VREAREA A ARMANJLORU

We, the representative of the Arman Community of Romania - Bucuresti, Calarasi, Constanta, Ialomita, Tulcea subsidiaries -, meeting in Bucuresti, today the 16th of April 2005 for the yearly General Gathering,

Considering that the inaccurate description, minimizing and ignoring our Arman identity, represent the causes of the fact that the Arman language and culture are deteriorating day by day and they are endangered to disappear,

We have decided that it is the moment - vini oara - to express the desire of the Arman Community to distinguish the ethnical and cultural identity of the Arman of Romania, as a part of the Balkan Arman people and at the same time, we have decided to take all the necessary steps with the competent authorities for our registration as a national minority in Romania.

The Armans wish to exercise the rights resulted from the national minority status, as well as from the man and citizen's fundamental rights, such as: studying the Arman language and culture at school, mass-media access, religious service in the Arman language.

The basic motivation of our desire relies on the fact that nowadays, only the juridical official recognition of our identity will be able to continue and fulfill the Arman historical way of relating to the others and to the world: the vocation of the path, of the communication and the opening towards other cultures and spaces.

As Balkan natives, carrying a Roman, Byzantine, as well as European civilization of synthesis, with acknowledged Christian moral values, the Arman all over the world are aware that they form a distinct ethnical unit, that they speak the same language.

The traditional values of the Arman culture are recognized by the ecumenism that gives them shape. Along the history, the intellectual curiosity in the first place, the plurilinguism and the tolerance towards the others helped the Arman integrate perfectly in the most various cultural contexts and geographical areas. The Christian love towards the others, the wish for helping, for embellishing the environment, for enriching it with original ways and forms of approaching, are attested by the imperial Byzantine documents that mention them at Athos Mountain, in the trade of the Empire, in the transport organization, in establishing economic contacts with the Western Europe and the Orient. In the XVII and the XVIII centuries, the Armans represented the contribution to the building of a Balkan economical and cultural metropolis, unique at that time in the Ottoman-Moscopol Empire.

But nowadays, we need modern institutions, according to the European standards, to protect and develop the Arman cultural patrimony. UNESCO classified the Arman language among the endangered languages. The Europe Council has adopted the Recommendation 1333 for saving and cultivating the Arman language.

We believe that the gifts inherited from our ancestors must not be wasted. They must be shared to the Armans and to the whole world. They must be a part of the European circuit as Arman values.

Romania has been a support for the Arman since the beginning of its existence as a national State, in obsolete ways nowadays, conditioned by the age. Our ancestors' surviving strategy from the end of the XIX century, of sacrificing their own identity in order to find powerful protectors, was also conditioned by the age. Our strategy of saving and developing the Arman language and culture is based on distinguishing our own identity and participating to the multicultural European and universal concert.

16.04.2005 Bucuresti

FARA ARMANEASCA DIT ROMANIA

THE ARMAN COMMUNITY OF ROMANIA