Benutzer:Tiao/China

The Gypsies of Germany

Paper to be presented at the EU-China Seminar on Human Rights Protection of Ethnic Minorities to be held from September 26 to 29, 2016 at the Southwest University of Political Science & Law in Chongqing, China.

Subtheme: Cultural Human Rights Protection of Ethnic Minorities

Abstract

For half a millenium, gypsies in Central Europe lived and suffered the fate of what Max Weber termed a pariah class. While powerholders could sometimes make use of them for military and other services, their history was mainly shaped by a combination of social rejection and legal repression. Against this background - including Nazi Germany’s genocidal campaign that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands members of the Romani people (Porajmos) - it is impressive to see the progress made in terms of human rights for this ethnic minority in all of Europe, and especially in Germany, since the end of World War II.

A focus on the cultural rights of gypsies in Germany - with special attention to their linguistic rights - underlines the importance of political umbrella organizations such as the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma in achieving emancipation. But it also reveals the costs and the remaining difficulties and shortcoming associated with such a complex process. One example is the risk of deepening the rift between the 70,000 long-established German Sinti and Roma on the one hand (recently recognized as a national minority by the government) and the lesser status of the unknown number of more recent newcomers who entered Germany as refugees from war and/or acute waves of antiziganism in neighboring countries.

Both the Council of Europe (with 47 member states) and the European Union (with 28 member states) have the legal instruments to protect the cultural rights of (members of) national minorities. The Council of Europe’s European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) explicitly aims to protect minorities from discrimination, and the European Court of Human Rights at Strasburg (ECtHR) has repeatedly stressed the necessity to give special protection to members of the Romani people. The European Union's Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxemburg fulfills a similar role and has published a number of anti-discrimination judgments.

This paper aims to inform about and to open a critical discussion regarding the merits and shortcomings of some of the legal instruments (such as the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages) and recent decisions of the judicature.

Background

The world's estimated 14 million members of the Romani people, whose ancestors had come to India during the second millenium BC, then started migrating from India westwards between the 6th and 11th century, and who now live dispered over some 30 countries - mostly in Eastern, Southeastern, and Western Europe, in Asia Minor, and quite a few in the Americas - do not have a country of their own. In spite of their long-standing presence in host societies (covering in some places a whole millenium, in others several centuries) their relationship to host societies is often precarious, characterized by distrustful indifference, but also by the host societies' prejudices and sometimes outright hostility. At various times and places there have been generalized persecutions of the Romani people, the most catastrophic one of course being the Porajmos that had cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Romani people during the genocidal Nazi policies during World War II.

After 15th century tolerance that knew protection letters for Gypsies similar to those for Jews, the Imperial Diets of Lindau (1496-1497) and Freiburg (1498) outlawed them as enemies of the Christian religion, allies of the Turks, sorcerers, and transmitters of pestilence. The Imperial Diet of Augsburg (1551) ordered the destruction of all passports and letters of protection. In spite of this, gypsies were seen as capable soldiers, making them a natural component of 17th and 18th century armies and, at times, police forces. During the 1720s there was an inflation of ever stricter criminal laws against them; the execution of a gang of gypsies in Gießen in 1726 was a public spectacle of sorts.

There soon was a tiered sanction system like "three strikes and you are out": after illegal entrance into a city there was expulsion and corporal punishment; a second offence was followed by branding, and a third one by execution. Summary trials without regard for procedural rules were usual. Children were forced to witness the execution of their parents before being expulsed or given to local residents. Those eliminatory tendencies were softened at the end of the 18th century.

The 19th century brought legal emancipation and citizenship as well as a process of settledness. In Prussia, Sinti were overwhelmingly sedentary at the the end of the 19th century. On the other hand, the new wave of freed Roma from the Habsburg Empire prompted a new wave of antiziganism in media and politics. In 1899, Munich inaugurated a national center for a war on gypsies (Zigeunerbekämpfung). In 1926, this center had collected finger prints, pictures and biographical data of 14,000 persons.

Ordinances like the Prussian Anweisung zur Bekämpfung des Zigeunerwesens (1906), and laws like the Bavarian Gesetz zur Bekämpfung von Zigeunern, Landfahrern und Arbeitsscheuen (1926) or the Hessian Gesetz zur Bekämpfung des Zigeunerunwesens (1929) wanted non-German gypsies to be expelled, while forcing German gypsies to settle down. Travelling people were forced to give their fingerprints and to carry specific documents.

