Post by depletedreasons on Nov 13, 2007 6:47:50 GMT -5
Romanian gypsies battle for highest royal honour
Correspondents Report - Sunday, 11 November , 2007
Reporter: Emma Griffiths
ELIZABETH JACKSON: The gypsies of Europe are both romanticised and persecuted. Variously known as fortune-tellers, musicians and beggars, there are about eight million gypsies living in Europe. Romania is home to the continent's biggest population, an estimated two million and it's there that the gypsy royalty live.
Our correspondent, Emma Griffiths, recently went to Romania to meet the royals, and found a king and an emperor both vying for the crown of the gypsies.
(Sound of festive music)
EMMA GRIFFITHS: The gypsy festival in the village of Costesti is a carnival of feasting and merriment. It's a time to indulge in some medieval-style decadence, where the good life means a big belly and lots of bling.
The women wear long, colourful skirts, scarves over their hair, gold hoops in their ears and gold teeth in their mouths. The men flash their round midriffs, drink whiskey straight from the bottle, admire their gold watches and rings and gnaw meat off the bone.
Every year the massive party spreads across a village field in south-western Romania. Each family seems to own a BMW or a Mercedes Benz. Their tables are bursting with food, roast meat piled on roast meat, and the music just doesn't stop.
(Sound of festive music)
It's a scene of fun and extravagance that belies the reality for most gypsies. Arguably Europe's most despised minority, they're more likely to live with disadvantage and discrimination.
Even the term gypsy is a centuries-old misunderstanding, based on the notion that these travellers were from Egypt, hence the misnomer: gypsy. In fact, their ancestors came from northern India, and the name they call themselves in their own language, "Roma" is slowly taking hold.
Even though the Roma have been in Europe for centuries, they're still regarded as outsiders. In Romania, the gypsy presence is strong, from the ghettos of the capital Bucharest to the countryside villages.
(Sound of people speaking)
And it's here in Romania that you'll meet the gypsy elite, like Florin Cioaba. He is a politician, a businessman, a preacher - and wait there's more - because he's also His Royal Highness, the King of the Roma.
I've been granted a royal audience inside the King's palace in the town of Sibiu. It's a three-storey mansion with a throne room adorned with portraits of his late father. He was the first King Cioaba: a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp, and a union official.
He crowned himself King in the early 90s, after the Communists were thrown out, and his son inherited the title. King Ciaoba usually wears a suit and tie, the trappings of a modern monarch, as he likes to call himself. But on special occasions, he pulls out the good stuff: a gold crown, sceptre and medallion.
(Sound of Florin Cioaba speaking)
"Me, as a king," he says, "I fight to defend their rights, because the Roma have to have a symbol to believe in, a man that they know is on their side and fights for them."
But the King of the Roma isn't the only monarch in the neighbourhood. Just around the corner, barely half a kilometre down the road, there's another ruler to meet, a man who claims to be the real leader of the gypsies. He is the self-declared Emperor of all Roma Everywhere, Iulian Radulescu.
(Sound of Iulian Radulescu speaking)
A big man in his 70s, the Emperor walks slowly down the steps of his palace to greet me with a royal peck on the cheek. He wears a gold robe, and proudly boasts it was made in Turkey to look just like one worn by the Pope. The Emperor is the King's cousin, and his biggest rival.
(Sound of Iulian Radulescu speaking)
"Everybody you ask will say I am the greatest leader", the Emperor tells me, "That is what everybody will say."
The Emperor says he has the noble blood to prove it. His father was a prominent gypsy chieftain too. He explains that in the late 90s he was voted in by thousands of gypsies unhappy with the rule of the King, so now he calls himself the Emperor.
Their long-running feud has descended to the level of personal slurs.
(Sound of Iulian Radulescu speaking)
The emperor accuses the King of crowing like a rooster. He says he thinks the King might be sick in the head, and has told him to go check himself into a mental hospital.
(Sound of Florin Cioaba speaking)
The King says, "Anybody can call himself the King of Soccer or the King of Beer, but I am descended from a family who led this nation, and everybody knows that the real King is Cioaba."
Both the King and the Emperor have a loyal following. But their conflict lies at the upper echelon of a society that lives on the fringes. The Roma are at or near the bottom of just about every social indicator there is: employment, housing, education, general living standards.
(Sound of copper being beaten)
At the village of Bratei the Roma are traditional craftsmen, making copper pots and trays by hand. They once sold their wares from village to village. But they've given up the travelling life to set up shop at home. Now they eke out a living day by day and dismiss the King and the Emperor as self-serving businessmen.
"He is King Ciaoba and a king just for his type," one man tells me, "He does things just for them. He says up-front that he is on our side and he does something for us, but we get absolutely nothing."
(Sound of festive music and singing)
The King and the Emperor at least agree on one thing, they both brush aside the complaints. But they also both believe in the innate decency of their people.
The fortune told for the Roma has often been bleak. But these outsiders have also proved themselves to be survivors, enduring inequity and injustice to remain free in spirit at least.
