rrojasandribbons:

chirikli:

rrojasandribbons:

halophhyte

Aren’t most Romani people Christian? Christian missionaries isn’t really a new thing, they’ve been doing this for centuries

No, and Evangelical Christianity is a very new thing to Romani people. 

Romani people usually outwardly refer to themselves as either Muslim, Orthodox, or Catholic, but many of our communities retain traditional beliefs that are rooted in Hinduism. Most communities that have, over time, become fully Christian are either E. Orthodox or Catholic, and most of them have found their own ways to merge traditional spiritual traditions with modern Christian ones. 

Evangelical Christians don’t want that. They want us to believe exactly what they believe, which means abandoning traditional belief systems that we have fought to preserve for the 800 years since we left South Asia.  

They have only begun targeting Romani communities fairly recently. I have zero problem with Romani people who are Christians, or those who have chosen Christianity because they were free to make that choice on their own. However, these missionaries know they can get their foot in the door in European Romani communities because we not only lack any institutional power to stop them, but many European Romani people lack proper education. 

And, even if they had been doing this longer, it doesn’t make it okay. They are purposefully targeting really impoverished and poorly educated communities in places like Hungary and Slovakia in order to eradicate our traditional belief systems. It is cultural genocide, and that is not an overstatement by any means. 

Edit: They are also one of the leading operating agencies of international adoption facilities in E. Europe that adopt out Romani kids to White Evangelical families in the US and UK. But, that’s not the bad part.. many of the Romani children who pass through these adoption agencies were illegally taken from their parents, as in the parental rights of their biological families were terminated in some really shady ways. Some Romani kids have been outright kidnapped and sold to Evangelical adoption agencies. This is actually a huge problem in places like Russia, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Hungary. 

If I believed in a devil, these people are it. They are the fucking devil. 

There was this heartbreaking documentary I saw about how evangelicals are basically destroying Romanian roma music. Like, all of our musicians are converting and then not playing traditional music because it’s “sinful”. These people are destroying our culture and there is absolutely no reason to play devil’s advocate here. This is cultural genocide.

Evangelical missionaries are literally the worst people on the face of the earth. 

I was reading over studies done in E. Europe related to Romani women’s rights, and some of the commentary given by Roma from Evangelical communities was basically along the lines of, “they promised to help us”, yet these communities remain some of the most impoverished, have some of the lowest literacy rates, and have some of the highest rates of child marriage in all of Europe. 

They are literally discouraging the best aspects of our culture [our music, dance, spirituality, pacifism], while simultaneously encouraging the worst [bigotry, misogyny, anti-LGBTQ beliefs, etc..] Some are also discouraging use of Romanes and encouraging English. 

And, when you look at the communities they go to, they aren’t targeting communities with higher literacy rates, or those of us who have community institutions. They aren’t going into places like Shutke, or Istanbul, they aren’t going after Kalaidzhi Roma, or Lovara, or Gabor.. they are systematically targeting poor, rural communities like the Bayash, Ludari, and Kashtale, as well as impoverished communities in rural Slovakia and Hungary. 

What makes it more insidious is the fact that while they mostly work out of the US, they very rarely work with Roma from the US to go into these communities. They work with White Europeans from existing Evangelical communities in order to get to their target Romani audience. Some of the people they have been on record working with are police and social workers, which.. hmm.. might really come in handy when they set up their adoption agency, right?

There are Romani kids adopted out into the US through these Evangelical agencies who, when they go back to look into information about their birth parents, they are given information about people that don’t even exist. The house that their country’s social services claimed to have removed them from.. doesn’t exist. And, we’ve all read some of the horrific stories of abuse that have occurred with interracial adoptions by White Evangelical families in the US. 

They are a modern day reincarnation of Maria Theresa, stripping us bit by bit of our culture, language, and taking away our children.. but at least Maria Theresa didn’t pretend to be some holy crusader who liked us. 

This a modern day genocide; a cultural genocide, as we keep repeating over and over again. No matter what way you look at it or how you try to paint these people as having good “intentions”.. it is just another attempt to eradicate us by means of eradicating our culture. It is another attempt to tame the wild Gypsy through forced assimilation.