A Politic of Collective Struggle and Resistance

An Interview with Kenan Emini from the Roma Antidiscrimination Network

Vanessa E. Thompson and Kenan Emini

This interview between Kenan Emini, a founding member of the Roma Antidiscrimination Network, and Vanessa E. Thompson, a Black abolitionist scholar and organizer from Germany, was conducted remotely in May 2022. While Emini and Thompson’s rich conversation spans several critical topics, the condensed excerpt here focuses on the multifaceted work of the Roma Antidiscrimination Network and the precarious situation of Roma in Ukraine against the historical backdrop of militarized, state, and border violence faced by Roma in Europe. Emini and Thompson also discuss the long tradition of Roma liberation struggles.

The Roma Antidiscrimination Network is a network that struggles against the expulsion and deportation of Roma and against anti-Roma violence, systematic racism and economic deprivation, and institutional discrimination. In the recent Russian invasive war in Ukraine, over eight million refugees have fled the country. White Ukrainians and peoples from Eastern Europe and central Asia are othered by Western Europe, stemming from a long history of colonial expansion in Eastern Europe, Cold War rhetoric, and precarious working conditions of Eastern European migrants to the West. Yet, the racialization of Eastern Europeans is uneven—a sliding scale of otherness. This is evidenced recently in the uneven responses to the war by Western elites and populations—including differing perceptions of who is supposedly deserving of care, attention, and shelter. For instance, while the European Union grants Ukrainian nationals the right to live and work in E.U. countries for three years—relatedly, media outlets in Western countries emphasize that Ukrainians are “almost like us,” and civil society has opened their homes to non-Black, non-Brown, non-Roma families—ethnoracial stratifications are strongly at play regarding other racialized populations fleeing the war. Roma and Black people are not taken by bus companies, are heavily policed at the borders by police and civilians alike, and are detained in and deported by neighboring countries. Further, of the four hundred thousand Roma living in Ukraine (many who are descendants of survivors and victims of the Nazi genocide), nearly 20 percent have no papers and are excluded from the already highly selective net of support and safety. The arming of Ukrainian forces, including paramilitary fighters, has spread intense fear among Roma communities in the country, as there have been pogroms against them in recent years (2015, 2016, and 2017).

As Emini and Thompson discuss in detail, anti-Roma terror, expulsion, segregation, and dispossession in Europe is nothing new; indeed, Roma nations, or subgroups, have lived in Europe for over seven hundred years. Thus, against the longue durée of what Cedric Robinson calls racialism, Roma people have been criminalized, enslaved, expelled, driven into economic and social deprivation, and systematically murdered in Europe.1 The Porajmos (meaning “devouring” in Romani), the genocide of over half a million of Roma in German concentration camps, as well as other ongoing genocides and pogroms against Roma in Europe, can only be understood through the lens of this ongoing continuity. Though E.U. policies regarding Roma rights remain on the level of liberal recognition and inclusion, and recent conjunctures of liberal antiracism operate alongside the diversification of systems of exploitation, violence, and surplus production, Emini and Thompson emphasize how the ongoing resistance of Roma people in Europe has been marginalized. Roma communities and organizations have long called for the freedom of movement and protection of Roma and all marginalized communities fleeing war. This includes the right to remain after militarized conflict and organized resistance against systematic expulsion and exclusion, and border, state, and neo-Nazi violence.

Roma children are standing in front of banners. They are holding hands. There is a crowd of adult community members behind the banners. One banner reads “All Roma Stay Here!” — Figure 1. Roma children hold hands at a rally in front of three banners. One banner reads “All Roma Stay Here!”

