A report leaked today by the Scottish Traveller activist Dr Lynne Tammi reveals the terrible history of how Scotland has treated it's Travellers.
For years Scottish Traveller Lynne Tammi has campaigned for the recognition of the violence done to Scottish Travellers as part of the "Tinker Experiments." Part of that campaign has involved walking across Scotland to Edinburgh only to be ignored by her government's own ministers. But a woman who can walk across a country to expose the injustice experienced by her own ancestors is not one to give up easily.
Today after years of being ignored and stonewalled by the Scottish Government she has taken the brave step of publishing a leaked report by the University of St Andrews into that painful history. We publish it today in solidarity with Dr Lynne Tammi secure in the knowledge that the true history of a people belongs to those people themselves rather than those who wrote it.
Lynne says:
"I take no pleasure in leaking this report. However, given that the Scottish Government have spent the last several months instructing the report writers to edit/redact important detail such as Wolfgang Abel's [Nazi eugenicist] racial studies on Gypsy Travellers in the North of Scotland in 1938 and their consistent refusal to meet with myself and other activists to discuss the content and context of the report, I felt I had no choice."
"I realise that I have taken a huge risk in leaking the report and expect there to be repercussions. But nonetheless I feel that getting the truth of the heinous legislation and practice [including the trafficking of children to the colonies and forced assimilation] directed towards Gypsies and Travellers in Scotland in the 20th century out there is more important that whatever 'punishment' awaits me. So although I take no pleasure in leaking the report I firmly believe it was the right thing to do."
"As for the Scottish Government? Now those uncomfortable truths, which they have attempted to suppress, have been revealed, it is time for them to do the right thing by officially re-righting the wrongs by way of an official apology and reparation."
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