From 1933 to 1945, all 30,000 "gypsies" on German territory were being subjected to a differentiated genetic-genealogical qualification. A circular order by Heinrich Himmer from 1938 and implementation rules from 1943 set the course for a policy of annihilation. During the war, more than 25,000 Roma from eleven European countries were deported to Auschwitz. Estimates for numbers of Romani victims of the Holocaust (of the Porajmos) range from 90,000 to 4 million, with most between 200,000 and 500,000.

Citizenship and Rule of Law

After 1945, both the German and the European policy towards ethnic minorities have shown an increased sensibility. There is a rather vivid consciousness of the need to prevent any relapse into exclusionary policies. To prevent such a collaps of civilization, the policy is to act preventively and to fight against prejudice and to overcome all kinds of cultural and socio-economic discrimination. Thus, sensitizing for past injustices is seen as a means of raising consciousness for the need to protect their human rights both individually and collectively. An important tool is to help them preserve their identity and cultural heritage with special consideration of the right to use one's language and practice one's specific customs.

Role of the Council of Europe

One major instrument is the legal framework provided by the Council of Europe (47 member states). The Council of Europe, founded in 1949, drafted the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), formally called the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in 1950. This treaty meant to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms in Europe, entered into force in 1953. The ECHR also established the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Any person who feels his or her rights have been violated under the Convention by a state party can take a case to the Court. Judgments finding violations are binding on the States concerned and they are obliged to execute them. The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe monitors the execution of judgements, particularly to ensure payment of the amounts awarded by the Court to the applicants in compensation for the damage they have sustained.

The ECHR's article 14 contains a prohibition of discrimination. It specifically prohibits discrimination based on "sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status" (protocol 12 extends this prohibition to cover discrimination in any legal right, even when that legal right is not protected under the Convention, so long as it is provided for in national law).

The ECHR has been of some importance through the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg, France.

In 2016, the ECtHR ruled at the occasion of a violent attack against Romani in the Czech Republic that had occurred in 2007, that - as a result of their turbulent history, "the Roma have become a specific type of disadvantaged and vulnerable minority", and that "they therefore require special protection ...”. In the specific case of attacks by private individuals (in Croatia, in 2007), the applicant, who was of Roma origin, was attacked by two unidentified men when collecting scrap metal in April 1999. They beat him with wooden planks and shouted racial abuse while two other men kept watch. Shortly afterwards the police arrived, interviewed people at the scene and made an unsuccessful search for the attackers. The applicant alleged, in particular, that the domestic authorities failed to undertake a serious and thorough investigation into the racist attack and that he suffered discrimination on the basis of his Roma origin. - Having considered all the material in its possession and the arguments put forward by the parties, the European Court of Human Rights considered that the failure of the State authorities to further the case or obtain any tangible evidence with a view of identifying and arresting the attackers over a prolonged period of time indicated that (...) there had been a violation of Article 3 concerning the lack of an effective investigation. The Court also found that there had been a violation of Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) of the Convention in conjunction with Article 3 for the following reasons : the applicant’s attackers were suspected of belonging to a group of skinheads, and it was in the nature of such groups to be governed by extremist and racist ideology; accordingly, knowing that the attack was probably the result of ethnic hatred, the police should not have allowed the investigation to drag on for more than seven years without taking any serious steps to identify or prosecute those responsible." ECtHR FS Roma

Role of the European Union

The rules of the European Union with its 28 member states are being concretized by the respective judicature of the (European) Court of Justice in Luxemburg (ECJ).

Romani Legal Status in Germany After 1945

Immediately after World War II, the politics of elimination were abandoned. What continued was the politics of de facto discrimination similar to that in most other countries. The formation of the Council of Europe and the European Convention of Human Rights did not change this situation at first. One of the reasons was that - in Germany - Romani were not recognized as a national minority in the sense of the ECHR. Unlike the Danes and Frisians in Northern Germany and the Sorbs in the East, the Romani lacked "traditional settlement areas" within Germany and therefore did not meet the last of five criteria that decided over this question - the other four being (1) German citizenship, (2) cultural identity, (3) the wish to maintain this identity, and (4) a long-standing tradition of living within the German borders.

When (in 1992) the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML; CETS 148) promised to protect and promote historical regional and minority languages in Europe, some member states conditioned the recognition of minority languages on their territory to the recognition of the speakers of those languages as a "national minority". By this measure, the fact that the Sinti and Roma in Germany were not recognized as such by the German government at first seemed to prevent the Romanes language from protection by the Charter- even though the wording of the charter itself explicitly wanted to cover not only languages with a specific territorial base in the respective states, but also linguistic minorities within the State as a whole (thereby including such languages as Yiddish and Romani, used over a wide geographic area).

