Cemromengo

Romani Republic Republika Romani
Flag Coat of arms
Motto: "Opre Roma"
Anthem: Gelem, Gelem
Capital and largest city	Romanivar
Official languages	Romani (official), Romanian, Hungarian, Ukrainian
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Government	Unitary Parliamentary Republic
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Romani State (Romani language: Cem Romengo, officially the Romani Republic (Manshutka Romani), is a country located in Europe. It shares borders with Ukraine in the North, Hungary in the West, and Romania in the south and East. It's capital is Romanivar.

The Romani people first arrived in Europe from India in the 12th century and arrived in the territory of the present Romani State in the 1400s. They are constantly persecuted for their nomadic lifestyle and in many cases, were enslaved. Even during the 20th century, the Nazis persecuted the Romani people and the other Axis peoples followed suit such as Romania and Hungary which committed genocide against the Romani; this was called the Pajramos.

After World War II, the Soviets punished both Romania and Hungary which were both Axis Powers due to their anti-Ziganist and anti-Semitic policies. Portions of Romania and Hungary were given to a neutral zone, with most of the prewar population ordered to be "repatriated" to Romania and Hungary. They were replaced in turn by Romani refugees, which were given a state of own provided they become loyal to the Soviet Union. The Romani People's Republic was founded in April 8, 1947 from the transitional Soviet occupation authorities, and ordered to sort the Romani migrants and resettle them into collective farms.

History

Main article: History of Cemromengo

The territory comprising the Romani State was once an important nucleus of the Kingdom of Dacia. In 106 AD the Roman Empire conquered Dacia, and settled it with Roman colonists. After the Roman legions withdrew in 271 AD, it was overrun by a succession of various tribes, bringing it under the control of the Carpi, Visigoths, Huns, Gepids, Avars and Slavs. From 9th to 11th century the Bulgarians ruled the territory.

The Magyars conquered much of Central Europe at the end of the 9th century and for almost six hundred years, the territory of the Romani State were part of Transylvania, a vassal state of the Kingdom of Hungary. After the Battle of Mohács in 1526, and the Hungarian defeat by the Turkish, Transylvania became a semi-independent principality under local Hungarian nobility rule but owing suzerainty to the Ottoman Empire, then a province of the Habsburg Empire as part of Hungary, and after 1848, again from 1867 to 1918 incorporated to the Kingdom of Hungary within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The dual monarchy dissolved after World War I, and Transylvania including the future Romani State was absorbed to Romania.

The Romani arrived in the Romani State's territory beginning in the 1300s, and in stages. While in demand in certain jobs, hostility by the Hungarian and Romanian populations persisted, and Empress Maria Theresa tried to suppress the traditional Romani culture by forcibly sedenterizing and assimilating them, with limited success. The Romani peoples only formed political organizations after the First World War.

Romani Settlement

The arrival of the Roma in Hungary, which also included the present-day Romani State and part of the Balkans, cannot be dated with certainty even if starting from 1370 the word Cigan appears several times in the registry registers as a surname, although there is no evidence that can be traced back to people of Roma ethnicity. In a note dated to 1416 it is reported that "Mr. Emaus of Egypt and his entourage of 220 people" was supplied with money and provisions, while another note of the same year refers to a letter of safe conduct from Nikolaus di Gara produced by him in the absence of King Sigismund.

Between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the kingdom of Hungary found itself in a state of constant war, with mixed fortunes, with the Ottoman Empire. The Roma from the Balkans were welcomed with great tolerance, their knowledge of the manufacture of metal objects and weapons made them sought after for their services and guaranteed them the protection of the king. In a document dated 1476 it is reported that the citizens of the city of Herrmannstadt asked King Matthias Corvinus for permission to have Roma in the suburbs of the city.

Early Modern History

Romani were officially emancipated from slavery in Transylvania in 1700 and in the neighboring Romanian Principalities in 1856. However, they were still treated as an unwanted minority and forced to do manual labor.

