I was trained to be an academic, not a whistleblower. But when I discovered that the Norwegian police had compiled a register of Roma, a national minority in Norway, I had no choice but to subject it to public and legal scrutiny.
I first saw the “family tree” of Norwegian Roma drawn up by police officers at a meeting I was invited to on crime prevention work in Oslo in the fall of 2023. Police officers wanted to learn more about the Roma and invited me because I had worked on Roma issues in my research. I photographed the “family tree” and, suspecting there was a record behind the charts, accepted an invitation to a follow-up meeting with the police officers who had presented it.
My suspicions were correct. At the follow-up meeting, an agent showed me the registry on his computer and explained how he created it. The registry includes 14 people accused in ongoing criminal cases, 74 who are their close relatives and 567 other people. The register even includes Holocaust survivors, deceased people and Roma children.
I recorded the meeting and took notes, thus obtaining proof. Based on the registration and the family tree photo, investigative journalists from the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten published a report last month revealing the existence of the Roma registry to the Norwegian public.
Keeping records of citizens based on their ethnic and racial origin is illegal in Norway, which in itself is reason enough for Norwegian authorities to follow up on this revelation. But the country’s history of police registration of Roma and its tragic consequences add to the seriousness of this violation.
From ethnic registration to Auschwitz-Birkenau
In the early 1920s, Norwegian authorities launched a campaign to register all of the country’s Roma, who then numbered no more than 150. At the same time, they also began denying members of the group Norwegian citizenship and invalidate their Norwegian identity papers, thereby rendering them stateless.
A new “G*psy clause” of the Norwegian Aliens Act, which prevented Roma from obtaining Norwegian citizenship, was unanimously passed by Parliament in 1927. There was a consensus from the far right to the far left on the fact that the Roma were not wanted in the country. Thus, Norway was able to declare itself “G*psy-free” long before the Nazis occupied the country in the 1940s.
These harsh policies allowed Norwegian Roma to be expelled from the country. As stateless people, many were unable to obtain legal residence in other countries and were expelled from place to place. In the 1940s, many were arrested and sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex in Nazi-occupied Poland. Of those deported to the camps, only four survived.
After the war, some of the surviving Norwegian Roma attempted to return to the country, but were prevented from doing so by the “G*psy clause” of the Aliens Act. Four of them fought a years-long battle on behalf of the community to regain their citizenship rights and were not allowed to return until 1956, after the clause was repealed.
It was a largely overlooked chapter of Norwegian history until Maria Rosvoll, Lars Lien and Jan Alexander Brustad, researchers at the Norwegian Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies, published a report on this subject in 2015. The Norwegian Prime Minister issued an apology and the descendants of Holocaust survivors received collective compensation.
It was obvious to me that the Norwegian police were aware of this historical context as they used the photos of Holocaust survivors contained in the report in their meticulous mapping of the Roma people in Norway.
Broad consensus to register Roma
The idea that it is necessary to keep records of Roma is a historically rooted practice. In 1932, Interpol’s predecessor, the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC), established an international “G*psy center” in Vienna to centralize the exchange of information on Roma.
In 1934, a standing committee was formed to support the “G*psy center” and what it called “the fight against the G*psy plague”. That same year, the ICPC had a stated goal of registering all people racially defined as “G*psies” or living a “G*psy lifestyle.”
Research by historian Jan Selling has shown that the Roma were the only ethnic group so targeted by the ICPC and that there was a broad consensus among Nazi and non-Nazi police chiefs in Europe to view the Roma as “criminals”. hereditary”. “. Despite this, European police organizations have shown a lack of interest in confronting this part of history, indicating that there has been ideological and operational continuity in European policing since the 1940s.
Norway has clearly followed through on ICPC’s intentions to register all Roma. Besides the Norwegian Roma, the minority known as Travelers (Romanifolk/tatere) was also registered by the police in 1927.
These practices continued even after the end of World War II, as the presence of such records in the National Archives reveals. Some of them were detailed and included information such as current names, dates of birth, social security numbers, passport numbers, photos, occupations, places of residence and relationships.
These registers were not closed even after the adoption in Norway of a law restricting the legality of the registration of ethnic and racial affiliation in 1978.
In other words, there is every reason to believe that the registration of Roma and Travelers (Romanifolk/tatere) has taken place continuously in Norway over the past 100 years. The comprehensive registration practices suggest that Norwegian authorities view criminality as “hereditary” for Roma.
Therefore, the recent disclosure of a Roma registry should infuriate but not surprise us.
“Do the police have my name?”
When I left the police station where I had attended the ethnic register, I had difficulty breathing. I was furious, but I was also afraid. Since I am not a Roma person and neither I nor my family are on the register, I could not even imagine how Roma people would feel about this disclosure.
The news naturally sparked strong reactions from Norwegian Roma. One of their biggest fears was confirmed. Intergenerational trauma has been reactivated. Having lived through a genocide committed by the state and hunted by the police, they know what such a register could lead to.
Norwegian Roma told media that many of them were considering leaving the country out of fear. Natalina Jansen, president of the Roma Council in Norway, said in an interview: “You feel the same fear that the family members had when in 1934 they were refused entry to Norway and persecution in Europe have intensified. Panic sets in.
A Roma child I recently met at a registry meeting looked at me with serious eyes and asked, “Do the police have my name?”
It is time for truth and recourse
Norway’s brutal treatment of Roma throughout history has not only directly caused death and trauma to the community, but it has also deprived our country of citizens who should have been part of our society. How Norway would have been with them present, we will never know.
As a Norwegian citizen, I am grateful to the four Roma people who form the basis of the police “family tree” and who fought for their right to return to their home country. And I am grateful that their descendants remained in Norway and enriched our society despite a largely hostile environment towards them.
It is time to seriously address the racist notion that Roma are more likely to become criminals than others. But words are not enough. Action must follow.
The well-worded and substantive apology presented by the Norwegian Prime Minister in 2015 is almost worthless if the Norwegian police continue their practice of recording and racial profiling of Roma people behind closed doors.
After it was revealed that Roma had been registered by Swedish police in 2013, the government responded by creating a commission against anti-Gypsyism. This could also be a step in the right direction in Norway. Further actions could involve suggestions made by various scholars and community members.
A recent research project from the Center for European Policy Studies recommends that antigypsyism be monitored more closely and that regional and local truth and reconciliation commissions be considered in the European Union.
Given that injustices against the Roma are not a closed chapter of history but rather enduring oppression, researchers Margareta Matache and Jacqueline Bhabha have suggested a restorative justice agenda that goes beyond truth and apologies for include offender accountability, restitution, restorative compensation and new and stronger legal protections.
Norwegian Roma have repeatedly begged Norway to shoulder its historic responsibility. Safira Josef and others called for a truth commission, and Solomia Karoli called for a memorial to the Roma murdered during the Holocaust. Furthermore, in their speeches on the occasion of International Holocaust Day, Josef, Amorina Lund and Palermo Hoff called for an action plan against anti-Gypsyism. Their demands went unheeded.
The world should now turn its eyes to Norway. The country was the only one to achieve the goal of being “G*psy-free” in the 1930s, and it once again fully registered its Roma national minority.
Will Norway take this opportunity to make serious efforts to break with the past? Or will the authorities just make empty promises that this will be the last time? The choice Norway makes will show the world where this country stands on justice and the fight against racism.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
