Roma Rising

For over 500 years, the Romani people were enslaved in the Romanian principalities. You were not taught this. Not because it was forgotten, but because remembering it would require reparations. From the 14th century until abolition in 1856, we were chattel slaves in Wallachia and Moldavia. Longer than the transatlantic slave trade. Longer than most European empires lasted. The silence around this history is not empty space. It is deliberate erasure serving material interests, the interests of states that built wealth on our stolen labour, of churches that held us as property, of a European project that required our elimination to justify itself. But this silence was never complete. It was filled with resistance. With songs sung in chains. With names remembered in the dark. The Architecture of Bondage The system was meticulous, codified, and absolute.  Roma were classified into three categories of property:  Crown slaves owned by the state,  Church slaves owned by monaster...

In July 2024, the High Court ruled that the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 unlawfully discriminates against Romani and Gypsy communities. Yet the Government continues to enforce it. This is the story of legislation designed to erase a culture—and why we must fight back now. KEY FACTS • High Court ruled the Act discriminatory under Article 14 ECHR (July 2024) • 4,000 authorised pitch shortfall across England—yet funding has been cut since 2010 • 56% reduction in stopping sites between 2020-2023 as local authorities close sites and accelerate evictions • Used only 34 times in the first year across 43 police forces—undermining Government claims of necessity • 90% rejection rate for Traveller planning applications vs. 10% for conventional housing • Gypsy and Traveller life expectancy is 10-12 years lower than the national average • Traveller women are 20 times more likely to experience maternal mortality The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 has bec...

The sixth annual International Romani Language Day conference convened in Berlin on 5 November, organised by the European Roma Institute for Arts and Cultural Studies (ERIAC) in partnership with the Council of Europe and AREA. The gathering brought together Romani scholars, poets, authors, journalists, educators, policymakers, and cultural activists to address the critical state of Romani language preservation and its intrinsic connection to Roma identity, culture, and survival across Europe. Yet the conference operated within a profound contradiction: how to preserve a language whilst protecting it from the very forces—state institutions, academic extraction, gadje appropriation—that have historically weaponised Romani knowledge against Roma communities. The Language Crisis and Historical Context UNESCO designates Romani as an endangered language, with only 3.5 million of 13–15 million Roma actively speaking it. Historical persecution—violence, forced assimilation, and suppression u...