Roma protest loaded survey question on "gypsy crime"

By MTI

The head of the National Roma Council has protested against a survey published on Wednesday which had juxtaposed the words "gypsy" and "crime" in a question.

Orban Kolompar slammed Nezopont Institute's survey, which found that 91 percent of those asked said they thought "gypsy crime" was a real issue. Kolompar said that the term was unacceptable and that the question was an incitement of hatred against the Roma minority.

Agoston Samuel Mraz, who directed Nezopont's survey in question, told MTI that his institute had applied the phrase because it was used both in public discourse and in sociology.

He noted that 77 percent of respondents in the survey thought Roma people were more inclined to commit crimes than others. "Nezopont thinks that reducing such a high level of prejudice is an urgent public responsibility," he said.

The slogan "gypsy crime" was used with increased frequency by far-right groups after a driver, whose car hit a Roma girl but did not hurt her, was lynched by the girl's family members in October 2006.

Following the incident, public dignitaries, politicians, criminal experts and Roma officials joined in protest against using the derogatory term and against efforts to stigmatise the Roma community.

Demolitions Continue In The “Gypsy” Neighborhood Of Istanbul

Demolitions continue in the Sulukule neighborhood of the Roma People in Istanbul. The members of the Sulukule Platform say that they are demolishing the buildings without taking precautions, while people and children are around. The people cannot even call for an ambulance.

Bia news center - İstanbul
28-08-2008

There was demolition in the Sulukule district of Istanbul today. Sulukule is where Roma People (who are commonly known as Gypsies, but some Roma consider the term pejorative) have been in Istanbul for centuries. The Fatih municipality in İstanbul has been trying to remove them as part of its Urban Transformation Project. Today it was the turn of the Neslişah and Hatice Sultan neighborhoods; the demolition in these neighborhoods lasted until the evening.

“Five-Story building came down; the one next to it collapsed”

Viki Ciprut from the Sulukule Platform says that the demolition done without any notices and necessary precautions cause much damage.

“Demolishing a five-story building resulted in the collapse of the building next to it. Those who used to live there have no idea what they are going to do.”

“They hid the demolition from the media”

Ciprut says that the municipality stops the work of demolishing when the media comes, and they resume it after they leave.

“They did not take any precautions, they demolished it and left”

Neşe Ozan from the Sulukule Platform says they demolished ten buildings in three streets.

“Kuruçınar Street is covered with rubble. The electricity and telephones are gone. They did their work without taking any precautions, when there were people and children around. If an emergency comes up, we are unable to call for an ambulance.”

“They did not take into consideration the Sulukule Report”

In spite of the June 11, 2008, report of the Human Rights Committee of the Governorship that utilities, water, food and health services need to be given to the area, nobody sends any aid to the area, says Ciprut.

“What we experienced here today shows that they did not take into consideration the report at all.” (CU/EZÖ/TB)

'Caravan' Puts Light On Gypsy Culture

August 26, 2008

Gypsy Caravan: When the Road Bends (Docurama, 2008) — Director Jasmine Dellal didn't set out to combat racism when she made "Gypsy Caravan." She just wanted to show off the wide variety of Gypsy musical styles seen throughout the world. But the overall message of this concert film is nonetheless racial enlightenment, as it shows members of one of the world's most misunderstood and shunned ethnic groups in a joyful and, more importantly, multidimensional light. These Gypsy musicians are so different, and their cultures so diverse, that at first when they get together to put on their show they don't see eye-to-eye about anything. They gradually warm to each other's differences and put on a lively performance that travels across the United States. In-depth profiles of each Gypsy musician give a fascinating glimpse of Roma life worldwide. Not rated.

Tourist attacks stir Italy migrant row

Paola Totaro, London
August 27, 2008

ITALY is engaged in a bitter debate about immigration and personal security after two foreign couples were robbed and the women raped in separate incidents.

The first incident, the brutal beating of a Dutch tourist and the rape of his wife on a camping and cycling holiday in Rome, has been blamed on two Romanians. A young German couple camping in a small beachside town near Naples suffered a similar attack at the hands of three men.

However, hostility towards the local Gypsy encampments may prove to be ill directed as police investigating that crime have now arrested a 17-year-old who is said to have Mafia links.

