Postcard from Bishkek

April 8th is designated as International Romani Day – a day to celebrate Romani culture and raise awareness of the issues facing Romani people.  (It was officially inaugurated  in 1990 in Serock, Poland, the site of the fourth World Romani Congress of the International Romani Union (IRU), in honour of the first major international meeting of Romani representatives, 7-12 of April 1971 in Chelsfield near London.)

The Romani people, (also known as Gypsies – although this term is considered pejorative),  are a widely dispersed ethic group living mainly in Europe who have been traced genetically to a group that migrated from the Indian subcontinent about 1500 years ago – arriving in the Balkans about 900 years ago and then spreading across Europe.

Traditionally a nomadic people, they have kept many of their original traditional and customs and this may have led to some of the distrust that more settled communities often feel towards them.  When the Romani people arrived in Europe, the initial curiosity of the indigenous people quickly changed to hostility against the minority newcomers.   The Romani were actually enslaved for five centuries in Wallachia and Moldavia, until abolition in 1856.  Often they were subject to ethnic cleansing, abduction of their children, and forced labor. In England, Romani were sometimes expelled from small communities or hanged; in France, they were branded and their heads were shaved; in Moravia and Bohemia, the women were marked by their ears being severed. As a result, large groups of the Romani moved to the East, toward Poland, which was more tolerant, and Russia, where the Romani were treated more fairly as long as they paid the annual taxes.  In fact a number converted to Orthodox Christianity.

Here in Kyrgyzstan, they are usually known by the Russian name Tzingani.

They do not component of the of the population in Kyrgyzstan.  In the 1926 census, for example, there were just 65 tzingani (Romani) living in the territory of what is now Kyrgyzstan.  By 1939 this had risen to 644, in 1959 – 776, in 1970 – 863, in 1979 – 1927, in 1989 – 990 and in 1999 about 1000.  One report in 2004, however, suggested that there may be as many as 4500.   It is possible, however, that these figures are unreliable as many do not have identity documents, (passports, or even birth certificates), and as elsewhere in the world, many tzingani identify with another nationality when it comes to registering in a national census.

There is one community of tzingani, the Lyuli, that live in southern Kyrgyzstan, in the village of Jany Kyshtak in the Osh oblast – and there are also similar communities in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.  (Although they are often identified as Romani, it could well be that they belong to a different group, the Domani,  that the Indian subcontinent a little earlier.)

It seems that they settled in the village in the 1950′s, mostly from Tajikistan,  (although one report suggests Iran), when the Soviet authorities decreed that they had to stop their nomadic ways and allocated them small plots of land.  They were employed in construction, agriculture and manufacturing, some even fighting in the Second World War … and the children were expected to go to to school.

Their standard of living is extremely low … the village has a small school which only caters for some classes, some small shops, (kiosks), a small clinic and a mosque, (the Lyuli being Muslims).  More to the point, there is no telephone, or running water, and no place for recreation.

Many of the adults apparently have no identity documents and are unemployed  - which means that they do not have access to education, madical facilities, social security and other benefits.  The men raise cattle and sell scrap metal, whereas the women either beg or tell fortunes.  They live in mud brick houses and, being poor, their diet is basically tandoori bread, tea, occasional dairy products and even more more occasionally meat products.  One report says that they wear “brightly coloured clothes”, but another refers to them as “sloppily dressed”.

It seems that they keep themselves to themselves.  This apparent reluctance to integrate with the rest of society helps to feed stereotypes and leads to marginalization, (if not isolation), and discrimination.  According to one report,  the young people are reluctant to go to neighbouring towns or villages for fear of “insults and beatings”.

 

Although in the Soviet period, they were pressured into settling down, it seems that there are some some that roam through Central Asia, living in tents of finding basements and earning a living by begging on the streets.  About ten years ago, a number of them were deported, basically because they failed to register when arriving in Kyrgyzstan,

 

Tags: For_the_Record, Kyrgyzstan, People