It was mainly thanks to the political umbrella organization of the German Sinti and Roma - the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma (German: Zentralrat Deutscher Sinti und Roma) in Heidelberg, founded in 1982 to represent 17 member associations - that the German government could be persuaded to recognize them as a national minority. Germany waived the fifth criterion of "territorial base" in view of overriding "historical reasons" and formally accorded the status of national minority to the German Sinti and Roma in 1995. When it ratified the Charter (ECRML) in 1999, the German Sinti and Roma (but not the recent Romani immigrants from the Balkans and other areas) were among its beneficiaries.

The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages

Aims

According to the Council of Europe, the Charter of 1992, which had come into effect in 1998,

1. enunciates objectives and principles that Parties undertake to apply to all the regional or minority languages spoken within their territory: respect for the geographical area of each language; the need for promotion; the facilitation and/or encouragement of the use of regional or minority languages in speech and writing, in public and private life (by appropriate measures of teaching and study, by transnational exchanges for languages used in identical or similar form in other States).
2. sets out a number of specific measures to promote the use of regional or minority languages in public life. These measures cover the following fields: education, justice, administrative authorities and public services, media, cultural activities and facilities, economic and social activities and transfrontier exchanges. Each Party undertakes to apply a minimum of thirty-five paragraphs or sub-paragraphs chosen from among these measures, including a number of compulsory measures chosen from a "hard core". Moreover, each Party has to specify in its instrument of ratification, acceptance or approval, each regional or minority language, or official language which is less widely used in the whole or part of its territory, to which the paragraphs chosen shall apply.
3. is to be enforced under control of a committee of experts which periodically examines reports presented by the Parties.

Germany and the Romany language

According to the Declarations contained in a letter from the Permanent Representation of Germany, dated 16 September 1998, handed to the Secretary General at the time of deposit of the instrument of ratification, on 16 September 1998:

1. The Romany language of the German Sinti and Roma in the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany and Low German language in the territory of the Länder Brandenburg, North-Rhine/Westphalia and Saxony-Anhalt shall be protected pursuant to Part II of the Charter.
2. Part II of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages shall be applied to Romany, the minority language of the German Sinti and Roma in the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany,

With regard to Romany, the German government communicated the following selection of protection devices in its declarations:

for the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany:

Article 8, paragraph 1 f iii; g; h; Article 9, paragraph 1 b iii; c iii; paragraph 2 a; Article 10, paragraph 5; Article 11, paragraph 1 d; e ii; f ii; g; paragraph 2; Article 12, paragraph 1 g; paragraph 3; Article 13, paragraph 1 a; c; d; Article 14 a;

and additionally:

- in Land Baden-Württemberg: Article 8, paragraphs 1 a iv, 1 e iii; Article 10, paragraph 4 c; Article 12, paragraphs 1 a, 1 d; f; paragraph 2.

- in Land Berlin: Article 8, paragraph 1 a i/ii; b i/ii/iii/iv; e i/ii/iii; i; paragraph 2; Article 11, paragraph 1 b i/ii: c ii; e i/ii; Article 12, paragraph 1 a; d; f;

- in the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg: Article 8, paragraph 1 b iv; c iv; Article 11, paragraph 1 b ii; c ii; Article 12, paragraph 1 a; d; f;

- in Land Hesse: Article 8, paragraph 1 a iii/iv; b iv; c iv; d iv; e iii; i; paragraph 2; Article 11, paragraph 1 b ii; c ii; e i; Article 12, paragraph 1 a; d; f; paragraph 2;

- in Land North-Rhine/Westphalia: Article 8,paragraph 1 e iii; paragraph 2; Article 12, paragraph 1 a; d; f; paragraph 2;

- in Land Lower Saxony: Article 12, paragraph 1 a; d; f;

- in Land Rhineland-Palatinate: Article 8, paragraph 1 a iv; e iii; Article 11, paragraph 1 c ii; Article 12, paragraph 1 a; d; f;

- in Land Schleswig-Holstein: Article 10, paragraph 1 a v; paragraph 2 b; paragraph 4 c; Article 11, paragraph 1 b ii; c ii; Article 12, paragraph 1 a; d; f; paragraph 2.