The incidents prompted rancorous comments from right-wing politicians.

Rome's anti-immigration Mayor, Gianni Alemanno, sparked fury when he suggested the Dutch couple, in effect, asked for violence after choosing an isolated camping site. He said the place they decided to sleep in was a place "abandoned by God and men", and they had asked "a flock of Romanian shepherd immigrants" for directions.

Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing Government this year took a series of measures to crack down on clandestine migrants. The program included fingerprinting thousands of Romanian Gypsies who have thronged to major Italian cities.

The experience of Gypsies and Travellers in Britain

Emma Nuttall from the Friends, Families and Travellers charity works with English Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers. She spoke to Sadie Robinson about the struggles they endure

Gypsies and Travellers in Britain are socially excluded, powerless and often quite dispersed. The lack of resources and services available to them has a drastic impact on their lives. Educational achievement among Gypsies and Travellers is the lowest of any ethnic group in Britain.

They have the highest rate of infant mortality, the lowest life expectancy and higher rates of maternal deaths. Gypsies and Travellers live between ten and 12 years less than the settled population. They have higher rates of anxiety and depression.

You're incredibly vulnerable if you're camped out on the roadside. We've had cases where people have been firebombed.

I think the tabloid press encourages people to see Gypsies and Travellers as not being human. This makes them victims of the last socially acceptable racism. But the reality is that where there are well established sites there are usually no problems.

Currently there are about 4,500 Gypsy and Traveller families in England that don't have an official site to live on. So they stop on the roadside and get moved on. We've worked with some families that have been moved over 50 times in a year.

Compulsory

The tabloid newspapers say it's outrageous that families are living on the roadside but they don't ask why the families are there – they haven't got an authorised site to live on.

This makes it very difficult to access education, employment and healthcare, not to mention basics like electricity and running water.

Local authorities used to have a duty to provide sites for Gypsies and Travellers under the 1968 Caravan Sites Act. People paid council tax and paid rent to live there.

The Tories' Criminal Justice Act in 1994 changed this. They thought that it was too costly to provide sites and that Gypsies and Travellers should buy their own land.

The act also recommended that local authorities should identify which land would be suitable for Gypsy and Traveller sites. But this wasn't compulsory – and only one local authority followed the advice.

This meant that whatever land Gypsies or Travellers bought was disputed. People would pressure councillors and say they didn't want gypsies living near them. Councillors wouldn't identify land that could be used for sites.

The Housing Act in 2004 introduced a duty on councils to do what they called a "Gypsy and Traveller accommodation needs assessment".

The act said that once the councils worked out how many pitches on sites were needed, the local authority had to allocate suitable land to meet that need. Their housing strategy would also have to say how the sites would be delivered.

But the problem is that, where many Travellers have bought land, they haven't managed to obtain planning permission.

The main stumbling block with the 2004 act is the length of time the process takes. It is so slow. Meanwhile you've got thousands of families stuck on the roadside.

Gypsies in Dharmapuri get residential school

Tuesday August 26 2008 01:48 IST
M Sankararamanujam ENS

DHARMAPURI: The Dharmapuri district administration and the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) have launched an exclusive school for children coming from gypsy families in Pachinampatti in Harur taluk.

An NGO—Gypsies’ Development Society— had started its service for the welfare of the gypsy community in Pachinampatti. According director S Maheswaran, more than 75 gypsy families were living in Pachinampatti, selling plastic products and birds to earn a living. So the NGO organised them and formed the society.

In Dharmapuri the gypsy community was spread in several places. As it was a model village in Panchanampatti where children were given schooling in residential school, Dharmapuri district administration and SSA administration also considered the plea and started the residential school exclusively for gypsy students, he added.

Maheswaran and two teachers were teaching them. The Chief Educational Officer (SSA) S Suganya told Express that to promote the educational status they enrolled the dropouts. The building and other infrastructure were being launched by the NGO and the SSA would support by providing teachers and teaching aids. The children would later be admitted to regular Government schools.

This was the first attempt to launch residential schools for gypsies and there are plans to launch more schools in identified hill areas.

The gypsy families of Madhu, Anchammal, Sridevi and Guna appealed to the district administration to provide community certificate and form a society for the welfare of the community. The also submitted their memorandum zto the Collector.

