How Gypsy gangs use child thieves

BBC NEWS

By Sam Bagnall
This World

Across Europe thousands of Roma (Gypsy) children are being forced onto the streets to beg and steal, and law enforcement agencies are seemingly powerless to prevent it.

Cash machines in Madrid are a particular target for street crime. The cardholder is distracted at the crucial moment by one person, allowing a child to dive in, grab the money and run off.

Thirteen-year-old Daniela says she can make 300 euros (£260) from a single successful robbery without any risk of being punished.


"It's only the police that catch us. They take the money we have on us. They take us to the day centre, and the centre lets us go.

"I give [the money] to my mother so we can go to Romania to build a house. But I hide some of it for myself. I give her 150 euros, and I keep 150."

Madrid police say that 95% of children under 14 that they pick up stealing on the streets are Roma from Romania.

Because the age of criminal responsibility in Spain is 14, there is little they can do.

More than 1,000 Romanian Roma live in just one of the many camps that lie on the outskirts of Madrid.

The conditions are appalling - rats roam freely amid the rubbish, and there is no sanitation.

Every day children from the camp head out into the city to steal and beg, and many are beaten by their minders if they do not return with money.

Organised crime

Nowhere in Europe has there been more controversy over crime in the Roma community than in Italy, where the government recently declared a state of emergency following various high profile crimes blamed on the Roma.

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Hungarian Neo-Nazi lead war on gypsies

22 April, 2009, 09:30

In Hungary, fascist groups are targeting Roma gypsies, but the government seems to turn a blind eye on the problem of ethnic minorities, and offers no protection for them.

A cold and brutal crime has torn a young family apart. Robert and his five-year-old son were shot dead, and his two other children seriously injured when their home was attacked. A homemade bomb was thrown through the front door and immediately sent the entire house up in flames. The young family had just finished building their small but modern house.

Their only crime was being Roma gypsies.

Robert’s family lives next door, and are reminded daily of the terror of the tragedy, but what haunts them more is the way the criminal investigation is being carried out.

“They pretended not to see 18 bullet holes in the small boy’s body. How is it possible that an experienced police official could not see this? Then it was reported that the fire was electrical. But there are remnants of a bomb everywhere,” says Robert’s mother Erzsebet Csorba.

The European Roma rights centre strongly supports the family’s claims.

“The police were not acknowledging that a murder had taken place. I’m not aware that there has been any progress,” said Rob Kushen from the European Roma Rights Centre in the Hungarian capital of Budapest.

Fighting for their rights, activists also fear that the economic crisis will lead to an increase in hate crimes against Roma in poorer EU countries.

“So far they have done a good job in keeping the peace – which is a recipe for disaster,” Kushen believes.

Attacks on Roma haven’t only increased since the onset of the crisis, but a neo-Nazi trend is also growing in Hungary. The far-right Jobbik party, said to be affiliated with a banned fascist group called the Magyar Guarda, is growing in popularity. They often hold protests against Roma, insisting they are criminals.

Bela Kovacs, President of the Jobbik Party for a Better Hungary is unequivocal in his views:

“Gypsy crimes are growing every day, and it's getting so bad that people are afraid to go out at night,” he said.

But the party refused to comment on its connection with the extremist group which often attends their protests.

Robert’s family believes the Magyar Guarda brutally attacked their loved ones, and will never be punished, especially under the wing of a growing political party.

In the past year alone in Hungary, there have been 18 attacks on Roma homes, and six people have been killed. No one has been caught.

Civil groups demand resignation of ombudsman over remarks on "Gypsy crime"

Saturday, 04 April 2009

Civil groups on Friday demanded the resignation of Hungary's ombudsman Mate Szabo, in the wake of his remarks that some crimes can be associated with the Gypsies. The ombudsman has withdrawn his statements.

The Hungarian Helsinki Committee, the Roma Civil Rights Foundation and the European Roma Rights Center protested in a joint statement against the ombudsman's remarks, and said Szabo could not fulfill his post credibly in the future.

In a Thursday interview, Szabo said that he could see "the profile of Gypsy crime" as a form of criminal activities to make a living by members of "an almost tribal group as opposed to the highly individual nature of Hungarian society."

"When we see this profile, we must warn the people and we must also give it a name," Szabo added in the interview.

The ombudsman has violated the constitution and should withdraw his remarks, the Society for Civil Liberties (TASZ) said in a statement, adding that an official airing such views was not suitable for the position.

"Szabo stigmatises groups of people and does not have a clear view of the general ombudsman's function to protect fundamental rights," said another NGO, the Eotvos Institute, founded by former Ombudsman Laszlo Majtenyi, in a statement.

The ombudsman withdrew his statements, saying that "I have surely composed my words wrongly... and I apologise if I had offended anybody".

"I withdraw all my statements that can lead to conclusions that I'd ethnicise delinquency," Szabo said on commercial television ATV on Friday evening.

However, he also said he would only resign if organisations authorised by the constitution called him to do so.

Hungary's Roma minority is estimated at 800,000. They live mostly in dire poverty and are hit by unemployment. They are also threatened by a recent surge of attacks that claimed several lives during the past year.