Recent European Judicature

European Union Judicature

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxemburg recently decided the following cases:

Electricity Discrimination

In the largest "Roma district" in the Bulgarian town of Dupnitsa, the electricity company decided to install all electricity meters on pylons forming part of the overhead electricity supply network at a height of between six and seven meters, wshereas such meters were placed at a height of less than two meters in the other districts. The idea behind this practice was to prevent tampering with the electricity meters by (Roma) inhabitants of that specific district. The consequence was that inhabitants were unable to check their electricity meters for the prupose of monitoring their consumption and making sure that the bills sent to them were correct.

After a shopowner in the district - who herself did not claim to be of Roma origin - complained about what she saw as an unlawful discrimination, the Grand Chamber of the ECJ decided on 16 July 20215 in case C-84/14 that this practice was indeed unlawful and that the offensive and stigmatising effect of the measure made the shopowner suffer together with the people who were being discriminated against for belonging to a specific ethnic group. The court saw a violation of the Council Directive 2000/43/EC of 29 Juni 2000 implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin (OJ 2000 L 180, P. 22) and of Article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

Employment Discrimination

The director of a Belgian company made public statements that his company was looking to recruit fitters, but that it could not employ 'immigrants' because its customers were reluctant to give them access to their private residences.

In its judgment the Court pointed out that

1. "the fact that an employer declares publicly that it will not recruit employees of a certain ethnic or racial origin constitutes of itself direct discrimination in respect of recruitment, since such statements ae likely to strongly dissuade certain candidates from submitting their candidature and, accordingly, to hinder their access to the labour market"
2. such statements of employers justify the presumption of discrimination
3. such violations require effective, proportionate, and dissuasive sanctions; these could consist of a finding of the court with an adequate level of publicity, or an injunction to cease the practice, or even the award of damages to the body bringing the proceedings (European Commission Legal Service, C-54/07; judgment of 10 July 2008).

Council of Europe Judicature

As guardian of the ECHR, the Court of Human Rights in Strasburg (ECtHR) is often confronted with Convention violations to the detriment of Roma. Typical cases concern a striking inactivity of state organs to elucidate the circumstances of hate crimes committed against members of this minority. Investigations drag on for years without results and convey the impression that the state couldn't care less about the human rights of this minority. Other cases show a manifest collusion of the police with those who committed assaults. Beyond that, there are cases of forced sterilization of Roma women, cases of abuse, neglect, and all kinds of discrimination. Here are just a few examples published by the European Court of Human Rights (2016):

Failure to Investigate

The applicants, mother and son, complained about the racially motivated killing of their respective son and brother by seven teenagers, and about the subsequent failure by the Bulgarian authorities to investigate and prosecute those responsible.

The Court held that there had been a procedural violation of Article 2 (right to life) of the Convention, finding that the Bulgarian authorities had failed in their obligation under Article 2 to effectively investigate the applicants’ relative’s death promptly, expeditiously and with the required vigour, considering the racial motives of the attack and the need to maintain the confidence of minority groups in the ability of the authorities to protect them from the threat of racist violence.

Police Brutality

In September 1993 three Roma men were attacked in the village of Hădăreni by a large crowd of non -Roma villagers, including the local police commander and several officers: one burnt to death, the other two were beaten to death by the crowd. The applicants alleged that the police then encouraged the crowd to destroy other Roma properties: in total 13 Roma houses in the village were completely destroyed. Hounded from their village and homes, the applicants were then obliged to live in crowded and unsuitable conditions – cellars, hen-houses, stables. Following criminal complaints brought by the applicants, some were awarded damages ten years later.

The Court could not examine the applicants’ complaints about the destruction of their houses and possessions or their expulsion from the village, because those events took place in September 1993, before the ratification of the Convention by Romania in June 1994. However, it found violations concerning the complaints about the applicants’ subsequent living conditions and noted that the applicants’ ethnicity had been decisive in the excessive length and result of the domestic proceedings. In particular, the Court held that:- there had been a violation of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) of the Convention; - there had been and was a continuing violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life and home) of the Convention; - there had been no violation of Article 6 § 1 (access to court) of the Convention;- there had been a violation of Article 6 § 1 (right to a fair trial) of the Convention on account of the length of the proceedings;- there had been a violation of Article 14 prohibition of discrimination) of the Convention taken in conjunction with Articles 6 § 1 and 8. (See also: Moldovan (no. 1) and Others v. Romania, judgment (friendly settlement) of 5 July 2005; Lăcătuş and Others v. Romania, judgment of 13 November 2012 (concerned an attack on Roma homes in a village in September 1993 by a mob of non-Roma villagers and the local police, during which the applicants’ common-law partner and father had been beaten to death by the crowd).

