[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 6]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 8538-8539]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              COMMISSION ON SLAVERY ESTABLISHED IN ROMANIA

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. ALCEE L. HASTINGS

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 29, 2007

  Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Madam Speaker, 200 years ago, the movement 
for the abolition of slavery achieved a major victory with the passage 
of a British law banning the trade in slaves--an anniversary that is 
getting heightened attention with the release of a new movie 
chronicling those events. Ending the trade in slaves was not the same 
as actually ending slavery, but it was a critical beginning to the end.
  Other developments have also caused us to revisit the legacy of 
slavery in our own country. This includes the decision by the 
legislature of the Commonwealth of Virginia to apologize for that 
state's role in the slave trade, and reports that Maryland and Missouri 
are considering similar steps.
  With a view to our own country's painful and complicated history of 
slavery, and as the first African-American Chairman of the Helsinki 
Commission, I was particularly interested to

[[Page 8539]]

learn about commemorations held on February 20th in Romania, marking 
the beginning of the end of slavery in that country. In the case of 
Romania, however, slaves were not kidnapped and transported from a 
faraway land. Instead, those enslaved were Roma, a people that had 
settled in Romania by the 14th century.
  This ethnic group--somewhere around 1,000 years ago--migrated to 
Europe from what is now India. Today, Roma make up the largest ethnic 
minority in the European Union, conservatively estimated at 10 million 
people.
  Romania, with an estimated 2 million Roma, has the largest Romani 
minority on the continent. And in that country, beginning in the 14th 
century and ending with the establishment of the modern Romanian state 
in 1864, slavery to the crown, to nobility, and to the monasteries was 
the exclusive status of Roma.
  To be clear, Roma were not serfs; they were slaves, bought and sold 
like chattel. In 1837, the great Romanian historian and statesman 
Mihail Kogalniceanu described their situation as follows:
  On the streets of the lasi of my youth, I saw human beings wearing 
chains on their arms and legs, others with iron clamps around their 
foreheads, and still others with metal collars about their necks. Cruel 
beatings, and other punishments such as starvation, being hung over 
smoking fires, solitary imprisonment and being thrown naked into the 
snow or the frozen rivers, such was the fate of the wretched Tsigan 
[Rom]. The sacred institution of the family was likewise made a 
mockery: women were wrested from their men, and daughters from their 
parents. Children were torn from the breasts of those who brought them 
into this world, separated from their mothers and fathers and from each 
other, and sold to different buyers from the four corners of Romania, 
like cattle. Neither humanity nor religious sentiment, nor even civil 
law, offered protection for these beings. It was a terrible sight, and 
one which cried out to Heaven.
  Unfortunately, it appears that the history of slavery in Romania--and 
the impact of slavery on the lives of Roma--has received little 
scholarly attention. As a corollary, little is taught in Romanian 
schools about this important chapter in the nation's history.
  I was very heartened, therefore, to learn that Romanian Prime 
Minister Calin Popescu-Tariceanu announced on February 20 that the 
Romanian Government will establish a commission to study the 
enslavement of Roma. The National Agency for Roma will play a central 
role in setting up this commission, and the commission will produce 
recommendations for the teaching of Romani history and promoting Romani 
culture.
  Madam Speaker, there is an awful lot of hand wringing about the 
deplorable situation of Roma today. Across the OSCE region, they face 
profound discrimination, sometimes manifested in the worst forms of 
racially motivated violence. Moreover, in 2003, the United Nations 
Development Program issued a report on the situation in five Central 
European countries, concluding that, ``by measures ranging from 
literacy to infant mortality to basic nutrition, most of the region's 
Roma endure living conditions closer to those of Sub-Saharan Africa 
than to Europe. ``
  But if you want to know where you're going, you have to know where 
you came from; if we want to change this status quo, we have to 
understand the past, which makes this new commission vital for Roma.
  With respect to Roma, that means three things. First, it means 
understanding the history of Roma before World War II, and in the case 
of Romania and Moldova, that requires teaching, studying, and 
acknowledging the enslavement of Roma. Second, the genocide of Roma 
during World War II must also be remembered, and more must be done to 
study and understand the diverse experiences of Roma during the war in 
different European countries. Finally, we must put an end to the 
pernicious, dangerous myth that communism was ``good'' for Roma.
  With all this in mind, Prime Minister Tariceanu's initiative is 
really an extremely important step in addressing so many of the 
problems that Roma face today. I commend him for his leadership and I 
look forward to following closely the work of this body.

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