Vanessa: Kenan, you have spoken about the history of racial capitalism in relation to the Roma people: that there was already a racialization within Europe of Roma people as “different” and thus killable and exposed to oppression that permeates capitalism. Over time, we have seen how these practices of racialization shape capitalist development and the extraction of wealth and assign racialized structures to life and labor. There have also been several ongoing genocides of the Roma in Europe—more recently, during the Second World War and the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. As you have previously shared as well, this protracted history of violence is too often ignored or not acknowledged at all. Fast forward, in the case of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022), the situation of the Roma people is pushed to the side or ignored altogether. But when we consider these prevailing histories of war against the Roma within Europe, including different but also entangled histories of racist and fascist violence against Roma in the context of racial capitalist Europe, we see that what is happening now is nothing new at all.: Kenan: It’s very important to connect the Balkan Wars to the current situation in Ukraine. A large concentration of Roma lived in the former Yugoslavia until 1991 when the war started. During and after the war, Yugoslavia was severed into pieces: Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Macedonia, and later, Kosovo. Throughout the war, the Roma were targeted, persecuted, and killed. I myself grew up in Croatia, but in 1991, my father, brother, and I were forced to leave because we knew that likely, the state would mobilize us for the army. But we didn’t understand why people were fighting and what kind of war this was: Who exactly was our “friend” and who was our “enemy”? We left for Kosovo since my grandmother lived there. We never returned to Croatia because after the war, the government changed the law, and our passport was no longer valid.; Now, in Ukraine, Roma who are fleeing their homes will never be able to return. This was also the case for the Roma in Kosovo after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia for seventy-eight straight days in 1999 in support of the Kosovo Albanians. The Kosovo Albanians used this situation to persecute and expel the Roma systematically and to steal their property, and they also did the same to the Serbs and other minorities. After the war, starting on June 13, almost the entire Roma community was forcefully driven out by the Kosovo Albanian majority population, after having lived in the area for more than six hundred years. Many of them were raped, tortured, and killed. Many disappeared forcefully and their bodies have not been found to this day. Their homes were taken over or looted and burned by the majority population. The ethnic cleansing took place in front of the eyes of NATO and other international organizations. There was no solidarity for the displaced Roma. To this day, many continue to live as internally displaced persons in Serbia or neighboring countries, while others live in Western Europe. Some are still only tolerated and are at risk of deportation at any time. In 2001, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) in Germany, which documents human rights abuses globally, conducted extensive research and discovered that over fourteen thousand homes and businesses of the Roma were burned and destroyed.2 In total, 150,000 Roma were expelled from Kosovo and fled to Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro, as well as Germany, Belgium, France, and Italy. About six hundred Roma have been murdered or have disappeared. Some of the Kosovo Albanian war criminals are finally being tried by The Hague—among them Hashim Thaçi, who was Kosovo’s president until he was charged in 2020.; Since 2000, I’ve been in Germany—that’s almost twenty-three years. Here, the Roma have also fought hard since the government originally provided us with Duldung. This is not residency status, but rather you are “tolerated” and can be deported at any time. Until 2007, we were forbidden to work, we couldn’t access language courses or study, and we received limited state support for food, only seventy euros per month. When we were finally allowed to work, we were unable to find jobs because Duldung status is only for one to three months. No one is going to give you a job because you can be deported at any time. This destroys the possibility of any viable future: children are unable to build lives even as Germany demands that you are “integrated.” Due to the Residenzpflicht—a law which dictates that you must remain within a certain distance from your place of registration—we were unable to travel or move to other cities. In 2009 we founded alle bleiben! (all stay!), a nationwide campaign to fight against deportation.3; Since the Roma Antidiscrimination Network is meeting and working with Roma refugees from Ukraine, we are observing similar ramifications. For instance, we made trips to Poland and the Czech Republic to meet Roma refugees from Ukraine (about four hundred thousand Roma live in Ukraine), and they’ve shared that the Russian army destroyed their houses. But the Roma have faced violence from both sides: they have experienced violence and discrimination at the hands of white Ukrainians, too. We will see, after the war, whether these refugees are able to return home. This is an urgent question and our history: losing our homes because of war and having our homes stolen by the majority of society. For decades, we have been fighting for our rights on multiple fronts, including the right to move and to stay.; But during the 1990s, the Roma mostly from the former Yugoslavia displaced to Germany between 1989 and 1993 mobilized one of the largest social movements in the contemporary history of Germany. For more than a year, we occupied public spaces and institutions and even blocked the Autobahn. There were massive hunger strikes, and people protested on the streets from Hamburg to the former concentration camps Neuengamme and Dachau. We protested at the border of Germany and the Netherlands, as well as in Geneva and Strasbourg. There were many women and children and families there, too. Everybody took part. We slept in tents and in the streets. Again, this was one of the largest organized protests in Germany’s history, at least in the last fifty years, but it remains largely unknown within as well as beyond Germany.

