The demonstrators had nothing left but anger. They were holding up images of what used to be their homes. Bulldozers caved in the plastic corrugated sheet roofing of their houses and ripped apart their walls as though they had been made of paper. Chairs, curtains, childhood photos and memories were torn away.
Amongst the protesters was Brisilda Taco, who was passing around megaphones and starting chants. It was also Taco who had called for the demonstration to take place in front of Tirana town hall. From one day to the next, dozens of Roma families in the capital of Albania had been dispossessed and their homes once again destroyed. “The government came to us and said, ‘You have to be out of here by tomorrow’,” she recalls. Five years have passed since then, but Taco’s anger is still palpable.
For years, Amnesty International has documented how Roma in various Albanian towns have lost their homes overnight and been forced into homelessness and living in tents. Others have been taken to the outskirts of towns by bus and abandoned there. Unlawful evictions violate human rights; rights that Albania has officially committed to uphold. Taco believes that cities like Tirana still order evictions at short notice as a calculated act. “There are many good laws in Albania,” she says, “but they are not implemented if people don’t insist on their rights.”
For a long time, even Taco did not know what to do in order to take action against the seemingly all-powerful Albanian state. The authorities to whom she directed her complaints referred her to other officials who did not see themselves as responsible in the matter. But Taco and other young activists did not give up. They networked with Roma all over Europe, educated themselves on their rights and the law, put their foot down and became more vocal. “We went to the prime minister with a lawyer and said: ‘This is the current legal situation, and you are breaking the law’,” Taco tells me. Since 2017, Roma in Albania have rarely been the target of forced evictions. Taco’s success is also a symbol of new beginnings for the Roma in Albania. The Albanian Roma are starting to organize themselves, inform themselves and stand up for their rights.
For centuries, Roma in Europe have been displaced, enslaved and killed. Although their ancestors came to Europe from the region of present-day India about a thousand years ago, they are still often treated as outsiders. “We have been experiencing structural racism for centuries — not only within society, but also through state institutions,” says Adriatik Hasantari, the chairman of the NGO Roma Active Albania. “Roma are treated like second-class citizens.”
The spoked wheel is the symbol of the Roma, and it represents their nomadic lifestyle. However, the nomadic lifestyle has come to a standstill for many Albanian Roma: many Albanian Roma communities settled at the beginning of the socialist era, and they have remained settled since. “There is still this bizarre fantasy that it is enough to feed the Roma with a bit of food so that they can move on and spend their lives barefoot on some riverbank, dancing all the while,” Hasantari sighs.
After the collapse of the dictatorship in 1991, Albania was the third poorest country in the world. While things slowly improved for many Albanians in the following years, the Roma were often forgotten or deliberately ignored. Many were deported to settlements on the outskirts of towns where they lived without electricity, without running water and without prospects. Even today, the majority of the estimated 100,000 Roma in Albania, a country with a population of 2.8 million, live in precarious conditions.
Adriatik Hasantari holds the majority of the Albanian population and the government responsible for making a change. “Anti-Roma discrimination is not a problem that is only created by a minority of Albanian society,” he explains. “It is a problem that exists within the majority of society and within those who do not accept this group of people.”
But activists like Hasantari and Brisilda Taco no longer want to wait for this burden to be lifted from them. They themselves want to bring about the change that they wish for. “The situation of the Roma has been improving considerably for several years, because there are more and more well-educated Roma,” Taco says. She herself was the first person from her neighborhood to go to university. “A friend of mine is 33 and recently became a grandmother. I’m 32 and I don’t even have a child.” Taco states that this was only made possible through the support of her family.
“It is a patriarchal system that runs Albania,” explains Emiliano Aliu, who is a Roma. That is why it is crucial to make it clear to parents that only education can free their children from the cycle of poverty in which they are trapped; it’s a cycle that exists within a system of discrimination and oppression. Aliu is the head of the NGO Roma Versitas Albania, an organisation that advocates for better educational opportunities. Only those who graduate from school have the opportunity to get a better-paying job; however, according to the United Nations, only 55% of the Roma population in Albania go to school at all, while the rate is 97% for the total Albanian population. Most Roma only attend classes up to fourth grade.
“Many families are more focused on getting food than registering their children at a school,” Aliu says. The children have to help their parents with work, because they would otherwise starve to death. In addition, parents often do not understand the need for schooling beyond elementary school – most of them only went to school for four years themselves. Most Roma students end their school careers at the end of the compulsory schooling period, which extends until the end of the ninth grade. By the age of 16, 96% of Roma girls have already left school, and 68 percent of boys no longer attend school. Even if the common misconception in Albania is that most Roma are married off as children, and although reliable figures are difficult to come by, youth marriage is not uncommon according to the United Nations Development Program. The affected 15 and 16-year-olds then have to look after their newly founded family. Attending secondary school thus becomes a luxury that they cannot afford.
Then there is the problem of the systematic discrimination that exists within society. Due to racist discrimination, teachers often give lower grades to Roma students, who are sometimes made to sit in the back row. The language is also a hurdle: Many Roma children speak Romani as their mother tongue instead of Albanian. “When I started first grade, I spoke a mix of Romani and Albanian,” Aliu recalls. He was lucky; a teacher taught him Albanian after class. “Without her help, I would have had problems following the class, I’d have been afraid of speaking and would have gotten bad grades,” Aliu tells me. “I would have dropped out of school after the fourth or ninth grade in that case.”
