Feminist Romani Deputy: It’s Time for Action for Romani People!

Soraya Post, a feminist Roma member of the European Parliament, became the first Roma politician in the Swedish state to have her mother forcibly sterilized.

“When my mother was seven months pregnant with her third child, the Swedish state forcibly took the child and sterilized her. In other words, we start our lives as ostracized before we are even born. But now I am in the European Parliament. I am both Roma and a woman.”

Soraya Post says. She entered the European Parliament as a Swedish MP in the elections in May.

She is 57 years old, a feminist and Roma.

She is Sweden’s first Roma politician. But she was directly elected to the European Parliament without being able to enter parliament in her country. Moreover, she took her first step as a member of the Feminist Party, which entered parliament for the first time.

One of the stops of the three-day study tour of Roma civil society organizations in Brussels was the EU Parliament.

Roma do not need interpreters

Soraya Post welcomed us in the parliament. She is one of those women who immediately draws people to her with her strong stance.

However, she means more than that for Roma. Because a Roma, moreover, as a woman, is at the top of the decision-making mechanisms.

And they are aware that they can make their voices heard to this parliamentarian. Because they speak the same language. This is not a figure of speech. If all the Roma people in the world have not been assimilated, they can speak their native language, Romani, which they inherited from India, where they came thousands of years ago.

Imagine that a Swedish Roma parliamentarian who lives miles away from each other can communicate with a Roma from Turkey without needing an interpreter. They can also be accompanied by Roma people from Macedonia, Serbia and Kosovo.

The only difference in their languages ​​is the words that each of them has added to Romani from the countries they immigrated to.

Soraya Post speaks Romani very well. She was born in Sweden to a Roma mother and a Jewish German father.

Romani women are still sterilized

The discrimination she has experienced throughout her life because she is a Roma woman begins with her mother's story.

In 1970, when her mother was pregnant with her third child, the Swedish state told her, "Enough, you gave birth" and forcibly aborted her seven-month-old baby. After saying “your baby was a boy”, he sterilizes the mother.

The sterilization of Romani women was widely used as a tool of assimilation policy not only in Sweden but throughout Europe. Most Romani women were not even aware that they were sterilized. They attributed their inability to give birth either to their age or to fate.

Moreover, do not think that sterilization is a thing of the past. There are ongoing cases on this subject in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Bulgaria. It is thought that this is still the case in small places.

Soraya Post also grew up with this trauma that her mother experienced. They did not have a home. “As children, we lived every day in fear that social services would take me and my brother, because they had such a right,” she says of her childhood. This was another tool of assimilation. The child, who was separated from his family and Romani culture with the excuse that he was not being well cared for, was forced to live in the arms of the state without knowing his past.

Post reads under all these conditions. “I learned at school that I had rights, that I could stand up and speak out,” she says.

Just when she was tired…

She devoted herself to combating the problems of the Roma as a human rights activist. She took part in the establishment of a school attended by adult Roma. She worked for the Roma struggle for years.

She entered politics just when she felt tired.

“I never hid my origins. For years, we ran in the corridors, wasting our breath to explain the problems of the Roma. I was feeling very tired now. Nothing was changing. We could not take part in decision-making mechanisms. Decisions about our daily lives were being made by someone from above without including us.”

She entered the EU Parliament from the Feminist Party at such a time. She drew attention to the fact that the lives of Roma women were twice as difficult and said, “We must ensure gender equality so that inequalities in other areas can also be eliminated.”

In 2014, Post said that the situation of the Roma in Europe was unacceptable:

“You cannot eliminate the problems by banning Roma from begging. What you really need to do is ban poverty. It is unacceptable that 10-15 million Roma people have such a status in Europe in 2014.

It is called the Roma problem of Europe. The problem is not with the Roma, but with your unserviceable discriminatory perspective. It is said that the Roma are lazy, they cannot do anything. We must prove the opposite. We must eliminate this discriminatory perspective.

This work must go beyond Brussels, all good practice examples in Europe must be shared with other countries. Similar ones must be done for the Roma there. This is a must for integration and equal citizenship.

In the next five years that I will be in the parliament, I will work for all Roma civil society organizations to be included in decision-making mechanisms. I call on social democrats and Roma leaders. Let's use our power here. Send letters to the Commission, let's put pressure. Now is the time for Roma.”

Nilay Vardar

03.10.2014

Source: Bianet

http://bianet.org/bianet/toplum/158915-feminist-roman-vekil-artik-romanlar-icin-haracket-time