In the mid-18th century, Empress Maria Theresa (1740–1780) and Emperor Joseph II (1780–1790) dealt with the Romani question by the contradictory methods of enlightened absolutism. Maria Theresa enacted a decree prohibiting the use of the name "Cigány" (Hungarian) or "Zigeuner" (German) ("Gypsy") and requiring the terms "new peasant" and "new Hungarian" to be used instead. She later placed restrictions on Romani marriages, and ordered children to be taken away from Romani parents to be raised in Hungarian or Romanian families.

Romani People and Territory During the World Wars

In 1918, the Romanian lands of Moldova (Bessarabia) and Transylvania were annexed to Romania. During the 1930s, it was reported that 242,656 citizens of Romania were of Romani origin, though the real number was said to be higher.

The Romani people faced legal discriminations with the rise of fascism in Europe. In the lands annexed to Hungary in 1940, the Romani there were sent to German concentration camps; 36,000 Roma in Romania and the future Romani State died due to deliberate neglect, abuse, and disease. Marshal Ion Antonescu ordered all the Romanian Roma still there to be deported to Transnistria.

Romani partisans in Europe emerged in the German-occupied World Wars. The most famous of them, Yon Voiku, was originally a violinist turned partisan. He then was arrested by Romanian authorities in 1943 despite attempted intervention by his mentor George Enescu. He escaped prison, however, and in 1943 fled to the Soviet frontlines where he witnessed the cruelty of the Pojramos. Vowing that the Romani given justice, he then soon joined the Red Army and successfully petitioned Stalin to form an elite Soviet Romani unit. Voiku was made deputy commander due to his age, instead giving it to Alexander Baurov, a Soviet Romani officer. Voiku instead became the ideological leader of the Soviet Romanies and vowed a homeland for them either in the Soviet Union or in one of the former Axis territories. When Romania was conquered by the Soviet Union, Voiku saw an opportunity and convinced Stalin and Beria not to return Northern Transylvania to Romania (though Cluj-Napoca was returned to Romania), instead making it a Romani satellite state.

Founding of the Romani State

During 1944, the Soviets encountered heavier Romanian and Hungarian resistance against their occupation. In a meeting with the Politburo, Lavrentiy Beria toyed with the idea of establishing a Transylvanian buffer state between Hungary and Romania with a third group. When the Soviet general staff noted that they have a Romani unit, Beria requested them to let them occupy Northern Transylvania and set up a new state there, to serve as a future check on both Romania and Hungary. Although Stalin repressed Romani intellectuals in the 1930s, he then approved of the plan, seeing a way to ingratiate himself with the Western Allies and elicit goodwill by establishing a homeland for a persecuted people, though it is also seen as a solution to as Stalin said, "put the Romani into one place". Stalin then released some Romani intellectuals from the gulags and assigned Soviet Romani officials to Northern Transylvania. The Soviets then made contact with Romani communist partisans, the chief of them Josef Serinek of Czechoslovakia, and assured them that they would be given a Romani state.

Stalin then convinced the Western Allies that Northern Transylvania would be a state for the Roma, instead of being returned to Romania or Hungary. The Soviets then chose Ion Voiku to become the leader of the Romani People's Republic.

Soon, the Soviet authorities have conducted "repatriation operations" for the Roma of Romania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Two million Roma were relocated to the future Romani state in 1947, and the majority of the original Romanian and Hungarian population were expelled to their respective countries. Only Maramures and Szekelyland had sizeable non-Roma minorities to this day.

Nevertheless, due to communist policies, dissent was rife; the government put down a strike in Satu Mare in 1958 causing 234 deaths was a notorious example, as well as the government putting down protests in 1968 in sympathy for the Czech reformists; however, Voiku ordered to stop any further crackdowns. In 1971, the World Romani Congress was formed to represent the Roma diaspora and call for the democratization of the Romani State.

Communist Rule

Main article: Cemromengo People's Republic

Yon Voiku became the first President of the independent Romani People's Republic. Nomadism was deemed to be feudalistic and banned, and all people are herded into either collective farms or cities. Forced industralizaton was implemented, and most of the pre-1946 history of the Romani People's Republic were altered to communist tastes or destroyed. Because the Romani were considered a "victim" nation, the remaining factories there were not removed. The RPR, however, were required by the Soviets to supply them with minerals in exchange of aid. 20,000 people were either executed or imprisoned for collaboration, "parasitism", and refusal to work. Neighboring East European countries forcibly patriated most of their Romani to the Romani State, and an elaborate surveillance system was put into place. The Romani State's economic growth was said to be only matched by fellow Communist country Albania; the Romani state's national income was 23% and 51% higher than the world and European average, respectively. The Romani State received a greater proportion of aid from the Soviet Union than any other East European country.

