"Che mundro omiro" — "How beautiful the world is"

The walls of the classroom where the Romani children from the village Peri study are decorated with large letters cut from coloured paper — "Che mundro omiro", in Romani language: in English it means "How beautiful the world is". This slogan, with its brightness and colour, its simplicity and festivity, openness and vivacity, perfectly reflects the mood of its young creators — Romani-Kotlyar children from the Vsevolozhskii district of the Leningrad region.

You sense this mood the minute you enter the "tabor", as the large Roma settlement is called in Peri. Life here is bright and unusual, difficult but cheerful and joyous. Everything sparkles here — the startlingly white snow, the black eyes of the children shining with curiosity at the appearance of strangers, the elegant dresses and shawls of the women peeping out from houses, the gold teeth of well-built men and the silver threads in the long plaits of the eternally beautiful elderly Romani ladies. Here they know here to smile, to dress up, and to dance. They not only know how to, they want to and love to enjoy themselves, although life around them more often forces them to be sad and worried, to constantly toil to solve basic everyday problems, to undergo deprivations and humiliation, to endure rising racism and risk being attacked at every step. We walk through the tabor and see pretty girls, carrying buckets with water, laughing shyly. Our schoolchildren-guides explain to us that there is not enough water in the tabor it has to be fetched from afar, bought from Russian neighbours at 5-10 rubles a bucket. We meet two men, who smile kindly at us, although it is difficult for them to return a greeting as they are dragging a sleigh with sacks of coal, and have a long way to go. It is even more difficult to supply much-needed gas to homes, because to fill up a container you have to go by train to the neighbouring Kuz'molovo. And that is a very dangerous journey. A month ago three brothers — two youths and a boy in his early teens set out to buy gas. As they stood with their container on the platform waiting for the train three young racists from the local football fan club approached them. Immediately recognizing them as Roma, the fans decided take out their frustration at their unsatisfactory life on the "blacks" and attacked them. The shaven-headed sadists threw the brothers to the ground and pushed a detonator into the collar of the eldest, which threatened to blow up at any minute. The youngest managed to break loose and free his brother from the live detonator, after which they ran and found temporary shelter in the home of a local policeman. The Russian proprietress was scared and indignant at this unexpected invasion, but the Romani brothers preferred her verbal abuse to another confrontation with their fascist pursuers. The parents of the boys speak of this house in Kuz'molovo with gratitude — "they hid with Russians, Russians saved them."

On the whole, the local Russian population occasionally takes the side of the Roma, despite serious danger presented by skinheads from St. Petersburg and local football fans. The world is not without good people and brave people. Somebody gave shelter, somebody offer protection, somebody even suffered in a fight with young extremists (such fights are occurring ever more frequently at suburban tabors; a few months ago one of the Romani defenders even received gunshot wounds while resisting serious armed aggression). Women are in no less danger than men and boys from the tabor. While we were discussing the incident in Kuz'molovo two women in brightly coloured scarves and skirts approached us. They had just come from Toksovo, where they had visited their mother in hospital. They immediately began to tell their story:

- We entered the hospital and they, the skinheads, began to insult us and curse at us…

- What did they say exactly?

- It's unrepeatable, and they also used gestures …

The eyes and cheeks of the girls burn with offense: humiliation, although frequent, is not something that they have become accustomed to or tolerate easily.

We were told about a woman, whose cheek was slashed by skinheads and who received multiple stitches in the same Toksovo hospital. The doctors are, of course, fully aware of the situation, as are all locals and the police. But nobody intends to act. And all the while the number of racist attacks is growing menacingly. A few years ago nobody in the tabor knew the word "skinhead"; now even infants know it. In 2002 Romani fortune-tellers started to complain that it was no longer safe to travel to St. Petersburg: at Devyatkino platform skinheads attack them, beat them, douse them with gasoline and shout "Death to blacks". This started in St. Petersburg, and nobody imagined that the same danger could await the Roma everywhere, even in the places where they had lived quietly for so long.

As long as people know which places are dangerous and where not to walk — it is possible to live. But when your home is dangerous… That is true terror. Last September another tabor became the latest victim to this terror — a settlement of Tajik Roma-Liulia on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. The police had, as usual, long ignored the regular raids by skinheads, attacks and fights. In September a large group of "brave men" attacked two women and two small children: all four were savagely beaten. Five-year-old Nilufar Sangboeva died soon afterwards, seven-year-old Sakhina Yabonova along with both women was taken to the hospital — there are witness reports that this child died from her wounds even before she reached hospital. All Liulia living illegally in St. Petersburg were arrested and expelled from the city by the police. All that remained of the former tabor were ruins. Besides the deportation of the victims (as a result the investigation cannot be brought before the courts due to the absence of victims and witnesses), this time the police also arrested some of the criminals. Not all, of course.

