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BILL TEMPLER worked many years with Roma activists in eastern Bulgaria. He is on the staff of the Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture at the University of Leipzig and the editorial advisory board of the Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies.
Empire is characterized by the close proximity of extremely unequal populations, which creates a situation of permanent social danger and requires the powerful apparatuses of the society of control to ensure separation and guarantee the new management of social space.
THE ROMA ARE Europe's ubiquitous underclass, the largest ethnic minority on the continent. Its most marginalized, oppressed and alienated citizens, they have now been "targeted" for a major concerted effort by East European governments, the World Bank, and George Soros' Open Society Institute. There is much hype and some hope in the air. The fanfare around the Decade of Roma Inclusion peaked on February 2, 2005 in Sofia, when it was formally launched in a high-level meeting of prime ministers from across Central and South East Europe. This multi-pronged initiative funded by European capital and the WB will span the decade 2005-2015, and is aimed at "ending discrimination against the Roma and ensuring equal access to education, housing, employment, and health care." Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, and Slovakia are formally committed to reform in these four priority sectoral areas.
The prelude to this initiative was a 2004 EU report, "The Situation of Roma in an Enlarged European Union," which presents an alarming picture of squalor and exclusion, a key statement on how the European plutocracy views its most powerless citizens. It is instructive to compare that assessment with the Roma National Congress "Report on the Condition of the Roma in Europe 2000," which presents the perspective of an international Roma elite on the most pressing needs of the broader Roma masses.
An open letter presented to the EU by the European Roma Rights Center and other groups on International Roma Day April 8, 2005, highlighted the crisis: "anti-Gypsyism continues to be rife, is rarely punished and is often used as an acceptable outlet of racism in mass media as well as in every aspect of life," stressing "the persistent reality of extreme poverty and systemic...