The shameful history of anti-Gypsism is forgotten - and repeated

By Thomas Hammarberg, Human Rights Commissioner, Council of Europe
Published Monday, 18 August, 2008 - 17:58

Today’s rhetoric against the Roma is very similar to the one used by Nazis and fascists before the mass killings started in the thirties and forties. This is shameful and dangerous says the Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe

Only a few thousand Roma in Germany survived the Holocaust and the concentration camps. They faced enormous difficulties when trying to build up their lives again, having lost so many of their family members and relatives, and having had their properties destroyed or confiscated. Many of them had their health ruined. When some of them tried to obtain compensation, their claims were rejected for years.

For these survivors no justice came with the post-Hitler era. Significantly, the mass killing of the Roma people was not an issue at the Nürnberg trial. The genocide of the Roma – Samudaripe or Porrajmos – was hardly recognised in the public discourse.

This passive denial of the grim facts could not have been surprising to the Roma themselves, as for generations they had been treated as a people without history. The violations they had suffered were quickly forgotten, if even recognised.

Sadly, this same pattern is repeated even today.

That is why it is particularly valuable that the Council of Europe has produced a series of fact sheets on Roma History. These are intended for teachers, pupils, political and other decision makers and every one else interested in knowing the facts about what this people have gone through.

Readers of these fact sheets may learn about 500 years of shameful repression in Europe of the various Roma groups since their arrival following the long migration from India. The methods have varied between enslavement, enforced assimilation, expulsion, internment and mass killings.

(MORE)

'Why do the Italians hate us?'

Dan McDougall
The Observer, Sunday August 17 2008

It is an image that shocked the world: two young Gypsy children lie dead for three hours on an Italian beach while, feet away, a carefree couple enjoy a leisurely picnic. Dan McDougall travels to the Roma camps of Naples to meet the dead girls' mother and finds fear and bitterness - and a country in danger of forgetting its far-Right past.

(MORE)

Czech far-right party activist to address BNP

Jo Adetunji
The Guardian, Saturday August 16 2008

The head of an ultra-right wing party which advocates a "final solution" for Roma in the Czech Republic is due to speak at the annual festival held by the British National party today. Petra Edelmannova, chair of the Czech National party, is booked to give a 25-minute speech at the BNP's Red White and Blue festival in the village of Denby in Derbyshire.

The event faces strong opposition from local residents and anti-racism campaigners who are mounting a demonstration. The protest has been organised by a number of groups including Unite Against Facism (UAF), Love Music Hate Racism and Derby Racial Equality Council. The TUC and unions CWU and Unite are giving their support. UAF said it was expecting more than 500 people and coaches from around the country.

Edelmannova's party recently announced it was working on a 150-page "study" called The Final Solution to the Gypsy Issue in the Czech Lands, which it said it would present as part of a 2010 general election campaign.

Although the title evokes the Nazi plan to eradicate Jews in wartime Germany, the party told Lidove Noviny, a national Czech newspaper, its aim is only to offer Roma voluntary relocation to land bought in India. The NS is a marginal party in the Czech Republic, gaining only 0.17% of votes in the 2006 parliamentary elections. Judy Mallaber, MP for Amber Valley, said she had deep concerns. "[The BNP's] attempts to present a respectable image are still masking some deeply disturbing underlying views."

Simon Darby, deputy leader of the BNP, said: "There is a Gypsy problem there. What's wrong with people who talk frankly about their problems?"

Vatican distances itself from Catholic magazine's warning of fascist revival

The Vatican today distanced itself from a series of blistering attacks on the centre-right government of Silvio Berlusconi by the mass-circulation Roman Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana, which in its latest issue gives warning that Italy is in danger of returning to Fascism.

The magazine, owned by the Paulist Fathers, has repeatedly attacked the Berlusconi Government since it came to power in May on a law-and-order platform, arguing that the Right's targeting of immigrants and Gypsies as part of a crackdown on crime is racist and xenophobic. In June it compared the Government's "security decree" to the racial laws imposed by Benito Mussolini, Italy's Fascist dictator, in the 1930s.