Several people are holding up a black banner with the words “ALLE-BLEIBEN!” (all stay) in yellow. Behind them are dozens of people walking in solidarity against Roma deportations. — Figure 2. A rally against Roma deportations. Protestors are holding a black banner with the words “ALLE-BLEIBEN!”

Vanessa: These protests were so crucial as a sign of Roma power. It is also problematic that they are not considered as an integral part of the history of radical antiracist movements in Germany and beyond. Kenan, can you talk more about the Roma Antidiscrimination Network, the network you are involved with? How was it founded and what’s the work you do? And in relation to the current war in Ukraine, can you tell us more about the situation of Roma people from Ukraine?: Kenan: Broadly, the Roma Antidiscrimination Network is a platform that supports Roma people suffering from racism at school, their workplaces, and in other institutions, and from white supremacist groups like the neo-Nazis. The expansive work of the network is something that many of us have been doing for years and years, but more recently, we’ve been collectively organizing under this formal name. The network was established in 2015 because Roma organizers thought it was essential to create an independent, Roma-led institution against discrimination, since this didn’t already exist. As part of our work, we research, write about, and mobilize against the systemic discrimination, violence, dispossession, and exploitation that the Roma face in Germany and everywhere in Europe. Our network works with advocacy, legal, and movement-based organizations across Europe, and we share what’s happening to the Roma in places like Kosovo, Serbia, Macedonia, Hungary, and Ukraine with those in Western Europe. In fact, we wrote extensively about several racially motivated attacks against the Roma in Ukraine between 2016 and 2018, where community members were badly injured and killed.; The network also organizes political education programs to confront racist institutions, and we organize with students and teachers. We coordinate workshops for people who work in institutional settings, and we try to educate authorities about the conditions that Roma navigate. For instance, officials in the public sector will often say that our people don’t like to work, but what they hide or sometimes even do not know is that we don’t always have the right to work. Personally, I produce movies and create videos about Roma, like The Awakening.4 It’s about the Roma in Germany struggling with their right to stay and against deportation and right-wing extremism in Europe. In the film, you see how the police come after us with their dogs; the lives that children lead after deportation; and how neo-Nazis in the Czech Republic and Slovakia attack the Roma. It’s very hard to watch. But this is the reality. These are the lives that our people lead. The movie is always a work in progress because I regularly change it to include new sequences. So far, we’ve screened it in more than one hundred cities in Germany, Austria, and Serbia. Lastly, the Roma Antidiscrimination Network documents and archives these experiences of violence as critical sources of knowledge because they reflect persistent problems that are so rarely shared beyond the Roma community. For instance, the significance of May 16, 1944.
Vanessa: For readers of this interview, can you briefly explain what happened on the sixteenth of May and how historic this resistance was?: Kenan: On May 16, 1944, the Nazis planned to arrest and murder six thousand Roma through the gas chambers. This information was leaked, and the Roma resisted with full force. They took what they could access, like stones and wooden sticks, and they fought back against the Germans in Auschwitz. After nearly three months of intense fighting, on August 2, the Nazis murdered about four thousand Roma and Sinti. Today, August 2, is commemorated as a day of resistance to mark this struggle. In 2009, we started to organize international gatherings in Auschwitz. Then in 2011, the Polish parliament recognized August 2 as a memorial day, and in 2012, Croatia followed, and the European Union recognized this date as Roma Genocide Remembrance Day.; In Berlin, the memorial to the European Roma and Sinti victims of National Socialism was built in 2012. It’s a profound place. But you can imagine how much the Roma and Sinti had to fight