The Romani People's Republic was general perceived as loyal to the Soviet Union, and it helped put down anti-Soviet uprisings in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. However, it broke with the Soviet line concerning Israel during the Israeli-Arab War, citing historical experience and the need to convert Israel to the Soviet side. Because of ethnic ties, the Romani were also used as intermediaries between the Soviets and the Indians.

Yon Voiku became the longtime leader of the Romani People's Republic until his death in 1971. His legacy is considered mixed in the Romani State today; on the one hand, he was credited as a founding father of the new Romani homeland; however, like his fellow communist contemporaries he is criticized for his totalitarian rule and excesses.

End of the Communist Regime and Present

Like fellow Eastern European countries, The Romani State experienced waves of protests demanding democrating reforms and end to mandatory surveillance, legalizing nomadism for adults, and the end of Soviet influence in Europe. In 1989 a Hungarian-Romanian pastor named Laszlo Tokes was arrested in Timisoara but fled to the Romani People's Republic. Nicolae Ceaucescu then ordered an invasion of the Romani People's Republic to both arrest Tokes and enforce Romania's claim to the Romani People's Republic in December 18, 1989. Goghu Radulesku, the last Romani People's Republic president, was killed in an aerial bombing in Romanivar. Despite having technological and numerical superiority and even occupying the capital, killing most of the Romani state leadership, the Romani stood their ground and expelled the Romanian invasion, and warned Hungary not to exploit the invasion. A military government took over in the Romani state which did not have open party sympathy. The surprising victory of a nation that was the poorest in the Warsaw Pact shocked and encouraged the world, and was the direct trigger of the Romanian Revolution of 1989, overthrowing Ceaucescu. The military government of the Romani state in 1990 decided not to continue the Communist system and ordered fresh democratic elections, with Ilya Badea Stanesku of the Romani Democratic Alliance winning the May 3 elections with a plurality of votes.

Government and Politics

The Romani State operates under a parliamentary system as a presidential and democratic republic with universal suffrage.

There are three branches of government: the Legislative the Executive, and the Judiciary. The President is the head of the Executive Branch and is considered to be the head of state and government of the Romani State. The President must be of Romani nationality, speaks the Romani language, and at least thirty years of age. The President is elected for a four year term from an electoral college made up from the nine Romani counties, can be re-elected only once and consecutively. He organizes the Parliament's two sessions.

The Prime Minister is appointed from the majority political party of the Parliament and is assisted by the deputy prime minister.

The Parliament (Vakerlin) is the legislature of the republic. Requirements for both are at lest twenty-five years of age, can read or write, and have no criminal record; the Romani State uses the "first past the post" as a determination of the Parliament's 130 seats.

Legal system

The Romani State has a two-tier court system; the county courts and the national courts. The highest tier is the Supreme Court (known in Romani as simply the Kris) is located in the capital; it serves a dual role as the highest court of appeals and the highest court of justice. In the latter role, the Kris rules as a court of first instance, allowing individuals, both citizens and non-citizens, to petition against the decisions of state authorities.

The Romani State's legal system combines civil law and traditional Romani law (or Rromano zakono). It is based on the principle of stare decisis (precedent) and is an adversarial system, where the parties in the suit bring evidence before the court. Court cases are decided by professional judges rather than juries. The more conservative political parties want to convert to traditional Romani law in its entirety, seeing the current law as "unjust" to both prosecutors and defendants and seem to value punishment more than rehabilitation.

Military

The Romani state spends 1.3 percent of its GDP on defense. The Romani Republic Defense Forces is the military of the country, and is headed by its Chief of General Staff, the Vajda, subordinate to the Minister of Defence. The RRDF consist of the army and the air force. It was founded during the 1940s from Soviet Romani units and bolstered by militias founded by the new Romani government.