In its latest editorial it says: "We hope that the suspicion that Fascism is being reborn in a different form proves to be untrue." Drawing on an analysis in the French Catholic publication Esprit, it compared the fingerprinting of Roma children in Italian Gypsy camps to the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis before and during the Second World War.

Government ministers rounded in fury on Famiglia Cristiana, with one saying that the magazine was itself displaying a Fascist mentality by making intemperate attacks on a democratically elected government.

(MORE)

White House Proposes to Butcher Endangered Species Act

This Monday, just months before the curtains close on the Bush administration, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced a proposal for the biggest overhaul of the Endangered Species Act since 1986. Kempthorne's proposed rules would excuse thousands of federal activities, including all greenhouse gas emissions, from review under the Act, letting federal agencies decide for themselves whether projects potentially devastating to the environment would indeed harm endangered plants and animals. The rules would codify Kempthorne's previously announced plan to green-light activities that add to climate change -- without inspecting their impacts on protected species like the polar bear.

History has shown that letting agencies babysit themselves regarding their own projects -- instead of consulting with government scientists, as is now required -- just doesn't work. When agencies were allowed to self-consult on logging activities in 2005, it turned out that 62 percent of those projects violated the Endangered Species Act. "These [new] regulations are a recipe for disaster for the extinction of endangered species," said Center for Biological Diversity science director Noah Greenwald. "It's a classic example of letting the fox guard the henhouse."

(MORE)

Tracking Animal Cruelty Crimes Act (S. 2439)

Please visit the Compassion Index - AWI's Legislative Action Center to find your federal legislators and see how much compassion they show on important animal protection measures currently
before Congress. The CI also allows you to contact your legislators on these issues.

The FBI tracks the incidence and pattern of crimes committed in the United States. The data provided by such crime-tracking enable law enforcement agencies to target their crime fighting resources and implement better prevention and prosecution. However, there is currently no separate
reporting category for animal cruelty crimes. The Tracking Animal Cruelty Crimes Act (S. 2439), introduced by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), would change this.

Why is it important to track animal cruelty crimes?

• Animal cruelty is a heinous offense in and of itself, causing terrible suffering for so many sentient creatures. It is a crime in all 50 states and certain egregious acts are felonies in 43 states and the District of Columbia.
  
• Animal cruelty also often coincides with domestic and child abuse. Moreover, a clear and recognized link exists between animal abuse and other forms of violence in society. Ironically, the FBI was one of the first to establish this link, yet the agency has yet to track
  animal cruelty crimes as a separate category.
  
• The FBI’s programs for collecting and disseminating crime statistics are invaluable tools for guiding law enforcement operations, crime prevention programs, and research and planning
  efforts. Assigning the crime of animal cruelty to its own reporting classification, as required under S. 2439, would enable law enforcement, social service agencies, researchers, and others to track trends at the state and national level and to determine the demographic characteristics and other factors associated with animal abuse. Significantly, the National District Attorneys Association supports the legislation.
  
• Having the improved information about animal cruelty crimes that S. 2439 would generate would lead to much greater understanding of—and more effective responses to—both animal abuse and other offenses. Animal cruelty—including animal fighting—would be regarded as serious crimes against society, thereby bringing greater investigative and prosecutorial resources to the problem at the state and federal level.

This small change would yield significant benefits for efforts to prevent and intervene in the cycle of violence that victimizes so many animals and people.

Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month celebrated in style in Lancaster

Members of the Traveller community from Lancaster have celebrated the first ever national Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month. The month was marked with an evening exhibition at Skerton Learning Centre organised by Lancashire County Council's Traveller Education Service and the Adult College.

(Media-Newswire.com) - Members of the Traveller community from Lancaster have celebrated the first ever national Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month.

The month was marked with an evening exhibition at Skerton Learning Centre organised by Lancashire County Council’s Traveller Education Service and the Adult College.

Britain’s 300,000 Gypsies, Roma and Travellers have lived, worked and travelled throughout Britain for over 500 years, yet are rarely mentioned in British history.

This year, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities across the country joined forces with central government backing to celebrate their rich history, culture and contribution to Britain’s past and future.

Displays of work produced by local Travellers included arts and crafts by the Traveller Family Learning Group during courses run by the Adult College, which had also held taster sessions for the Traveller community on family history, reminiscence work and digital photography.