This is Emma Griffiths in Romania for Correspondents Report.
www.abc.net.au/correspondents/content/2007/s2087288.htm
Correspondents Report - Sunday, 11 November , 2007
Reporter: Emma Griffiths
ELIZABETH JACKSON: The gypsies of Europe are both romanticised and persecuted. Variously known as fortune-tellers, musicians and beggars, there are about eight million gypsies living in Europe. Romania is home to the continent's biggest population, an estimated two million and it's there that the gypsy royalty live.
Our correspondent, Emma Griffiths, recently went to Romania to meet the royals, and found a king and an emperor both vying for the crown of the gypsies.
(Sound of festive music)
EMMA GRIFFITHS: The gypsy festival in the village of Costesti is a carnival of feasting and merriment. It's a time to indulge in some medieval-style decadence, where the good life means a big belly and lots of bling.
The women wear long, colourful skirts, scarves over their hair, gold hoops in their ears and gold teeth in their mouths. The men flash their round midriffs, drink whiskey straight from the bottle, admire their gold watches and rings and gnaw meat off the bone.
Every year the massive party spreads across a village field in south-western Romania. Each family seems to own a BMW or a Mercedes Benz. Their tables are bursting with food, roast meat piled on roast meat, and the music just doesn't stop.
(Sound of festive music)
It's a scene of fun and extravagance that belies the reality for most gypsies. Arguably Europe's most despised minority, they're more likely to live with disadvantage and discrimination.
Even the term gypsy is a centuries-old misunderstanding, based on the notion that these travellers were from Egypt, hence the misnomer: gypsy. In fact, their ancestors came from northern India, and the name they call themselves in their own language, "Roma" is slowly taking hold.
Even though the Roma have been in Europe for centuries, they're still regarded as outsiders. In Romania, the gypsy presence is strong, from the ghettos of the capital Bucharest to the countryside villages.
(Sound of people speaking)
And it's here in Romania that you'll meet the gypsy elite, like Florin Cioaba. He is a politician, a businessman, a preacher - and wait there's more - because he's also His Royal Highness, the King of the Roma.
I've been granted a royal audience inside the King's palace in the town of Sibiu. It's a three-storey mansion with a throne room adorned with portraits of his late father. He was the first King Cioaba: a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp, and a union official.
He crowned himself King in the early 90s, after the Communists were thrown out, and his son inherited the title. King Ciaoba usually wears a suit and tie, the trappings of a modern monarch, as he likes to call himself. But on special occasions, he pulls out the good stuff: a gold crown, sceptre and medallion.
(Sound of Florin Cioaba speaking)
"Me, as a king," he says, "I fight to defend their rights, because the Roma have to have a symbol to believe in, a man that they know is on their side and fights for them."
But the King of the Roma isn't the only monarch in the neighbourhood. Just around the corner, barely half a kilometre down the road, there's another ruler to meet, a man who claims to be the real leader of the gypsies. He is the self-declared Emperor of all Roma Everywhere, Iulian Radulescu.
(Sound of Iulian Radulescu speaking)
A big man in his 70s, the Emperor walks slowly down the steps of his palace to greet me with a royal peck on the cheek. He wears a gold robe, and proudly boasts it was made in Turkey to look just like one worn by the Pope. The Emperor is the King's cousin, and his biggest rival.
(Sound of Iulian Radulescu speaking)
"Everybody you ask will say I am the greatest leader", the Emperor tells me, "That is what everybody will say."
The Emperor says he has the noble blood to prove it. His father was a prominent gypsy chieftain too. He explains that in the late 90s he was voted in by thousands of gypsies unhappy with the rule of the King, so now he calls himself the Emperor.
Their long-running feud has descended to the level of personal slurs.
(Sound of Iulian Radulescu speaking)
The emperor accuses the King of crowing like a rooster. He says he thinks the King might be sick in the head, and has told him to go check himself into a mental hospital.
(Sound of Florin Cioaba speaking)
The King says, "Anybody can call himself the King of Soccer or the King of Beer, but I am descended from a family who led this nation, and everybody knows that the real King is Cioaba."
Both the King and the Emperor have a loyal following. But their conflict lies at the upper echelon of a society that lives on the fringes. The Roma are at or near the bottom of just about every social indicator there is: employment, housing, education, general living standards.
(Sound of copper being beaten)
At the village of Bratei the Roma are traditional craftsmen, making copper pots and trays by hand. They once sold their wares from village to village. But they've given up the travelling life to set up shop at home. Now they eke out a living day by day and dismiss the King and the Emperor as self-serving businessmen.
"He is King Ciaoba and a king just for his type," one man tells me, "He does things just for them. He says up-front that he is on our side and he does something for us, but we get absolutely nothing."
(Sound of festive music and singing)
The King and the Emperor at least agree on one thing, they both brush aside the complaints. But they also both believe in the innate decency of their people.
The fortune told for the Roma has often been bleak. But these outsiders have also proved themselves to be survivors, enduring inequity and injustice to remain free in spirit at least.
This is Emma Griffiths in Romania for Correspondents Report.
www.abc.net.au/correspondents/content/2007/s2087288.htm