The Court's Influence

Sometimes, the mere fact that the court is dealing with a case can make a significant difference. For instance, the court decided to strike some applications of individual Roma against Romania off its list of cases following a declaration by the Romanian Government, in which it recognised violations of Articles 3, 6, 8, 13 and 14 of the Convention and undertook to pay each of the applicants compensation, as well as to adopt several general measures involving the judicial system, the educational, social and housing programmes and aimed at fighting discrimination against the Roma in the county concerned, stimulating their participation in the economic, social, educational, cultural and political life of the local community, supporting positives changes in public opinion in their respect, as well as preventing and solving conflicts likely to generate violence (cf. Gergely v. Romania and Kalanyos and Others v. Romania 26 April 2007. These cases, notabene, concerned the burning of houses belonging to Roma villagers by local population, the poor living conditions of the victims and the authorities’ failure to prevent the attack and to carry out an adequate criminal investigation, depriving the applicants of their right to bring a civil action to establish liability and recover damages).

Weblinks and Bibliography

• BMI National Minorities
• BMI Nationale Minderheiten in Deutschland: Deutsche Sinti und Roma

• Council of Europe: Details of Treaty 148 - European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages; Von der Charta .. geschützte Sprachen (deutsch)

• European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in: en.wikipedia

• European Court of Human Rights (2016) Fact-Sheet Roma and Travellers (with judicature)

• Günther, Olaf (2015) Im Zwischenraum – Zigeuner in Zentralasien. Ein Vergleich postsowjetischer und afghanischer mugat-Gruppen.
• Gypsies/Roma in Hungary. Ministry of External Affairs (2004) Budapest

• Margalit, Gilad & Matras, Yaron (2007) Gypsies in Germany—German Gypsies? Identity and Politics of Sinti and Roma in Germany, in: The Roma: a Minority in Europe: Historical, Political, and Social Perspectives, ed. by Roni Stauber & Raphael Vago. Budapest: Central European University Press, pp. 103-116.

• Marsh, Adrian & Strand, Elin (2006) Gypsies and the Problem of Identities. Contextual, Constructed, and Contested. Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul. Transactions 17
• Romani, in: de.wikipedia
• Rose, Romani (1994/95) Patrin. Sinti and Roma as National Minorities in the Countries of Europe
• Sinti, in: de.wikipedia
• Sinti und Roma, Dokumentationszentrum
• The Civil Rights Movement of Sinti and Roma in Germany (2016)

Leftovers

Their Indian origin has been recognized by the Indian Minister of External Affairs in 2016, when he stated at the occasion of an International Roma Conference that they were children of India. The Conference recommended that the Government of India recognise the world's Roma communities as part of the Indian diaspora.

A look at the legal status of the Romani people - formely known as gypsies - demonstrates some of the difficulties and shortcoming associated with the treatment of ethnic minority protection. Special attention is given to the case of Germany, where their name has been changed from gypsies to Sinti and Roma. While this symbolic step of overcoming centuries of social exclusion has been accompanied by significant progress with relation to, e.g., the linguistic human rights of this minority, there are continuing problems of discrimination to be dealt with by social actors and both the national and international judicature.

Therefore, after a brief description of the Romani people (popularly known as gypsies) this paper concentrates on the development of their human rights situation in Germany. It recalls the early history of legal tolerance and repression and the increasingly dangerous dynamics of exclusion since 1871, while recognizing the different forms of antizyganism in the eras of the Empire (1871-1918), the Weimar Republic (1918-1933), and the so-called Third Reich (1933-1945), during which an estimated half a million members of the Romani people lost their lives in the Holocaust. While post-war Germany (since 1945) abandoned eliminatory practices, it did not succeed in reaching a coexistence with today's 70,000 Sinti and Roma with German citizenship that could be seen as free of discrimination. Like all other European countries with a Romani diaspora, Germany is still struggling to adjust the legal order to the rights and needs of this minority.

Special attention is given to the process by which the 70,000 "German Sinti and Roma", i.e. those with German citizenship, were officially recognized as a national minority. Questions of linguistic human rights with relation to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) as well as related issues are being discussed with reference to recent judicature. Among the legal norms to be treated in this contribution, there will be the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ETS No. 148) of 1992, and among the judicature considered we will turn to, among other decisions, those by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxemburg and those by the Council of Europe's European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg.

