Gypsy camps destroyed as Italian intolerance flares

Richard Owen, Naples May 17, 2008

SMOKE rose yesterday from the smouldering ruins of a Gypsy camp attacked by vigilantes in a run-down industrial suburb of Naples in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius.

The charred remains of the makeshift wooden shacks, mattresses and belongings at the site in Ponticelli crunched underfoot. Dogs scavenged through a pile of uncollected rubbish nearby.

Police guarded another squalid "nomad camp" beneath an overpass after the inhabitants fled during the night to avoid meeting a similar fate. Signs of their flight were everywhere, with doors to shacks left open and the ground strewn with clothing, shoes, bicycles, plastic bottles, pots and pans and children's toys.

Police launched a nationwide round-up of nearly 400 illegal immigrants this week from the Balkans and North Africa - the first step in a crackdown on crime promised by the new centre-right Government of Silvio Berlusconi. Almost 120 of those held in the operation, which stretched from Naples to northern Italy, were ordered to be deported immediately for offences ranging from drug-dealing and robbery to prostitution.

In Rome, where Gianni Alemanno, the new right-wing Mayor, has vowed to dismantle "nomad camps" to reduce street crime, police raided a Roma camp, taking the inhabitants by bus to detention centres. Mr Alemanno has promised to deport 20,000 illegal immigrants.

But in Naples local people pre-empted the crackdown and took the law into their own hands. Scores of youths on scooters and motorbikes wielded iron bars and threw Molotov cocktails at the Roma shanty towns. Their anger came to a head after a 17-year-old Roma girl entered a flat in Ponticelli and apparently tried to steal a six-month-old girl. The child's mother and neighbours gave chase and the teenager escaped being lynched only after police moved in.

Naples erupted in fury, with women leading the marches on the Roma camps to the chant of "Fuori, fuori" ("Out, out") and "Go home, dirty child stealers". Young men, allegedly on the orders of the Camorra, the Naples Mafia, set the sites ablaze, blocking attempts by the fire brigade to put out the fires. Exploding gas canisters completed the destruction. The women jeered at the firemen, shouting: "You put the fires out, we start them again."

Hundreds of Roma families fled for their lives, their belongings piled on to small pick-up trucks or handcarts. Some have been taken under police protection. Others have found refuge at Roma camps elsewhere in the Campania region, while a few have been taken in by Naples residents shocked at the outbreak of xenophobia.

The arson attacks come from festering anger over rising crime and urban degradation, much of it blamed on Roma gypsies and the estimated half a million Romanians who have emigrated to Italy since Romania joined the European Union. The Roma rights group Opera Nomadi says there are 2500 Roma in Naples, 1000 from Romania and 1500 from Balkan areas.

Late yesterday, the Berlusconi cabinet was to approve an emergency "security package" drawn up by new Interior Minister and deputy leader of the anti-immigrant Northern League Robert Maroni. It includes the dismantling of Roma camps, the appointment of "special commissioners" to deal with "the Roma problem", tighter border controls and speedier deportation of immigrants who cannot show they have a job or adequate income. Mr Maroni wants to make illegal immigration a criminal offence.

Romanian Interior Minister Cristian David arrived in Rome yesterday for talks on the crisis.

The Times

100 Gypsy Shakened Istanbul

By Ozi on Thursday, December 13 2007, 22:10

Istanbul is accustomed to host amazing concerts and festivals, but this one was differend and really enormous. Budapest Gypsy (Cigan) Symphony Orchestra is welcomed by artlovers in Istanbul. Gypsy Orchestra is consist of 90 violonists, 10 clarinetists, 6 cymbaloms. This enormous orchestra shaken TIM Art Center with a fantastic concert.

Throughout 2 hours concert, hundreds of artlovers listened enormous orchestra with fascinated ears and amazed eyes. Istanbul artlovers were lucky because they have been first audiences listened the new repetoire of Symphony Orchestra. They have prepared onother surprise too for Istanbul. Gypsie artists terminated first Istanbul concert with ‘Yaverim’ a unique composition from Turkish Art Music. After last concert on 16. december, Budapest Gypsy Symphony Orchestra will launch new concerts in other metropoles of Europe .

Are you ready for the Budapest Gypsy Symphony?

The Budapest Gypsy Symphony Orchestra, in Hungarian Szaztagu Cinanyzenekar is the worlds largest Gypsy Orchestra.

The Budapest Gypsy Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1895, when Sandor Jaroka, at the time Hungary’s most famous “primas” (gypsy soloist) died . All Hungarian Gypsy musicians decided to attend his funeral and after the ceremony they began to play . The orchestra had been born out of this improvised moment. Since its foundation the Orchestra has performed numerous concerts in many European countries , especially in France , where the orchestra performs 60 sell- out concerts every year. The orchestra has also toured successfully in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Turkey, and Japan.

The Budapest Gypsy Symphony Orchestra performs with the most amazing virtuosity, the soul of a whole nation. Their repertoire mixes the traditional Gypsy violin of Lazlo Berki, Grigoras Dinicu, Jeno Hubai, Victorio Manti, Elemer Szentirmay, with the great classical works of composers Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt , Jacques Offenbach, Giocchino Rossini and Johan Strauss.

There are violins, viocellos, Double Bass, cimbalons and clarinets, all brought together to bring us lively and heart rending music of a distressing tradition and art that only belongs to them.

Magic atmosphere where each note is like a moan, a farewell, a sob and at the same time an incredible hymn for life. What dazzles the public is the art, that belongs only to these musicians, the art of playing without a break, the art of short turn and variation, which never betrays the composition but enriches it. They transmit to the spectators the energy of a nation, which has chosen music as its universal language.

Instinctive as a Gypsy gathering, rigorous as a Vienna concert, in black tuxedo or traditional dress the Budapest Gypsy symphony Orchestra gives as much to look at as to listen to.

With no contest, it is the most exciting Symphony orchestra of our time, the worlds greatest orchestra of Gypsy musicians. The Budapest Gypsy Symphony Orchestra will play the Royal Theatre Castlebar on Friday October 5 at 8pm. Tickets cost from €39.50; for more information log on to www.royaltheatre.ie.