Local police surrounded
the mostly-gypsy village of Fawar in southern Iraq for several days,
refusing to allow anyone in or out. The reason? So gypsies couldn’t
taint the rest of local society with their immoral ways.
1.10.2015
“When I used to dance and sing I felt free,” says Karima
Muhsen, a 42-year-old gypsy woman living in the area of Fawar, about 20
kilometres southeast of the city of Diwaniya, capital of the southern
Qadisiyah province. “And I used to teach my daughters the art of dancing
and singing. But now we are no longer allowed to dance and sing. I am
getting old and I can no longer work – I can't even beg in Diwaniya's
streets,” she complains.
Muhsen is one of Iraq's gypsies,
or Romany people, known locally as Kawliya. It is hard to know how many
gypsies are living in the country – estimates range between 6,000 and
20,000. But what is known is that after 2003, when Iraq became more
religiously conservative thanks to the end of the regime of secular,
nationalist dictator, Saddam Hussein, the gypsies were forbidden from
earning their living from dancing and singing.
After 2003, gypsies became easy targets for religious militias who took
over many gypsy villages and caused inhabitants to flee, often outside
the country. The word “gypsy” was replaced in Iraqi identification
papers by the word “exception”, basically taking away local gypsies'
right to an ethnic identity of their own. After the fall of Saddam
Hussein's regime, the ethnicity, “Iraqi”, was applied only to those who
were born to Iraqi parents. Because gypsies' parentage is often unclear,
they began to be described as “exceptions” instead.
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