This tragedy, this outrageous incidence of violence, this murder of small children (5-7 years old!) met with a reaction of calm surprise from the city authorities. When several human rights organisations in St. Petersburg, on the initiative of our centre, wrote a letter to the city governor, demanding more attention be paid to the problem of skinhead violence and urgent action be taken, the chairman of the administrative committee L.I Bogdanov replied with the following: "The measures taken by the organs of the state powers in St. Petersburg and the security structures have had positive results in the sphere of prevention of crime on the grounds of racial and national difference." Further it was cheerfully announced that "four members of an informal young union of skinheads" had been accused of the murder of the Liulia girls, and that the questions that preoccupied us, "about respect and dignity … in future will be under the constant control of the representatives of the organs of state power, St. Petersburg."

So, everything's under control. A Tajik tabor is smashed up at the end of September, and at the beginning of November Romani women from Peri suffered a vicious skinhead attack not far from the metro "Grazhdanskii Prospekt". When one of the women — beaten and bloody — reached the metro and tried to get help from policemen on duty there, they refused, saying something along the lines of "we'd rather join in ourselves!" Under control … yet in the past ten days in Petersburg neo-Nazis have killed a Nanaian student, an African and — again a child! — a 9-year-old Tajik girl, Khursheda Sultanova.

And already in March we learn that "during the investigation into the murder of Khurseda Sultanova three skinheads, who had been convicted of the murder of a Liulia girl on 21st Sept. 2003, were detained." How many more children have to die, so that each murderer will be tried for even one murder? And so that the administration of the city, where it is dangerous to live if you are at all visibly different, will stop complacently believing that the situation with "rights and dignity" is under control?!

Attacks that don't result in the death of the victim (which, naturally, is the only thing that draws the attention of the police and the authorities) are daily occurrences in the city and suburbs. And the problem is not only with dangerous " young gangs" and "extremism". What can you expect from street kids in a city, where the police don't help victims and instead express their support for racist-aggressors, where the authorities don't concern themselves with disturbing questions raised by human rights defenders, where journalists at a Rosbalt agency round table discussion 'Nationalism in Petersburg — myth or reality?" amicably assured each other that there was no such nationalism in this quiet city, "everything is under control", look — here's a sociological survey… A survey is all well and good, but what about murder? Murders, of course, were not mentioned at the discussion, mere trifles that they are. However, the chairwoman of the discussion N. S Chaplina did ask one human rights expert the following question: "Many people say that we have bad relations with the Roma, but how can we improve our relations with them when we're surrounded by such a crowd? The human rights expert for some reason began to talk about the "traditional good relations between Russians and Romani people" and claimed "we have to differentiate between local Russian gypsies and new arrivals, those who come from far away." Good gracious, Nikolai Mikhailovitch, now why is that?! Why do we have to differentiate between Russian, Moldavian, Tajik and Hungarian, between Roma and non-Roma even? After all, we're talking about the murder of children here and, after all, those "new arrivals" lost a child in September. And even if we're not talking about murder, not about children… Although it is the very crimes against children are the most terrifying, the most absolute manifestation of racism. And if children are beaten for the colour of their eyes in this city, in this country — do we need to talk of myths or refer to surveys?

On the trains, heading north from Finland Station, Romani children sing, some accompany themselves on guitar, some on a bayan. It's dangerous on the trains; we know that our schoolchildren friends in Peri are not allowed on the trains even with adults and teachers. We chat with a small soloist, about where he is from, whether he is scared. Anatoli arrived with his parents from Moldavia; he speaks and sings in three languages — in Russian almost without an accent. In answer to the question, whether he was ever beaten, he begins to count the times: by football fans who threw him off the train, by skinheads, who beat him strongly, by the police constantly, who take his money, the cover of his accordion has also been pierced all over with a screwdriver.

- You're not scared?

- What can I do? Nothing really bad has happened to me, but policemen at the metro station "Ploschad Lenina" beat my 9-year-old cousin savagely at the start of March. They took him into their cabin and beat him there; five of them tortured him. They were drunk and one of them — Dimka — was an animal.

We leave Peri and remember the colourful Romani slogan: "How beautiful the world is!" And on a dirty wall in Toksovo we see large, clumsy, dark letters — "Death to blacks."

Bulletin #5

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