Book promotion ’Life and Work of Sait Balić: A Story on the Roma Movement’

The book titled ’Life and Work of Sait Balić: A Story on the Roma Movement’ by Osman Bajić will be presented at the SASA Hall 2, on Tuesday, 14 May, starting at 1 p.m. Academician Tibor Varadi, Professor Dragan Todorović, Dragoljub Acković, PhD, and Osman Balić will discuss it.

Written by the hand of a grateful son, nowadays a seasoned Roma leader of European scope, the book ’Life and Work of Sait Balić: A Story on the Roma Movement’ is an intimate narrative about the prime mover of an awakening of Roma national consciousness and the leader of Roma activism in former socialist Yugoslavia.

What Šaban Bajramović represented in Roma music is what Sait Balić was for the cultural and political emancipation of the Roma people in Niš and Serbia in the second part of the last century. He was a tribune of the people, a practical strategist of the Roma politics, a distinguished and expressive visionary, knowledgeable of the ways of the then regime and their leaders.

The monograph is a tribute to one of the last great leaders of international Roma politics, however,  it can also be read as a critique of the disunion of the international Roma movement today. It is directed toward young generations of Roma activists, ’the generations of conformists not rebels’, as they are, justifiably or not, described by the author of the publication.