which was the declared objective of the EU policies. Indeed, overall, the language of Roma inclusion, and more recently that of the combating of “Antigypsism”, are largely failing. A similar assessment was made by the European Parliament which talked about “severe gaps in implementation” of Roma inclusion policies (European Parliament, Evaluation of the EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies, Abstract, at 1 “these strategies suffer from severe implementation gaps and that Roma populations continue to live in significant socio-economic deprivation, suffer extensive discrimination and high levels of anti-Gypsyism”).
To exemplify, the most serious case of anti-Roma racism, unjustly called at European level “Anti-Gypsism”, was largely ignored. EU leaders were extremely vocal, and rightly so, to criticize the US Government for the killing of George Floyd by the police in 2020.
Yet, in 2021, the same EU leaders were astonishingly silent on the death of Stanislav Thomas, a Czech Roma who was killed after the police in Teplice knelt of Stanislav’s chest and neck for 5 minutes. Roma people were distrustful of the autopsy performed by the Czech authorities.
The fact that the EU continues to claim that “Anti-Gypsism” is a priority proves the distance between the EU Roma discourse and the reality Roma live in. Same is true of the Czech Republic. Neither this case, nor the myriad of other cases of police brutality against Roma, did not produce a change in the Roma discourse that would be apt to address it properly, apt to fulfill its generative function.
Another example pertains to the “Roma criminality”. Called by Jobbik and Magyar Garda “the Gypsy criminality” it appears to be coded at European level as “itinerant crime”. Indeed Belgium was one of the first to raise this concept, which it associates with Eastern Europeans only, and covertly, with Roma: “An itinerant criminal group is an association of offenders, which systematically commits burglaries in houses [and other offences and] whose members mainly originate from the former Eastern bloc countries or form a sedentary group of offenders in Belgium; which operates or is directed from abroad or from the big urban areas in Belgium; which commits a considerable number of offences in a large part of the territory and; sometimes exploits minors for committing thefts… Sedentary criminals are understood to be nomads, originally from the former Yugoslavian Republic, Romania, France or Belgium.
These nomads are actually people without a real homeland. In historic terms this population group came to Western Europe in large migration waves. They now have Belgian nationality, are seeking asylum or are illegal. Despite the fact that a large part is settling down, the break between being sedentary and being mobile is not radical and never final” (StateWatch, EU / France / Germany: France and Germany: take on “itinerant crime groups” through cross-border cooperation, personal data exchange, predictive policing available at
Thus, let us now revert to our old friend Shakespeare’s thoughts, we may paraphrase:
What is a name? That which we call racism,
By any other name would smell as bad!
Indeed, weather called “Gypsy Criminality” (Magyar Garda) or “itinerant crime” (EU) the smell of racism is the same when the actions are similar. And what a horrible smell the smell of racism is!
Again, the EU Roma discourse on combating anti-Roma racism is inapt to produce generative effects when focus of policing to combat itinerant crime is in fact to associate crime with Roma and to target Roma. Such targeting is further supported by the fact that at least 5 states have been reported to have created databases linking Roma to criminality based on their ethnic appurtenance (Sweden, France, Italy, Romania and most recently Norway).
The distance also affects Roma leadership, not only the EU. The newly created Roma Foundation for Europe, is allocated a total funding of 100 million euros until 2030 by the Soros Foundation. However, over the past years, the Roma Education Fund substantially reduced the scholarships for Roma students throughout Europe and in some countries, like Romania, the scholarships were completely eliminated.
The allocation of substantial amounts of money to fulfill the political ambitions of the few to the detriment of the educational needs of the many is yet another instance where we need to ask ourselves questions about the generative function of the Roma discourse. Simply put, at the end of the day, is it just to take away the money allotted for Roma children/students and use it to promote the political ambitions of a few “Roma” leaders? And is it honest of the rest of us to look the other way and say nothing?
Lastly, how should the Roma discourse be shaped?
Do the Roma need “A New Deal? For the last 3 decades, Roma NGOs, Roma communities, member states and the European Union, OSCE, Council of Europe tried to combat poverty amongst the Roma. More recently the focus was changed to combat “AntiGypsism”. The results of the current policies show there is a need for a radical departure from the past. A transformative change of the descriptive and generative functions of the Roma discourse is needed, for we cannot continue to apply the same recipe and expect different results, for that, as we all know, is the expression of insanity.
So, yes, I believe A New Deal is needed. A Roma Deal!
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