Do the Roma habitually slaughter each other with axes in melees?

the psychology of mass fights in Romani culture

picture from this report on Bulgarian national news in July 2015. The headline reads: “MASS FIGHT; One dead and five injured in Romani brawl”

“There was a conflict,” the news report would say. “Two women from neighboring Romani tribes exchanged words about a man,” says one article from 2012 about one fight that resulted in two deaths. Later in the evening, one of the families got drunk and went to seek revenge for their honor, armed with “axes, clubs, bats, metal pipes, shovels.” In the case of the murder from 2015, “the 27-year-old man was walking down the street with his 6-year old son, when he was attacked.” The report continues to say that the mass fight involved 50 people.

Another article talks about a fight between two Romani tribes that have no blood relation to each other. The reporter visited the ghetto and talked with people there, including small children. He gleaned a little into some of the dynamics. “This other tribe,” he was told, “are new to here, we don’t know if they’re Christian or Muslim.” But what was the reason for the fight? Nobody, not a single soul in the ghetto, knew. They all seem to have shrugged when asked about it by the reporter.

Here is one thing we can tell you right away. Neither police, nor news reporters or journalists, nor even long-time non-Romani neighbors and friends will ever know what caused these fights and what exactly happened. Every Roma person who was interviewed, even the grieving mother of the 27-year-old man and the grieving wife of the man killed in the 2012 fight, only give vague answers. And they know how to shift the focus. They share the grief and despair. “He was so young, only 27 years old. His son was in shock,” says the grieving mother. “I now have 6 children to feed, I have no money,” says the widow several times, after sharing that she saw nothing of the fight other than “a broken shovel.”

These are the only details outsiders can get.

Mass fights do happen in, and across, Romani communities. When a conflict escalates to a physical altercation on a mass scale and especially if someone dies, this hits national news and people believe that the Roma club each other to death at every conflict.

We’re not here to put rose-tinted glasses on your eyes. Yes, mass fights happen. Deaths also happen - just like they happen in non-Romani, mainstream society when physical altercations escalate. But these are rare - extremely rare - and they are the only thing that outsiders ever see.

Many cases from mainstream culture that result in physical altercations and death seem to blend away as isolated incidents, even the ones that hit national news. In Romani communities, such conflicts are expertly defused before they escalate. Only rare exceptions reach the levels of a mass fight.

Contrary to the stereotype, mass fights in Romani communities are not mindless, nor alcohol-induced, nor spur-of-the-moment. They only happen when a conflict has been brewing for a long time and when multiple layers of diplomacy, negotiation, and conflict-resolution have yielded no results.

A recent example in our tribe

A couple of weeks ago, a conflict escalated over here too. One man from our tribe - a nephew of Pepi’s - had borrowed money from a man in a related tribe but was struggling to pay it back. After months and months of talks and postponements, the lender showed up at the door of the borrower, together with two of his relatives. This was at the crisis center where most families from our tribe are currently living in. The creditors barged in and started hitting Pepi’s nephew. Within minutes, his father, brother, and two of his cousins were there fighting them off. Since the police station is adjacent to the crisis center, the police heard about this quickly and the three attackers were arrested for 24 hours.

Now that the line had been crossed and people were hit, neither tribe could be sure that an angry relative from the other tribe won’t escalate further. So, on the following day, as the 24 hours of the arrest were about to run out, the area outside the crisis center was fuller than a stadium.

“We’re gathering,” Pepi’s sister told him when she called, which was enough information for him to immediately call a taxi and go to the crisis center. Relatives on the maternal and paternal side of Pepi’s nephew were flooding in from 3 neighborhoods in our city. Similarly, the other tribe was calling in on all their relatives.

While Pepi was on his way, Martina received a Facebook message from one of the teenage sisters of the nephew who had been attacked. “How are you doing?” she asked. “I’m ok, your uncle is on his way,” Martina replied, assuming that she was checking up on that. “Why?” she asked. “Because of the fight,” Martina said. It turned out that she was staying with a friend, only now got online, and had no idea what was going on. As soon as she saw “fight,” she video-called to ask what happened. In the 20 seconds it took Martina to tell her, she had put on her shoes and jacket and was leaving to join the others.

“When we gather, everyone joins,” Pepi says. “Men, women, and children. Everyone.”

You might remember us mentioning, the crisis center in front of which this congregation of two large Romani tribes was happening, is adjacent to a police station. Of course, the policemen knew what was brewing. But when they approached the Roma, they were talked into staying away. “There’s an engagement ceremony tomorrow,” one of Pepi’s sisters told the police. And it was true. This was happening a day before a planned celebration. “We’re gathering to clean up and prepare everything.”

The police watched closely but - even though the air was charged - the real reason they didn’t do anything was because nothing was happening. The large crowd was sitting calmly. People were drinking their coffee, smoking their cigarettes, chatting with their relatives.

The point here was a show of strength.

Like two armies at the ready. The goal is not to fight. The goal is to show that, if it comes to it, they will and can fight.

Eventually, representatives from each tribe started talking things out. These are usually “elders” in the tribe, very rarely the specific individuals who had been “wronged”, and the point is to understand what happened and negotiate a solution. In this case, the other tribe acknowledged that it was out of line to barge in and attack the nephew, so they offered to forgive his debt. It was also agreed that the nephew won’t file any charges against the attackers even though the police had been insisting that he does.

Then everyone went on with their day. The whole thing took 3-4 hours between placing the calls to everyone, gathering, negotiating, and reaching a solution. This is how the vast majority of such mass-fight-gatherings pan out.

Why the looming threat of violence?

Still, it can feel extreme for an outside observer to know that the implied threat here is that at a moment’s notice people are ready to fight each other - and not just exchange a few slaps, but grab rocks, or shovels, or whatever is in the vicinity. If a fight happens, it’s an all-or-nothing fight.

And this is the point. This is why the negotiations are effective. Both sides have teeth.

In the mainstream world, it’s acceptable to call the police when you feel threatened. If you gather hundreds of close and distant relatives to protect you? Not so acceptable. In the Romani world, calling the police is what is seen as too aggressive, violent, and downright an unforgivable betrayal. The Roma don’t trust the police to manage their conflicts, and rightfully so.

Justice for the Roma is something that they can only ever give themselves. They never receive it from the external world - not from police, not from institutions, not from society. Where a regular person from mainstream society will call the police, knowing full well the implied threat that a policeman will carry, a Roma person calls on the tribe. Where an average person relies on police to shoot or hit or detain someone, a Roma person relies on the tribe to be ready to use violence. And where an average person relies on the court and an entire institutional justice system to reach verdicts and solutions, a Roma person relies on the tribe.

All functions that mainstream societies have delegated and outsourced to the police and justice system, the Roma have retained within their communities. It is exactly because they, themselves, carry the weight of distributing justice that they are so connected to violence and, at the same time, extremely wise in when to use it.

How best to illustrate this? Every person walking into such a gathering is ready to both dish out and receive a beating. There are no empty threats. It’s exactly like walking into a battle with the purpose of defending your people. Which is why most of these conflicts are resolved at the negotiation level.

A few words about the deaths we mentioned at the beginning