for this. And now, the government wants to demolish the memorial to build an S-Bahn [subway] underground station. When we heard about this, we organized a demonstration in Berlin. The scandal is that the Deutsche Bahn, the railway company pushing for this subway construction, is the successor of the Reichsbahn, a company that played a prominent role in the Holocaust and the Second World War. They were in charge of transporting forced laborers, soldiers, war equipment, and the belongings of Holocaust victims. And they profited immensely from deporting Roma and Jewish people to Auschwitz and other death camps. So, the Reichsbahn was a Nazi company that transported people to their deaths, and now they want to demolish the Roma monument by half.
Vanessa: Thank you so much, Kenan, for sharing this. As a Black person from Europe, who organizes with abolitionist collectives, I often see so many similarities with regards to how impoverished, working-class and working-poor Black communities are treated, superexploited, and rendered surplus.
With regard to these similarities, one subject I often discuss is policing. Isidora Randjelović, cofounder of RomaniPhen and a dear comrade with whom you also work, talks about how both of these communities are severely policed and how schools work with the police to surveil children and Roma mothers. Roma children are taken out of their families and placed in foster care regimes, and they’re also targets of deadly police violence. Here, it’s important to remember that some weeks after the public assassination of George Floyd, as people were on the streets over several weeks in Europe, a Roma from the Czech Republic—Stanislav Tomáš—was also killed by a police officer and that was videotaped, too. You have this long history of the police in Europe, formed and activated to create a class of wage laborers, and thus crucial for understanding the central role police power (not just police as an institution) played in the creation and development of capitalism. However, policing also mobilized the stratification of workers, often alongside racial divides, and the role of brute violence is a mediator of that. The control and deadly violence used against the Roma people within capitalist Europe is constitutive of, rather than exceptional to, policing as a method for the functioning of racial capitalism. In relation to this, you had the colonial policing of Black people on the slave ships, on the coasts of the African continent, and on the plantations. Policing mediates modes of superexploitation and, increasingly, the control of surplus humanity, often racialized, through violence. There are these strong historical connections between the Roma and Black people and their structural location within racialized regimes of superexploitation and surplus, and today, I see these linkages specifically in policing, economic conditions, and in deportation and border regimes.
Further, the struggles of our communities are linked through the struggle around memory. For instance, when you think of the genocide in Namibia, the first genocide of the twentieth century that also paved the way for the systematic and industrial mass murder of Jews, Roma, and other racialized groups [by] the Nazis during National Socialism, you have these struggles around memory connected not only to recognition but also reparations. Another connection I see, Kenan, is the connection between state racism in its liberal form and fascism, as both are rather connected than separate projects. Perhaps from a Roma perspective, we can learn how the police, right-wing supremacists, and neo-Nazis are inextricably linked. In Germany, you have these so-called scandals of neo-Nazis in the police, when police officers have been unveiled to be neo-Nazis and whole police departments are connected to fascist structures, like in the case of the National Socialist Underground, which is no surprise at all, and that’s what Roma people actually experience all the time with neo-Nazi troops. The police are either involved in these formations or they simply play a role through protecting right-wing networks. The state has many arms, and fascists networks is one of them as well. The historical treatment of Roma shows that fascism does not infiltrate police but rather that police is fascism too. Do you also see these connections in terms of what is happening to poor and migrant Roma people and Black people?

