An Ordinary Pogrom
by Claude Cahn · 11/01/06
A Legacy in the Making
All over Central and Eastern Europe, since the changes that began in 1989, Roma have been falling victim to collective retributive justice. In most cases, an individual crime results in the creation of a mob, which then subjects the entire Romani community to violent attack or expulsion. Such attacks have resulted in death in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Slovakia.
Although legal systems generally prove swift in bringing Romani perpetrators to justice, for the most part the acts of vengeance that follow go unpunished, as they have in Velyka Dobron. On the contrary, police are more likely to take part in the collective retribution or even lead it. In 1991 in the Transcarpathian village of Velyki Bereznii, a police raid became essentially a pogrom, with people abused and property stolen and destroyed.
Victims of community violence often report that, upon return to the village from which they have been expelled, the people who expelled them express surprise and joy at seeing them. Where have they been all this time? Why have they been gone? In nearby Hudlevo, where a fight in a bar led to the expulsion of all of the local Roma and the destruction of the local Romani community, an ethnic Ukrainian farmer who witnessed the attack said, “We have never had any problems with Gypsies here.”
The events in Velyka Dobron and their legal aftermath-or rather the lack thereof-highlight the fact that the ability to achieve legal redress in Eastern Europe remains highly contingent upon who one is. Whenever the legal system is invoked, it is extremely likely that, as in Velyka Dobron, it will leap in to correct any injustice done to non-Roma, while either ignoring or reinforcing any injustice done to Roma. Even finding a lawyer willing to represent Roma is often close to impossible. The damage caused by such legal discrimination will have repercussions for the societies of Eastern and Western Europe for a long time to come.
Reprinted with permission from Transitions, Vol. 4, No. 4, September 1997.