Meanwhile, the paramilitary Hungarian Guard has staged demonstrative marches in villages with a significant Roma population to protest against an assumed increase in crimes which they attribute to the Roma minority.

Why Fidesz can't profit from "Gypsy crime"

By Erik D'Amato

Despite the bizarre idiosyncrasies of Hungary's electoral system, the country's electoral politics tend to follow the same rules governing other democracies. Chief among these is the importance of the "centrist" or "swing" voters who feel no strong attachment to either (or any) of the main parties vying for power. So it's always important to try to keep on top of what one famous American historian once dubbed "The Vital Center." And at least to me, Hungary's vital center seems to be increasingly preoccupied with two things: avoiding becoming as poor as Gypsies, and the Gypsies.

The news this week that some Roma/Gypsies are planning to set up a self-defense group akin to the right-wing Magyar Gárda has led even some perfect examples of Budapest cosmopolitism I know to shiver. One of the fears is that we could ultimately see a full-blown "race war" pitting uniformed right-wing paramilitaries against their Roma equivalents. (Thought the latter may not be wearing uniforms; one local journalist I know told me the leader of the "Roma Gárda" told his publication that "our skin in our uniform.") Another of the fears - at least among the sort of foreigner-friendly liberal Hungarians I inevitably spend a disproportional amount of time with - is that growing public concern/hysteria over the Roma will naturally play into the hands of the right come voting time, and add to the substantial "vote cushion" already enjoyed by Fidesz.

It is of course true that, if the issue of Gypsy crime (note that I am not putting it in scare quotes) continues to swell in the public consciousness, it will pull voters to the right.

At the same time, the "Gypsy issue" is very much a double-edged sword for Fidesz, and if not handled carefully, could hypothetically even cost the party its now seemingly guaranteed return to power.

The problem for Fidesz is that growing anti-Roma sentiment has the potential to squeeze the party from both sides. On the right it faces the surging Jobbik, which now looks set to easily breach 5% in the upcoming European Elections, and will greatly benefit in the subsequent general elections from the perception that Fidesz is a shoo-in. (In a tighter race, Jobbik supporters would be more likely to vote for Fidesz so as to avoid a return to power by the left.)

Meanwhile, on the left the party faces two problems. One is that the Socialists appear to have finally cottoned on to the potency of the issue, as was demonstrated this weekend when the government backed away from dismissing the police chief of Miskolc following some (very) impolitic remarks about crime and the Roma.

But the second threat on the left involves the one issue of much greater concern to most voters: the economy. Come 2010, it is likely that Hungary will be more rather than less dependent on outside sources (read: EU) of financing to keep the economy afloat. (By a strange coincidence/conspiracy, the enormous IMF facility the country received last fall runs out a month before the next scheduled general election.) And if Fidesz is perceived by the country's foreign paymasters to be an objectively "anti-Gypsy" party, there is a very real possibility that not only would the taps be turned off after the election, but that Brussels would make it clear before the election that this could happen. If you doubt this, recall that one of the reasons Fidesz lost its re-election bid in 2002 was the feeling among many centrist voters that a Socialist-led government would get the country better terms during the final run-up to EU accession. And if there is anything more terrifying to voters than not getting money you want, it's not getting money you have already come to rely on.

Thousands in countryside rally against "Gypsy violence"

By: MTI
2008-12-01 09:23

Over 3,000 people joined a torchlight march in Kiskunlachaza, about 45 km south of Budapest, on Friday night, in a protest against violence after a 14-year-old local girl was murdered there a week ago.

The town's mayor Jozsef Repas addressed the gathering, lamenting the decline in public safety in the settlement. Although the murderer or murderers have not been identified, Repas said: "Kiskunlachaza has had enough of Roma violence!" He also said that police were often branded "racist" if they tried to act.

Participants in the march were not all local. Some came from nearby Rackeve, others from more distant towns. A 200-300-person contingent from the right wing paramilitary Hungarian Guard attended as did some members of a motorcycle group known as the Goy Motorcyclists.

There was a heavy police presence and searches of some of the marchers yielded knives and daggers.

County police are continuing their investigation of the murder. They declined to give details of new evidence, saying that if the information were made public it could influence the investigation.

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

Rome police crack down on pedophilia ring preying on Gypsy children

(the Associated Press on www.iht.com)

Rome police on Monday broke up a pedophilia ring preying on children in Gypsy camps in the city, authorities said.

Twenty-eight suspects were arrested on charges of sexually abusing minors and four others were being sought on warrants, police told a news conference in the capital.

Police said social workers informed them that expensive gifts were circulating in the Gypsy camps, which are little more than shanty towns on Rome's outskirts, and that respectable-looking, professional, middle-aged men were visiting the camps in unusually large numbers.
Among those arrested were lawyers, doctors, teachers and an athletic coach, as well as parents of some of the children who allegedly allowed their offspring to be abused in return for the gifts, authorities said.

Family Policy Minister Rosy Bindi said the anti-pedophilia investigation "revealed that the crime is frequently interwoven in two worlds — on one side perpetrators without records, the so-called 'above suspicion' people with excellent social positions — on the other side very young victims" from extreme poverty impressed by the economic power of those who violate them.