Greece

   Estimated Gypsy population: 350,000. At an early date, Gypsies were recorded on the islands of the eastern Mediterranean. By 1384 Gypsy shoemakers were established on the mainland of Greece in Modon (then a part of the Venetian empire), and by the end of the 14th century a large number of Gypsies were also living on the Peloponnese Peninsula. As the Turks advanced into Europe, many Romanies fled to Italy and other countries of western Europe. Under the Ottoman Empire those Gypsies who remained were given comparative freedom provided they paid their taxes to the Turkish rulers. In 1829 Greece gained its independence. There have been a number of population exchanges between Greece and Turkey, and some Muslim Gypsies have taken the opportunity to migrate eastward to Turkey.

   Toward the end of World War II, the Germans began to arrest Gypsies to use them as hostages, but the majority survived unscathed.

   In Greece today, many Gypsies are settled in housing and their existence as an ethnic minority ignored, except by some educational authorities. Perhaps half are living in barely tolerated tent and shan-tytowns. In 1997 some 3,500 Gypsies living in tents were ordered to leave the land in Evosmos (Salonica) where they had been living for 30 years. It was intended to rehouse them in a converted army barracks. A number of other Gypsy settlements have been destroyed, some in preparation for the 2004 Olympic Games, and the promised compensation has not been paid. As the Olympics began, a score of Roma families were evicted from their settlement in Patras. Evictions from this area continued until June 2005. In the same year, 70 families were evicted from Votanikos (Athens).

   As many of the adults in shantytowns are not registered as citizens, their children are refused entry by schools. Elsewhere segregated classes are common. Children in Aspropyrgos on the outskirts of Athens were at first refused enrollment and then placed in special classes. The international Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights protested about this situation in an open letter to the minister of education in February 2006.

   A positive note is the establishment of a museum of basket making in Thrace. Also, in 2004 a government circular banned the use of derogatory references to Roma by the police.

   Gypsy musicians are popular. They include the singers Vasilis Pai-teris, Kostas Pavlides, and Eleni Vitali, together with the clarinetist Vasilis Saleas. An extremely popular television soap opera entitled Whispers of the Heart transformed public attitudes toward the Roma for a short time in 1998. Chronicling the love story of an upper-class Greek architect and a young Romany woman, it was one of the most successful shows ever on Greek television.

   See also Byzantine Empire.