Gypsy king went from marrying off 12-year-old daughter to girls’ education activist

Watch: Hundreds of mourners lined the streets of the Romanian town of Sibiu for the funeral of the self-styled “King of the Gypsies” Florin Cioaba

SIBIU, Romania – The King of the Gypsies arranged an opulent wedding for his 12-year-old daughter, ordering a dozen suckling pigs and buying her a lacy gown from Italy. When she stormed out, bridesmaids in tow, the furious outcry forced Romania to stop ignoring child marriage and pushed him to take a public change of heart.

Florin Cioaba, a member of the family that has led the country’s embattled minority since the 19th century, went on to become a leader who helped smooth relations with mainstream Romania and modernize Roma traditions, while still preserving his community’s separate culture.

Hundreds of Roma turned out for a funeral in his Transylvanian hometown of Sibiu to remember him on Friday. A banner emblazoned with his crowned visage was draped across an apartment building. Stonemasons have been carving his tomb in black marble for the last week.

Cioaba died of a heart attack Sunday at age 58 while on vacation in Turkey. Mourners were carrying his coffin – partially lidded with glass and rumoured to be air-conditioned – along a seven-kilometre (four-mile) route through the city.

“He cared very much about his Roma community and he helped it a lot. He integrated it into Romanian society; he sent the members of the community to school,” relative Ion Rudaru said.

But the road was bumpy. In 2003, as his 12-year-old daughter was preparing for marriage, the family openly talked about how Ana Maria would stop going to school once she was married. That may have been why she fled the church in front of 400 astonished guests – many of them members of the media invited to experience Roma culture.

She tearfully returned a few minutes later and was duly married off. The ensuing uproar over the wedding became a pivotal moment for Cioaba. The couple was separated after the ceremony and did not live together. Cioaba later pushed for education for Roma girls and began preaching that they should not be married until they were 16, aligning Roma tradition with Romanian law.

The move earned him a reputation as a leader who co-operated with officials.

Ciprian Necula, a sociologist who studies Roma, described Cioaba as a down-to-earth, moderate leader and a mediator who used his pulpit as a Pentecostal pastor to deliver many of his messages, including urging Roma not to beg on the streets and demanding more rights for the minority.

“When I greeted him “I kiss your hand, Your Majesty,” he replied, “Stop that nonsense!” Necula said Friday.

Cioaba was strongly influenced in his policies by his wife, Marica, whom he married when they were both 14 and with whom he had four children, Necula said.

Before the funeral, his elder son Dorin was crowned “the international king of Roma,” while his younger son Daniel was crowned “the king of Romanian Roma,” succeeding him as the heads of Europe’s largest Roma community.

Roma started arriving from India in the 14th century and there are an estimated 8 million in Europe, with the largest population in Romania. There are officially some 620,000 Roma in Romania, but many do not declare their ethnicity due to widespread discrimination. Roma leaders say there are between one and three million Roma in the country.

Cioaba took over the mantle in 1997 from his father Ion Cioaba, who was deported during the Holocaust to the Soviet Union.

In 2010, he set up a court to mediate disputes in the Roma community with a council of 20 members. While he preserved Roma customs, he sought to keep them in line with Romania’s move toward the EU, which it joined in 2007. He counted among his friends, President Traian Basescu, who this week took a helicopter to Sibiu to lay a wreath at Cioaba’s coffin.

However, Cioaba could be critical of European leaders, including former French President Nicolas Sarkozy whom he denounced for repatriating Romanian Roma from France.

Romanian Roma use a separate language, which borrows heavily from Romanian, and women traditionally dress in brightly colored long pleated skirts with headscarves, braids with gold jewelry. In eastern Europe, the former communist bloc where the Roma are concentrated, many schools are tacitly segregated, and hate crimes are commonplace.

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Mutler reported from Bucharest, Romania.