Roma families are attacked in the night by police. In the middle of the photo, a family is holding two small children close. A teenager is standing in front of them blocking a police officer. — Figure 3. Roma families attacked by police at night.

Kenan: Yes. Neo-Nazis are not only here in Germany, but they are everywhere where I grew up. As you know, I’ve lived in many countries, including Ukraine for many years. Serbia, Kosovo, and other countries of Eastern Europe have this problem too. We know that the state fosters nationalism and brings it to the streets: “Be proud of being Ukrainian, Kosovo Albanian, or Hungarian, and be proud of your warrior traditions,” and so forth on. The state has also cooperated with Far-Right nationalists and paramilitary groups. But we have to remember, right-wing extremists are in the European Parliament and other formal institutions. They wear suits and are a part of society. They exist at the very heart of societies, not at its borders.; And every day, Roma encounter these kinds of people in very different spaces, and if you are lucky, you are not beaten. In Hungary, for example, we have the Black Brigade, a paramilitary organization that is officially supported by the state. Often, they will come to where Roma live, thousands of them, and they’ll train with guns, just to create an atmosphere of intense fear. For years, there have been attacks in Hungary. In 2009, a father and his son were murdered when Nazis attacked their house with Molotov cocktails. Both of them were shot dead when they fled the burning house. During the Balkan Wars, the Roma who were deported to Serbia had no houses, so most of them were forced to live in large barracks, and frequently, people would throw Molotov cocktails into these spaces. The city would also destroy these settlements. In countries like Slovakia and the Czech Republic, they have built walls to segregate the Roma from the larger population.; And of course, thousands of neo-Nazis come marching into the villages with fire where Roma people live. The police is there, but they don’t do anything. In popular campaigns, politicians will scapegoat migrants and say things like, “We have a Gypsy problem in Germany.” When you say something like this, migrants automatically become targets for extreme violence. As a result, there are Roma who are murdered by the police, and politicians will say that the police did a great job.; I think now is the time for the Roma, the Black community, and other antiracist movements to work together. Several years ago, Roma activists worked with the VOICE Refugee Forum, a self-organized refugee network which is Black led.5 They built their organization in Göttingen. For a couple of years, our cooperation was very good. For example, we would visit refugee centers to provide support as they fought for their rights. In this way, I refuse to segregate the Roma as if we are the only ones facing this problem. No, we have a European problem: it’s racism and it affects us all in uneven ways. And we need to connect these dots, these struggles. We don’t speak enough about Frontex, or the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, and the reasons for flight and migration, like the wholesale destruction of countries and the overwhelming suffering that poor people experience through white supremacist capitalist and neocolonial structures. And too many people have died at sea. This is something we must speak about now. It’s time to create a different world. We have a big problem in Europe, and we can survive only if our shared fight is bigger. Right now, we have too many separate fights and we must bring them together. This is only possible if we have the capacity to organize ourselves and to create collective support through our activist structures.
Vanessa: Thank you, Kenan, especially for drawing the line to the Black Mediterranean and what is going on in one of the most dangerous, most militarized and surveilled migration routes in the world. Thousands of people are not only left to die, but they are really pushed to death at sea and, of course, also pushed back to Libya, where Europe has externalized itself as a neo-imperial project and is keeping thousands of African people there in prison and detention. This is part of the neocolonial reality of border regimes as crucial projects of racial capitalism. Also, shout out to the group Refugees in Libya, who are currently protesting in and in front of the Libyan detention centers as well as in many European cities, calling for the right to be evacuated and for not only freedom of movement but also for abolition.6 The point you made in terms of the capitalist system, which is a racial system from the very beginning, is so important too: it’s a system which produces mass premature death. Racism structures these processes. I especially appreciate the call for strengthening our ties of solidarity, particularly in this conjuncture of crisis and neoliberal antiracism (as a form of liberal inclusion) on the rise, too. Because we cannot win this alone—it is one global system and these forms of violence are inextricably connected—we have to do it collectively to abolish a system that only produces death, exploitation, and catastrophe. Lastly, I completely agree with what you mentioned in terms of “we have a problem in Europe.” I would add that that problem is Europe itself, in terms of the project of racial capitalism and its globalization.
Kenan, maybe as one last question, especially for readers in the North American context: What are specific campaigns you’re now involved in that people can actively support? How can folks support your work at this moment?: Kenan: Well, as a starting point, it’s important to have knowledge about our community and the larger problems we are struggling against. In other words, yes, please learn about our work, but also, engage the larger contexts. I don’t know if people in North America are even aware of the historical persecution and current racism against Roma in Europe, because even in Europe many don’t know (or don’t want to know) about it. Mostly, I’m really tired of the stereotypes that people hold of the Roma people. For example, we only make good music or we’re magicians or whatever else. It’s why we’ve initiated projects like Roma in Society, Reloaded.7; It’s important for people to understand the systemic deportations that Roma people have long faced. No one speaks about this. You certainly don’t hear about this in the news in Europe. Still, Roma are deported to countries like Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, and Montenegro. And even when Roma continue to struggle with the ramifications of the Balkan Wars, they are perceived as economic refugees rather than refugees of war, displacement, and violence. You can find this historical information on our website.8 Recently, the Roma Antidiscrimination Network was in Poland and the Czech Republic, where we visited Roma refugees from Ukraine to learn more about their situation and to provide donations since the state refuses to support them. Nobody wants these people anywhere. Nobody wants to give them private accommodations, so they are forced to stay in large refugee centers that are often in the middle of nowhere. About 20 percent of half a million Ukrainian Roma have no passport. Some lack papers altogether, so they can’t get passports. This is a big problem, because they are unable to access state benefits that other Ukrainian refugees receive, like residency status §24 (residence law), which allows you to work and access health insurance and financial support.; How can people support us? Please learn about these histories so we can collectively end the deportations of Roma. The Roma from the former Yugoslavia and Ukraine are also survivors or descendants of victims of the Holocaust, so Germany must take some responsibility for these people. Don’t forget the Roma. We don’t have a country, which is a significant problem. Where do we go? When the Zapatista were in Göttingen, the Roma Antidiscrimination Network spoke with them. Especially during the 1990s, their movement was prominent on a global scale. You even had mainstream bands, like Rage against the Machine, support their causes. But when we speak about Roma, we’re often excluded from larger movements, our organizations aren’t invited to well-known conferences, and the public knows very little about Roma struggles and our movements for freedom and liberation. Even though Roma have suffered intense persecution, racism, state-sanctioned and extralegal violence, dispossession and discrimination for hundreds of years, all over the world, their struggles are largely ignored by society. For us, change is only possible through shared forms of acknowledgment and resistance.
Vanessa: Yes, to struggle together and with full solidarity. Thank you, Kenan.