Romanis are drafted into the military at the age of 18, compulsory for males. Following mandatory service, Romani men join the reserve forces and usually do up to several weeks of reserve duty every year until their forties. Romani women can volunteer provided they meet the same standards as men. If a citizen does not want to do the military service on health and conscientious grounds, he will be involved in a program of service in hospitals, schools and other social welfare frameworks. The Romani State maintains 30,000 troops and 56,000 reservists.

Most of the weapons, armored vehicles and aircraft were imported from the former Soviet Union, but a modernization program has seen influx of Western armaments as well. The Romani State expects its military to comply with NATO standards and get rid of pre-1991 Soviet weaponry by 2030.

Foreign Relations

The Romani state has traditionally good relations with most countries with the notable exception of Romania and Hungary, in which both once claimed territory of the Romani State. Both were required by treaty to disclaim any territorial claims; in return, the Romani must ensure that the remaining Romanians and Hungarians are protected and be free to exercise their constitutional rights. Contemporary issues stem from the Romani government's perceived indifference to the plight of the minorities, and nationalist claims from neighboring countries.

The Romani State is on talks with the EU to join it; major issues are insufficient level of development and corruption.

Administrative divisions

Main article: Counties of Cemromengo

Cemromengo is divided into 11 counties (Judetso), each managed by a Voyvod (governor). Each Voyvod is also elected by a county council elected by the populace for a single four-year term.

Geography and Climate

The Romani State occupies the northeastern part of the Carpathian Mountain system. The Romani State's topography is diverse in terms of landscape. While it is known to be mainly mountainous, as it is surrounded by the Eastern Carpathians, the south has a flatter landscape and is the northern part of the Transylvania Plateau. Major rivers include the Muresh in the southeast and the Somesh in the northeast. The highest mountain in the Pietrosu Mountain in the Maramuresh region.

Rivers

The Romani State is a part of the Danube catchment area. Major rivers include the Muresh in the southeast and the Somesh in the northeast. Many Moldavian and Wallachian rivers also originate from the Romani State like the Bishtrita, Tatros, Bodza, and the Prahova rivers.

Climate

The Romani State has a continental climate, though there are also oceanic and Mediterranean influences. The average annual temperature is 9-11°C in the plains, 6-9°C in the hills and 0-2°C in the high mountains. The distribution of precipitation also changes according to the topography: 700-1200 mm in the mountains, 500-800 mm in the hills and basins, 500-600 mm in the plains.

Economy

The Romani Republic has a mixed economy with a Gross Domestic Product of US$23.4 billion. The Romani State inherited the economic infrastructure it created during the communist period, and initially it was successful in keeping it. The economy was one of the Romani State's great strengths ten years ago but poor governance, corruption, poor revenue collection, aging infrastructure and a sectionalized economy and workforce now were seen as problems. Industrial production is very stagnant due to the factors mentioned and the agricultural sector is seen as limited due to above constraints. The major exports are minerals, automotive equipment, and agricultural products such as wheat and livestock.

During the communist period, the Romani State endured great industrialization at the orders of the communist leadership, at the cost of lingering environmental problems.

Demographics

According to the 2018 Population Census, the total population of Romani State is 4,340,301. 93% are Romani, 4% are Romanian, 2% are Hungarian, and other peoples 1%.

Education

The educational system while having structural problems due to building the system from scratch, benefited the majority of the country and is instrumental in its literacy rate of 97.5 percent. The academic system starts in September and ends in June.

All children must attend school from the age of 6 to 16. All public education is free to high school; there are concerns however on the high dropout rate and Romani state law requires transient Romani groups to have at least one or two teachers with them.

Tertiary education was fine-tuned to comply with the Bologna Process. Tertiary studies include bachelor, master, and doctorates. The main university is the University of the Romanivar, founded in 1948.

Foreign languages and minority languages are mandatory subjects; due to many ethnic Romani also speaking Romanian and Hungarian, teaching them the language was said to be relatively efficient that many experts worry many are not fluent in Romani anymore. Russian, Ukrainian, German, and English are popular foreign language subjects in school.

External links

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• Template:CIA World Factbook link
• Romani State at UCB Libraries GovPubs
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