Madonna Defends Gypsies

The Material Mom elicited boos from some fans in the crowd at last night’s show at Park Izvor in Bucharest, Romania, when she spoke out about discrimination against Roma, or Gypsies as they’re more commonly known.

After a Roma dancer and several musicians joined the singer on stage to polite applause from the crowd, she apparently felt the need to get political.

“It has been brought to my attention … that there is a lot of discrimination against Romanies and Gypsies in general in Eastern Europe,” Madonna said. “It made me feel very sad.”

When some in the estimated crowd of 60,000 began booing and jeering her, she added, “We don’t believe in discrimination … we believe in freedom and equal rights for everyone” and then drew more boos when she went on to talk about discrimination against homosexuals.

“I jeered her because it seems false what she was telling us,” one fan explained. “What business does she have telling us these things?”

Obviously many performers might have been rattled or angered by the negative response, but more than 25 years of generating controversy appears to have given Madonna a pretty thick skin and she carried on with the rest of the show unfazed.

The Roma are a wandering ethnic group of people many believe originated in India. The greatest concentration of Roma live in southern and eastern Europe, with Romania home to the largest number in the region.

Ironically, while the music and culture of the Roma are accepted and even celebrated by people in eastern Europe, discrimination against them is widespread.

Recently there has been a wave of heightened aggression against them in Italy, Hungary and Romania.

A report by Vienna-based EU Fundamental Rights Agency reveals nearly one in two of the estimated 12 million Roma living in Europe claim to have suffered an act of discrimination over the past twelve months, with the worst abuses in housing, health care and education.