Varieties

The main distinct ethnicities within the Romani diaspora are the Roma themselves and the Iberian, the Finnish and the Welsh Kale, respectively, plus the Romanichal in Great Britain and other English-speaking countries, the Sinti in mostly German-speaking countries, Manush or Manouche in mostly French-speaking countries, and the Romanisæl in Sweden and Norway. There are also an estimated one million Roma in the United States (and Canada) and 800,000 in Brazil (and neighboring countries). While most Brazilian Romani's ancestors were 19th century emigrants from Eastern Europe, some have ancestors that were deported by the Portuguese government during the Inquisition.

Terminology

To most English-speaking people, the traditionally nomadic ethnic group called Romani or Roma is better known by the name of gypsies. Similarly, German-speaking people have been accustomed to the term Zigeuner ever since the 15th century (after a first mention of at Hildesheim in 1407, there was another one in 1446, by which the Frankfurt city council bestowed citizenship on one "Heincz von Mulhusen zyguner"). Nowadays, ever more people are taking offence at the exonym gypsy (Zigeuner), considering it pejorative due to its connotations of irregularity and illegality. Even though some members of this ethnic group consciously still do refer to themselves as gypsies, this paper acknowledges the scholarly state of the art (Marsh & Strand 2006) and distinguishes as follows:

Gypsy: Since this term is an originally externally ascribed name (based on the mistaken belief that they originated in Egypt), and since it is popularly often associated with negative characteristics, this term will only be used very carefully, i.e. when referring to historic language usage, and in those cases where members of the minority do use the term as their own self-designation.

Romani: Like most international scholars and organizations this paper will use the term Romani to refer to the ethnic minority formerly called gypsies.

Roma, Rom: While many scholars and organizations use Roma and Rom interchangeably with Romani, this paper will be conscious of the fact that - narrowly speaking - Roma and Rom are in fact designations of Romani subgroups. Those groups that split from other Romani groups in India in the 6th century and moved forward into Europe and later the Americas were called Rom, whereas those who remained in Persia and Turkey were called Dom.

Sinti: Sinti designates the oldest subgroup of Central and West European Roma. The term appeared in the late 18th century synonymous with Zigeuner, Roma, and Kale. Many Sinti emphasize the relative independence of their culture and special variety of the language Romanes. There is a certain (mutual) wish to distinguish between "German Sinti" of older residence, and the Southern European Roma who came later as either foreign labour or refugees of the Balkan wars and other conflicts. Different from the recommendations of the International Roma Union, the German Zentralrat Deutscher Sinti und Roma not only keeps to the double-term "Sinti and Roma" (instead of simply "Roma"), but even adds another differentiation by using the attribute "German". The aim of this policy is to restrict the privileges of the ethnic minority to those who have been living for generations in Germany as German citizens. The term "German Roma" is designed to designate only the offspring of those who, after the end of serfdom in the Habsburg Empire in 1851, migrated to Central Europe.

2008 (C - 54/07 from 19 July 2008) and in 2015 (C - 83/14 from 16 July 2015).

The Sinti and Roma, formerly known as gypsies (German: Zigeuner), originated in India, from where they started migrating some 1500 years ago first to Anatolia and the Balkans, and later across Europe and lately to the United States. Similar to the Jews, the Sinti and Roma have been living as minorities and shared the persecutions and the ambivalent social status of pariah groups. Among the six million victims of the Holocaust, there were also an estimated 500,000 European Sinti and Roma. In Germany, there are some 70,000 Sinti and Roman who are German citizens (> 0.1 %). In addition, there is a number of Roma from Romania and the Western Balkans for temporary residence. Whereas the Sinti and Roma can look back upon half a millenium of German history - the first written document referring to a gypsy was the citizenship certificate that the Frankfurt city council awarded to Heincz von Mulhusen zyguner in 1446 - the Sinti and Roma are not considered to be an autochthone, i.e. indigenous minority.

This gives the Sinti and Roma a lesser legal status in Germany than that being enjoyed by, e.g., the Sorbs and Friesians, who are being recognized as indigenous minorities.

Minority protection rights in Germany are limited to those minorities who are considered to be autochthone, i.e. indigenous minorities.

• Socio-Economic Situation and Conflicts

Therefore, the Romani languages are not covered by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of 1992, in force since 1998. (While there had been some political pressure put on the German government to include at least the Roma in the list of autochthonos minorities, the German government did not heed that advice, but compromised on a number of smaller points.)