07.03.2002 / Next April, 8^th, an event really interesting is going to be produced: the main rivers of all the world will bring in their flows thousands of flowers and burning candles. The Ganges, in India, the Danube in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Romania, the Seine in France, the Jordan in Israel or the Silver River in Argentina, are only some examples of the worldwide size of this phaenomenon.
   People responsible of such a poetical event, that is called The River Ceremony, will be Gypsies of all countries that, this way, want to celebrate the millennial of our exit of Punjab region, in India, and our following exodus for the world.
   Internationality of Gypsy People is an aspect difficult to represent, but people in charge of the organization and difusion of this event have found an element that perfectly summarize this feeling: the river, that flows away in its way without repairing in countries or man-stablished borders. So that, and for the importance water have to anybody that begins a trip, the river has turned in a central element of the close celebration.
   However, Gypsy’s history and its progressive settlement in different countries of all the world hasn’t been a path of roses, precisely. Gypsies have to fight against injustice, prejudices, racism and xenophobia that, yet today, in the XXI Century, are being present in a lot of world regions.One of the most recent examples is found in the Kosovo War, where Gypsies were pestered by the two confronted parts only for the fact of being Gypsies.
   Memories of those who have suffered these war and ethnical hatred situations will play a fundamental role during the commemorative events. Thousands of flowers and burning candles floating in the river water, will become the phisical symbol of these memories.
   The choosen day to celebrate the River Ceremony is April, the 8^th, considered as the Gypsy People Worldwide Day. That day, but in 1971, the First Gypsy Worldwide Convention was held in London, what meant the revival of international Gypsy movement, as well as its visualization to majority public opinion.
   So next April, the 8^th, thousands and thousands of Gypsies will meet at the main world river banks, of America, Australia, Asia and Europe, to launch flowers and candles into water in memory of our ancestors, that leaved India looking for a better future, and those who had to suffer in their own skin the hatred and the attacks for ethnical reasons.
   This way, the River Ceremony joints, in the same event, the celebration for the millennial way beginning and the memory of those who, regrettably, have suffered the difficulties of this long travel.