I was trained to be an academic, not a whistleblower. However, when I discovered that the Norwegian police had created 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 compiled by police officers at a meeting on crime prevention work in Oslo in autumn 2023, to which I was invited. The police officers wanted to expand their knowledge about Roma and had invited people. Since I had dealt with Roma-related topics in my research, this was very important to me. I photographed the “family tree” and, suspecting that there was a register behind the graphics, accepted an invitation to a follow-up meeting with the police officers who had submitted it.
My guess was correct. During the debriefing, an officer showed me the register on his computer and explained how he created it. The register includes 14 people against whom charges have been brought in ongoing criminal proceedings, including 74 their close relatives and 567 other people. The register even includes Holocaust survivors, the deceased and Roma children.
I recorded the meeting and took notes to preserve evidence. Based on the recording 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 registers of citizens based on their ethnic and racial origins is illegal in Norway, which is already reason enough for the Norwegian authorities to take action following this revelation. But the history of police registration of Roma in the country and its tragic consequences make this violation even worse.
From ethnic registration to Auschwitz-Birkenau
In the early 1920s, the Norwegian authorities launched a campaign to register all Roma in the country, who numbered no more than 150 at the time. In parallel, they began to deny the group’s members Norwegian citizenship and invalidated their Norwegian identity documents, leaving them stateless.
A new “G*psy clause” in the Norwegian Aliens Act, which prevented Roma from obtaining Norwegian citizenship, was unanimously approved by Parliament in 1927. From the extreme right to the extreme left, there was consensus that Roma were unwelcome in the country. Norway was able to declare itself “Gypsy-free” long before the country was occupied by the Nazis in the 1940s.
These harsh policies enabled the expulsion of Norwegian Roma from the country. As stateless people, many were unable to obtain legal residence in other countries and were repeatedly deported from place to place. In the 1940s, many of them were rounded up 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 “gypsy clause” of the immigration law. Four of them fought for years on behalf of the community to regain their citizenship rights and were only allowed to return in 1956 after the clause was repealed.
This was a largely silent chapter in 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 it in 2015. This led to an apology from the Prime Minister of Norway, and the descendants of Holocaust survivors received collective compensation.
That the Norwegian police were aware of this historical background was obvious to me when they used the photos of Holocaust survivors in the report for their careful mapping of the Roma population in Norway.
A broad consensus on the registration of Roma
The idea that it is necessary to keep registers on Roma is a historically rooted practice. In 1932, Interpol’s predecessor, the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC), established an international “Gypsy Center” in Vienna to centralize the exchange of information about Roma.
In 1934, a permanent committee was formed to support the “Gypsy Center” and the so-called “Fight against the Gypsy Plague”. In the same year, the ICPC had the stated aim of registering all persons who were racially defined as “Gypsies” or who lived a “Gypsy lifestyle”.
Historian Jan Selling’s research has shown that the Roma were the only ethnic group highlighted in this way by the ICPC, and that there was a broad consensus among Nazi and non-Nazi police chiefs in Europe that the Roma “Hereditary criminals” are “. Despite this fact, there is a lack of interest among European police organizations in engaging with this part of history, suggesting that there has been an ideological and operational continuity in European policing since the 1940s.
Norway has clearly pursued the ICPC’s intention to register all Roma. In addition to the Norwegian Roma, the minority known as Travelers (Romanifolk/tatere) were also recorded by the police in 1927.
These practices continued after the end of World War II, as evidenced by the presence of such registers in the National Archives. Some of these were extensive and included information such as current names, dates of birth, social security numbers, passport numbers, photos, occupations, places of residence and family relationships.
These registers were not closed even after the passage of a law in Norway in 1978 that restricted the legality of registering ethnic and racial affiliation.
In other words, there is every reason to believe that the registration of Roma and Travelers (Romanifolk/tatere) in Norway has taken place continuously over the last 100 years. The extensive registration practices suggest that Norwegian authorities view crime as “hereditary” for Roma.
Therefore, while the recent disclosure of a Roma registry should upset us, it should not surprise us.
“Do the police have my name?”
As I left the police office where I had witnessed the ethnic register, I found it difficult to breathe. I was angry, but also afraid. Since I am not a Roma and neither I nor my family are registered, I could not even imagine what the Roma would think about this disclosure.
The news naturally met with strong reactions from the Norwegian Roma. One of their biggest fears was confirmed. The intergenerational trauma was reactivated. They know what such a register can lead to because they have experienced genocide carried out by the state and persecution by the police.
Norwegian Roma told the media that many had considered leaving the country out of fear. Natalina Jansen, head of the Roma Council in Norway, said in an interview: “You have the same fear that family members had when they were refused entry to Norway in 1934 and persecution increased in Europe. “Panic is spreading.”
A Roma child I met at a recent registry meeting looked at me with serious eyes and asked, “Do the police have my name?”
Time for truth and recourse
Norway’s brutal treatment of Roma throughout history has not only directly resulted in death and trauma for the community, but has also deprived our country of citizens who should have been part of our society. What Norway would have been like in their presence we will never know.
As a Norwegian citizen, I am grateful that the four Roma who make up the police “family tree” fought for their right to return to their homeland. And I am grateful that their descendants remained in Norway and enriched our society despite an environment that was largely hostile to them.
It is time to seriously address the racist idea that Roma are more likely to be criminals than other people. But words are not enough. Action must follow.
A well-worded and substantive apology from the Norwegian Prime Minister in 2015 is almost worthless if, in parallel, the Norwegian police continue to register Roma and racially profile them behind closed doors.
After it was revealed in 2013 that Roma had been registered by the police in Sweden, the government responded by setting up a commission against antigypsyism. This could also be a step in the right direction in Norway. Further actions could include suggestions from various scientists and community members.
A recent research project by the Center for European Policy Studies recommends greater monitoring of antigypsyism and consideration of regional and local truth and reconciliation commissions in the European Union.
Recognizing that injustices against Roma are not a closed chapter of history, but rather a lasting oppression, scholars Margareta Matache and Jacqueline Bhabha have proposed a program of reparative justice that goes beyond truth-telling and apology to perpetrator accountability, reparation, reparative compensation etc. includes new and stronger legal protections.
The Roma in Norway have repeatedly called on Norway to assume historical responsibility. Safira Josef and others have called for a truth commission, and Solomia Karoli has called for a memorial to the Roma murdered in the Holocaust. In addition, Josef, Amorina Lund and Palermo Hoff called for an action plan against antigypsyism in speeches on International Holocaust Day. Their demands went unheard.
The world should now turn its attention to Norway. The country was the only country to achieve the Gypsy-free goal in the 1930s and has now reestablished a full register of its national Roma minority.
Will Norway use this opportunity to make serious efforts to break with the past? Or are the authorities simply making an empty promise that this will be the last time? The decision Norway will make will show the world where this country stands on justice and anti-racism.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.