The blue wall of a building is covered by a large banner with the words “K'AK'AL O'ONIL! Wir sind Teil des Kampfes!” (We are part of the struggle). On the banner, there is the image of a boat with members of the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation) wearing masks and holding a sign reading “Network of Rebellion.” In front of the building there is one row of people from a collective gathering standing and one row of people kneeling. Most people are wearing medical masks. — Figure 4. A delegation of Zapatistas visits Göttingen to talk about resistance.

Vanessa E. Thompson is assistant professor and distinguished professor for Black studies and social justice in the Department of Gender Studies at Queen’s University. Her scholarship and teaching focuses on critical Black studies and anticolonialism, state violence and racial capitalism, and global abolition. She has published on Black movements in Germany, France, and Europe more broadly and Black abolitionist struggles and world-making. Thompson organizes with abolitionist movements in Europe and beyond and is a member of the International Independent Commission on the Death of Oury Jalloh.

Kenan Emini is chairperson of the Roma Center and the founder and director (since 2015) of the Roma Antidiscrimination Network. He is also vice chair of the Bundes Roma Verband, an umbrella organization of migrant Roma in Germany. Emini works on the situation of deported Roma, among others, in Serbia, Kosovo, and Macedonia, Roma threatened with deportation in Germany, and the rise of the Far Right in Europe. He is the director of the documentary film The Awakening about the situation of deported young Roma in various countries.

Notes

1. Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (1983; Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 2.
2. STP is an important human rights organization in Göttingen that is working for marginalized and threatened peoples worldwide, including Roma and Kurds. STP also supported the organization of the Third World Roma Congress, which took place in 1981 in Göttingen. This led to the recognition of the Porajmos by the German government in 1982. After the Kosovo War, STP was the only international organization that published on the ethnic cleansing of Roma in the former Yugoslavia. Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker, https://www.gfbv.de/en/.
3. Alle Bleiben!, http://alle-bleiben.info/.
4. “The Awakening /Trailer,” ROMADNESS Strange Movies, December 17, 2015, YouTube video, 4:13, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZHc-yrN5nY.
5. VOICE Refugee Forum Germany–Flüchtling und Asyl in Deutschland, http://www.thevoiceforum.org/.
6. Refugees in Libya, https://www.refugeesinlibya.org/.
7. Tripx, “Roma in Society. Reloaded,” Roma Center e.v., January 20, 2020, https://www.roma-center.de/roma-in-society-reloaded/.
8. Roma Antidiscrimination Network, https://ran.eu.com/.

Interview