“I’d like to have a word with you to explain the meaning of what we are doing today, the Romani Resistance day. Here in front of you, I shall address the monstrous effigy standing there: the Racism of the State. If it is with joy and pride that we show you the power residing in the gestures and voices of the musicians, singers, and dancers, it is not because we are duped by the hypocrisy that makes us appear beautiful as we perform in front of a world that drudgingly and begrudgingly makes us ugly day in and day out. Seduction, among Romani people, as among other subjugate
d peoples, is a way to avoid being beaten by turning yourself into something pleasing to the master. Without wanting to ruin anyone’s fun, I have to confess that in any colonial imagination, exotic pleasure is the tails side of the coin of racial hatred.On May 16, 1944, the Roma and Sinti in the “Gypsy family camp” of Auschwitz II-Birkenau rose up. They rebelled with the support of the clandestine resistance network of the camp, which comprised Jews, Poles, Communists, and, above all, the so-called Sonderkommando in charge of the destruction of corpses. It is to those people we wish to pay tribute today! And that’s why, in addition to the solemnity owed
to their memory, on this May 16, we are also celebrating the power of life as exhibited in the acts of those heroes. Seventy one years later, we want to remember the power held by Bare Life when faced with deadly political violence, including the psychological, biological, and physical destruction of certain peoples by the state, and the possibility of the people being political. Whether you understand it or not, the space those camps occupied has never closed for most of us. It doe
sn’t take long for anyone who enters a Romani community anywhere in Europe to see the political reality of European societies from a hitherto unseen perspective. What they will see is that the political process of psychological and physical destruction – that is, genocide – has never stopped, and that a multi-faceted war with no known origin is ongoing, prolonged. Slums are a political product of State sponsored racism. Everything is done so that the odds are against anyone ever getting out. They are a tool for governing through racism. That’s what Romani Resistance aims to resist. We expect nothing from the State, but to remove it
s arms, and remove itself entirely. We expect nothing from the recognition of its past crimes because what we are mainly concerned with now is survival. We ask nothing of the State, but to disappear along with the tool it uses to root in our wounded flesh: racism. Creating multiple people held by the idea of its autonomy, it is obvious that none among us would ever need it, and we shall let this effigy die as today we make this paper monster disappear.” The speech was given on May 16, 2015 at the Romani Resistance Day celebration in Paris. The performance took place in front of the symbolically significant Basilica of St. Denis. Commonly known for housing tombs of the royal families of France, this site was specifically chosen because it also happens to be where the presence of Romani people was first documented in France, precisely in 1427, according to the French National Archives.
The speech was taken from the book “EDUCATION FOR REMEMBRANCE OF THE ROMA GENOCIDE: SCHOLARSHIP, COMMEMORATION AND THE ROLE OF YOUTH” edited by Anna Mirga-Kruszelnicka, Esteban Acuña C. and Piotr Trojański; Libron (2015)
You can read the full speech and download the book here