Lancaster Traveller Youth Group, Lancashire Young People’s Service and The Dukes DT3 held a photography exhibition featuring images of today’s young Travellers.

NCBI Lancashire’s Welcome Stories Project worked with the Traveller Youth Group to record their stories and experiences of living in the district and displayed the booklet, CD and posters produced by the project.

One of the youngest participants was four-year-old Joseph Doran, who won first prize in the pre-school category of the GRTHM Poster Competition which was launched in the House of Lords in February.

There were thousands of entries so it was a real achievement that Joseph, from Kingsway Playgroup in Heysham, won a first prize and Lancaster Traveller Youth Group won a runner-up prize.

Joseph was unable to travel to the House of Lords to receive his £100 prize in June as his family were at the horse fair in Appleby, so he was presented with it at the evening by special guest the mayor of Lancaster, Keith Budden.

Eileen Mullervy, team leader for the Traveller Education Service, said: “Lancaster and Morecambe Travellers and friends certainly made the first ever Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month in 2008 a month to remember and I am sure it is an event to go on from strength to strength next year.”

Going for gold: young Gypsy keeps up a family tradition

Esther Addley
The Guardian
Monday August 4 2008

Like many of the athletes departing for China ahead of the Beijing Olympics, Billy Joe Saunders had an emotional send-off from his home. "There were about 30 car loads of my family and friends who came to see me. They've got England flags all over the place. It was crazy," he says.

But while he describes his upbringing as "really normal", home for the 18-year-old welterweight hopeful is not entirely conventional. Saunders comes from a Romany Gypsy family and lives on a Travellers' site near Hatfield, Hertfordshire.

Saunders's older brother, Tom, is a professional cruiserweight, and his father also boxed in his youth, but perhaps the proudest family members will be his great grandfather on his mother's side, Absolom Beeney. Now 95, as a young man Beeney was a champion in the travelling fairground boxing booths, stepping up, as his father, also Tom, puts it, "whenever he needed some beer money".

Tom Saunders Sr believes his son may be the first Gypsy to represent Britain at an Olympics, having taken it up at seven when his older brother, who was being bullied in part for being a Traveller, asked his dad to take him boxing.

But his family background may in fact be the least remarkable part of Billy Joe Saunders's story. Saunders was originally singled out by the British head coach, Terry Edwards, as a potential medallist for the 2012 games, one of a strikingly talented generation of British amateur boxers that has led Saunders, without irony, to predict that by the time of the London games Britain will be "the new Cuba" of boxing.

Expectations may have been low for Saunders, but he thought differently. After winning 49 fights in a row, he edged out the experienced British team captain Neil Perkins, who fights in his weight class.

"They had to give me my chance to qualify, I felt," says Saunders. "I boxed the No1 Cuban, I beat him, I boxed the No1 Russian, the European champion, beat him. I had to get my chance to be there, and when I got it, I took it."

Having won gold at the Commonwealth Federation championships last year, gold at the European Junior championships and a further gold, last month, at the European Union championships, some insiders are tipping Saunders as heavily as his teammate Frankie Gavin, the lightweight world champion and one of Britain's best hopes for gold.

"Given a fair wind and a bit of luck every one of the team could do as well as Frankie," says Edwards. "Billy Joe is the youngest member of our team, but in age terms he is very, very mature, he's a tough lad. We'd first identified him as a 2012 athlete, and he still is - we're right on course for that. The difference is that he may well be defending his gold medal in 2012."

For Tom Saunders, his son's presence in Beijing is a welcome opportunity to correct misconceptions about their culture. "We are true Romany Gypsies, that is what we are. If you go two, three generations back, to your great, great grandfather, he's most probably seen our people, with the horse-drawn wagons, selling the old wooden pegs and things like that. That's what the majority of people in this day and age don't understand."

"There's good and bad in everybody," agrees Billy Joe, "and you can't tar all Gypsies, or Travellers, with the same brush. I just need to get out there and prove to everybody that we're not all the same." Most of all, he'd love to be a positive role model, he says - to his adored one-year-old son, Billy Joe junior, and to his peers. "I would love it to be that I could get young kids off the street and into the gym. Help them out. I would love to think that I could do that."