Aliu grew up in a Roma settlement; his mother was a good student and wanted to study at university, and his father wanted to become a professional footballer. But both had to get married at the age of 16. “My parents’ dreams did not come true. So, they made sure that mine could come true,” Aliu says. They supported him through school and supported his plans to continue studying. Aliu firmly believes that education plays a crucial role in the awakening of Roma self-esteem. “When I wanted to enroll at an Albanian university in 1999, I was the only Roma who had applied,” says Aliu, who is now 40 years old. Aliu, like many other Albanian Roma who applied, was rejected despite having excellent grades: “I had no opportunity to study in my country, I had to go to Italy instead.” There, he worked almost non-stop to finance his studies: “Back then I slept maybe three or four hours a night.”
Aliu is speaking English quickly, loudly and energetically as he tells me his story. Twenty years on from his time at university, you can tell how frustrated he is that the government did not offer any places at universities to Roma students. That has changed since then: with the help of his NGO, Aliu was able to help around 200 Roma to apply and study at universities. “There are currently 37 Roma studying at universities all over the country,” says Aliu. These are still very few in relation to the total population, but it’s a start. Aliu’s organization awards scholarships, helps Roma with the application process and tutors students to provide them with support.
Kristina Myrteli is in her second year at university, where she is studying law. Without the help of Roma Versitas, 19-year-old Myrteli is certain she would have not been able to achieve this. “How would I have paid the tuition fees?” she asks. Myrteli is studying law in order to help her community with legal advice in the future. “A lot of Roma don’t know their rights, which is a huge issue,” she says. Myrteli is a good student, but the COVID pandemic has changed a lot of things. She shares a small apartment with other students. There is internet, but she didn’t have a laptop when distance learning was introduced. “I can take part in the class using my cell phone, but I have no access to the university’s library system,” she tells me. Myrteli’s grades have deteriorated significantly, and she is frustrated by learning from home.
It’s not just university students who have suffered during the lockdown. Roma students at school have also been disadvantaged by the pandemic. Many Roma can barely support their children with their learning, as there are no school books and many have no access to the internet. Only 7% of the Roma in Albania have a computer, according to a study by the UN. “I think the COVID pandemic has set most Roma students back by two years. And quite a few will not return to school,” Hasantari reckons.
For many Roma, the lockdown became a struggle for survival. A UN study from July 2020 found that 90% of households did not have enough food. One reason for this was that not even one in five Roma has a permanent job. Most Roma work in the informal sector and could not earn any money during the lockdown. “We got calls from people who said they were starving,” Hasantari says, as he recalls the start of the pandemic.
It was also more difficult for Roma to adhere to the hygiene measures prescribed by the government than other Albanians. Compared to the rest of the population, Roma are twice as likely to live in cramped conditions and to have to share an apartment with more than four people. There is hardly any room to socially distance. In addition to this, only about half of the Roma have access to running water, which makes it more difficult for them to frequently sanitize their hands.
The pandemic has slowed down the fight for equality in particular. As panic around the virus grew, many people fell back into outdated, discriminatory prejudices that were thought to have died out. “The Roma were being accused of bringing the virus into the country – of letting it get out of control and distributing it,” says Hasantari. It seems that the fear of COVID could become part of yet another chapter of anti-Roma hostility in Albania.
The consequences of this will be felt by the youngest most of all. “Through a variety of projects, we have achieved a situation in which Roma and Albanians can coexist peacefully,” Hasantari says. “But a physical coexistence no longer remains between the students because the lessons take place online.” He believes that all the work done by NGOs over the past decade in the fight against anti-Roma discrimination and the fight for better opportunities for Roma could be undone by the pandemic.
Aliu’s NGO, Roma Versitas Albania, is trying its best to preserve at least some fundamentally equal opportunities. The NGO has bought a hundred tablets to give to Roma students to help them with their studies. Aliu is surprised when he drives to the outskirts of Tirana, where children are cycling on the street in circles between potholes and deep puddles. The air carries the tang of gasoline and dust, and the walls of the houses have been eaten away by the weather. Families have come together in a narrow backyard. Aliu calls the students over and hands them the devices.
As Aliu is talking to one of the teenagers, he raises his voice and his tone becomes sharper. The boy has dropped out of school and is now working to support his family. “This isn’t about distributing gifts; it’s about your future,” Aliu says to the boy. He tells the boy that he should come to his office and register for an apprenticeship that Aliu is offering through his NGO – it is only then he will be given the tablet to support him. Aliu also speaks to the family’s conscience by explaining that the time that the boy invests in vocational training now will pay off later.
But despite all these efforts, education alone is not enough. “If we want to achieve real change, Roma have to be in the right positions in politics,” Aliu explains. He sits on the Rrogozhina City Council and can exert influence there. But Aliu is an exception. “There are perhaps three Roma people in our country’s administrations,” he tells me. “Not 3%, mind you – three people.”
Brisilda Taco has also recognized that this is a problem. “There are now many well-educated Roma, but most of them work in NGOs and not in administration or in politics,” she says. Roma are being encouraged to apply for such positions, but there is a key problem. “We never get the job because we don’t have any work experience. But how are we supposed to gain the experience if we’re never accepted?” Taco asks. But she didn’t let that stop her. “I’m currently an activist because I don’t want to compromise,” she says. “Maybe I’ll run for the city council later – and then for parliament.
Translated from German by Julia Siebert Courtesy of Surprise / INSP.ngo
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