Chimeras of Terror: Disciplining Roma Identity in Lithuania

The article explores the proliferation of discourses on (anti) terror and the production of discursive "peripheries" that provide a rationale for social exclusion, ethnic intolerance, and governmental disciplining after 9/11. Preconditions and functionality of the vocabulary of terror in the construction of the identity of the Roma ethnic minority in Lithuania are presented in the case study. The case study focuses on the conflict in late 2004 between state authorities and the Roma community settled in the Kirtimai district of the capital cit. KEYWORDS: public discourses, social enemies, Roma, terrorism, Lithuania ********** One might argue that mythical notions can contribute to adequate redescriptions of the political condition after 9/11. Today the figure of the Chimera, referring to the bodily disparity of an imagined ancient creature, can be turned into a viable political metaphor to define incoherent but legitimate rationalities of present social and governmental practices. An expansion, multiplication, and omnipresence of global and local discourses on terror and antiterror structure public and scholarly debates, realities of international relations, and national security policies; antiterrorism becomes an imperative of institutional order: "The danger is still out there." (1) However, the discourse on terror seems to have a centrifugal force as it is detected in various and, sometimes, unusual realms of social relations and communal interactions. It is salient to identify and explain the production, establishment, and functionality of such "peripheries" of the discourse on terror to detect cases when this political imperative tends to mutate into a rationale of social exclusion, ethnic intolerance, and structural violence. (2) This article presents a case study of terror as a technique of social and governmental discipline; namely, an instrument to structure relations with the ethnic Roma minority in Lithuania. The article aims to untangle a complex nexus between local discourse on terror and the social construction of Roma identity to answer the following question: How could the local Roma be overtly labeled "terrorists" by state authorities without major and effective public dissent in autumn 2004? The Roma--a Prescribed Terrorist Identity? The analyzed case of discursive control of minority identity is relatively unconventional in international settings, and in Lithuania it is exceptional. The further analyzed public discourse does not concern migrants, newly established ethnic minorities, Islamic communities, or any external (foreign) threats. Rather, the Roma belong to one of the oldest ethnic groups in the country, having exercised an official right "to roam Lithuanian lands" since 1501. (3) The Roma community of fewer than three thousand people makes up less than 1 percent of Lithuania's total population. Roma are among the least numerous of ethnic minorities, along with the Latvian, German, Tatar, and Armenian communities. (4) Some 25 percent of the Roma community is located in the Kirtimai suburb on the outskirts of Vilnius, the capital city of Lithuania. Today the Roma community of Lithuania is not homogenous, although divisions and relationships inside the community are hardly known about by nonmembers, except for a language variation. (5) In spite of a durable and relatively nonviolent historic interethnic cohabitation, the vocabulary of terror was evoked in a conflict with the Roma in autumn 2004. It represented the peak of tensions after unsuccessful attempts of the Vilnius municipality and police department to intensify a surveillance system in the Kirtimai settlement in Vilnius on the grounds of crime reduction and prevention of drug trafficking. First, the Roma representatives expressed overt discontent with the installation of video surveillance cameras in their living area. Second, on October 6, 2004, a police station, newly established at the entrance to this Roma settlement, was burned down. …