Does he hope his son, too, will follow the family tradition and take up boxing? "It's completely down to him. If he decides he wants to take the boxing route he can, and I will be supporting him all the way, same as my dad did for me."

Gypsy leaders accuse Italy of discrimination

WARSAW, Poland: Gypsy leaders attending a ceremony at the former Auschwitz death camp Saturday accused Italy of harassment and discrimination, a news agency reported.

"Over the past year in Italy, we have had to deal with a situation unprecedented in the history of postwar Europe," said Roman Kwiatkowski, the president of the Association of Roma in Poland, according to Poland's PAP news agency.

"For the first time since the end of World War II, the authorities of a state are actively engaged in policies of repression and discrimination against an ethnic or national minority, in this case the Roma."

Kwiatkowski spoke at an event marking the 64th anniversary of the Nazis' gassing of the most of the remaining 2,900 Gypsy inmates at Auschwitz.

In recent weeks, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi's conservative government has come under fire for plans to fingerprint Roma living in Italy.

(MORE)

Protect Montana/Canada National Park from Mining

Mountain-top removal coal mining and coalbed methane extraction are threatening a pristine area on the border of Montana and Canada.

Send a message to the Canadian ambassador to the U.S. and ask him to protect this area!

Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, which spans the border between Montana and Canada, is a globally significant biological hotspot, protecting elk, moose, deer, mountain goats, bull trout and a host of other wildlife and plant species.

It is also one of the most intact and diverse ecosystems in this type of climate in the world.

Please speak up against threatening our wild lands with mining. Your voice can make a difference.

Sincerely,

Emily
Care2 and The PetitionSite Team

Help animals in China: take action today

Unfortunately, the Chinese fur industry continues its unrepentant slaughter of dogs and cats, whose skins are often deliberately mislabeled as "Asian Jackal" or "rabbit" when sold overseas. While the attention of the world is on the Olympic Games, we want to spotlight this cruel practice and invoke worldwide pressure against the Chinese fur industry.

Now more than ever, we need your help to make sure as many people as possible know about the suffering that goes into the production of every fur garment.

Consumers everywhere need to know the truth about fur. When people learn that millions of innocent animals are beaten, boiled, hanged, and electrocuted for their fur every year ... when they learn that every fur coat, lining, trim, or fur cat toy represents the intense suffering of several dozen animals? and when they learn that furriers intentionally mislabel fur as not taken from dogs and cats or as fake ... then every decent human being will want to go FUR-FREE.

Take the FUR FREE PLEDGE!

Romanian president slams Italy's gypsy rules

ROME (AFP) — Romanian President Traian Basescu has hit out at Italy's tough new stance towards gypsies Thursday, according to comments reported by ANSA news agency after a meeting with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Rome.

"Romania does not approve, I repeat, does not approve, in part, or in large part, of measures taken by the Italian government," Basescu was quoted as saying during a joint press conference with Berlusconi, according to the Italian translation of remarks made in Romanian.

"Roma citizens are citizens with full rights in the European Union and should be treated as such," he added.

Basescu visited Romanian gypsies in a shantytown outside Rome before his meeting with Berlusconi.

"We understand part of the measures taken by the Italian government, but we cannot agree with treatment going beyond the norms of the European Union," he had earlier said in the camp in Rome's Magliana suburb.

Tough new immigration policies in Italy have focused on Roma, whom many Italians blame for rising crime across the country.

A promised crackdown featured heavily in Berlusconi's winning election campaign in April.

The government recently ushered in a plan to fingerprint gypsies, including children, and send police into the camps to take those fingerprints by force if necessary.

Bucharest said it was concerned by the new measures and has asked that Romanian diplomatic representatives be allowed to observe what the Italian authorities say is a census-gathering exercise.

Berlusconi told Basescu during their meeting that fingerprinting to identify citizens "is a common practice in numerous European countries" and that his government plans to extend it "to all Italian citizens."

Basescu and Berlusconi appeared to agree that the issue of how to deal with the Roma was a "problem" in both their countries.

"We recognise that we have an unresolved problem at home, that of the Roma minority. We propose to the Italian government to collaborate to resolve this problem," said Basescu.

Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni will travel next week to Bucharest for talks with this Romanian counterpart on how to integrate the Roma population using EU funds.

