ON December 8 2020, World Genocide Commemoration Day was marked worldwide.  It was commemorated under the auspices of the United Nations “to commemorate the victims of genocide and highlight humanity’s responsibility to prevent future genocides.”.  Genocide has been defined as “the intentional and systematic eradication of an ethnic, racial or religious group”

The media in Guyana gave little notice to the Day, except for Swami Aksharananda’s enlightening letter to the editor.  Swami Aksharananda stands out as one of Guyana’s greatest humanists and educationists.  One fact alone, (in addition to others) elevates him to one of the country’s greatest educationists: with almost no funds, he created a school at Cornelia Ida in the countryside which admitted children whom all schools had rejected and who came from financially poor backgrounds.  In a few short years, he created a school which rivalled Queen’s College in results.  Swamiji’s reputation attracted donations which were directed towards the creation of new school buildings which today stand out as among the best school buildings in Guyana.  This article is largely inspired by Swamiji’s writings.

Most people associate “genocide” with the Nazi murder of the Jewish people of Europe — some six million — the horrors of which are well documented.  To now, most people still cannot believe that such an atrocity could occur in the 20th century in the most civilised continent in the world where the cream of Europe’s cultured middle classes were destroyed.  We must however not forget there have been other genocides in this century such as the Armenian genocide by the Turks, when one million Armenians were killed or the Rwandan genocide when one million people were suddenly attacked and killed, mostly with cutlasses.  Almost the same as genocide is the mass expulsion of communities as was the case of the Huguenots (French Protestants) or the Jewish communities in the Arab world.  Genocides and mass expulsions always do irretrievable damage to the social and economic life of the countries where these crimes are perpetrated.

The group which has suffered genocides and expulsions continuously over the last thousand years are the Romas or Gypsy people of Europe.  Europeans, as a whole. have become inured to their plight and seem not to be able to see their suffering though it stares them in the face.  Proportionate to their population, more Romas were murdered in the Nazi death camps than Jews.  Eli Wiesel, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust and a Nobel Prize winner, said that the Gypsies (Roma) suffered more than any other group in the death camps since, unlike the Jews who had persons of power and influence to speak up on their behalf, the Gypsies had no one since they were poor and powerless.  At the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi war criminals, no mention or notice was taken of the Gypsies.

Today, right-wing politicians in Europe still speak of the Roma in terms almost identical to Hitler’s “final solution”.  In Hungary, for example, Zsolt Bayer, a leading member of the governmental party, referring to Gypsies, declared: “They are not suitable for being among people.  Most are animals and behave like animals.  Animals should not exist”.  .  .Bayer is oblivious to the important contributions Gypsies have made to Hungarian music.  Likewise, Gypsies have made important contributions to Spanish music.  Mr Sarcozy, when President of France, a country known as the home of humanitarianism and freedom, harassed the Roma and expelled many of them.

The Roma emigrated from India some 1500 years ago and still remember their Indian affinity.  India has never recognised the Roma and has never offered them any help, though individual groups in India had extended the hand of friendship to them.  When Ashook Ramsaran, a Guyanese-American, was President of GOPIO, the Organization for people of Indian origin, he was able to offer associate membership to the Roma.

Since Guyanese people are descended from African slaves, Indian semi-slaves and Amerindians who were neglected and expected to diminish and disappear by the colonialists, it was expected that the media would have given more notice to World Genocide Commemoration Day and showed a fellow feeling for the plight of the Gypsies.