The European Commission has asked Italy to report on the conditions under which its census of Roma is being conducted.

The Council of Europe's commissioner for human rights, Thomas Hammarberg, has Italy's measures signified a "worrying" step away from international law.

Rome said those concerns are "totally unfounded."

Poland ministry to close Gypsy-only classes

By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA – Aug 1, 2008

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland's Education Minister plans to shut down Gypsy-only school classes following complaints they are discriminatory.

"There will absolutely be no more forming of separate classes for Roma children," Katarzyna Hall told radio Tok FM on Friday. "We must put an end to this."

In 2004, the Council of Europe in 2004 appealed to Poland and other nations with Roma, or Gypsy, minorities to put an end to segregated classes.

(MORE)

Gypsy families threaten to take to the streets

FIFTY-THREE gypsy families from the troubled Quinta da Fonte council estate in Loures say they will again take to the streets and demonstrate if they are forced to live side-by-side with hostile, non-gypsy Portuguese families.

According to their spokesman José Fernandes, the gypsy community, which was ordered back to their apartments last week after camping out in the Loures municipal park, are awaiting a favourable reply from the Lisbon Civil Governor to the effect that they will be re-housed.

The demands come in the wake of violence which erupted a fortnight ago on the council estate between rival families of gypsies and black African-Portuguese in which cars were smashed, shots were fired and people were beaten up.

However, the Câmara Municipal de Loures maintains its position that it will not re-house disgruntled families who will lose their rights to social apartments if they refuse to return to them.

The 53 gypsy families who still refuse to return to the estate are living with friends and relatives, although José Fernandes admitted that “not everyone (had) managed to sort out a roof over their heads.”

“If we don’t get a favourable solution then we will take to the streets in demonstration again, keeping within the law as we always have done,” he added.

Romania to collaborate on gypsies

President Basescu pledges 'shared plan' to resolve problem

ANSA) - Rome, July 31 - Romanian President Traian Basescu on Thursday said Romania would cooperate with Italy to resolve the problem of Italy's gypsy camps.

Speaking after a meeting with Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, Basescu said Romania wants to create a ''shared plan'' to help free gypsies with Romanian citizenship living in Italian camps ''from the degrading state of poverty in which they find themselves''.

''We realise that we share the problem of the Roma (gypsy) minority, and we want to collaborate with the Italian government to resolve the issue, which we have been unable to do at home,'' Basescu said.

The Romanian president also defended Italy from international criticism that it was discriminating against Romanian citizens following a controversial census of gypsy camps that has been slammed by the European parliament and human rights groups.

''It's far from true that there has been negative behaviour towards the Romanian community in Italy,'' he said.

''The Italian government has put into effect simple safety measures to protect its citizens - not against Romanian citizens, but against people without correct identification papers.

''The Romanian state protects its citizens in whichever part of the world they find themselves, but we will never ask the authorities of another country to protect Romanian criminals,'' he added.

Earlier on Thursday he visited a gypsy camp with Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno and told residents that it was ''important to know'' how many Romanians were living in Italy and Europe.

He also warned gypsies that criminal behaviour will not be tolerated if they choose to return to Romania in the wake of the crackdown by the Italian government. ''Soon many of you will return to Romania, but the Romanian state will not accept criminals: the law must be applied,'' he said.

PRESIDENT SAYS EU LAWS MUST BE RESPECTED.

However, Basescu reiterated that the Romanian government did not approve of all measures adopted by the Italian government in its emergency security package and stressed that it would not turn a blind eye if these contravened European Union laws.

''Romanian citizens have full rights as European Union citizens and should be treated as such,'' he said.

Italy is set to deliver a full report on measures adopted towards its gypsy population to the European Commission by the end of July and has pledged to abide by any EC ruling.

Berlusconi repeated that the aim of the crackdown on gypsy camps - which Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni has said he eventually plans to dismantle - is to improve integration, get children into schools and prevent minors being forced to beg and steal. He said Maroni will fly to Bucharest next week to meet his Romanian counterpart in order to discuss how best to use European Union funding to aid the integration of Roma communities.

Romanian Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu is also due to visit Italy in October to discuss the issue.

The vast majority of the 152,000 gypsies living in Italy are of Romanian origin, while a small percentage come from the Balkans.