Italy: Mayor 'pays' Roma-Gypsies to leave the city

Pisa, 21 May (AKI) - The mayor of the central Italian city of Pisa, Marco Filippeschi said the city was paying Roma-Gypsies who lived on the outskirts of the city to leave. "We send them back to their home in Romania," said Filippeschi, quoted by Italian daily 'Il Giornale'.

Filippeschi, from the centre-left Democratic Party, said he decided to demolish the shanty towns along the Aurelia and behind the hospital of Cisanello.

"The initiative has been coming for a long time. It involves 42 Roma-Gypsies from Romania, European Union citizens, who have voluntarily chosen to take part," said Filippeschi.

"As a grant to the families, the initiative cost 21,500 euros (or 511,90 per person), or a total of 30,000 including the bus trip escorted by the Red Cross. We cannot say that this is an exhorbitant price."

The group of Roma-Gypsies were taken to the Romanian city of Craiova, located in southwest Romania.

Filippeschi, when asked whether he was a member of the Northern League party known for its anti-immigrant and anti-Gypsy stance, insisted he was a member of the Democratic Party and this was not a deportation.

"By no means. I am a member of the PD. This was not a deportation, you know?. Everything was done respecting the law, informing the prefecture, police headquarters and the relevant foreign ministries. It is called 'voluntary repatriation' anyway."

The mayor said that the area of Pisa hosts around 1,000 Roma-Gypsies, half of whom live in villages where they pay rent or expenses, and the other half who live as squatters in makeshift huts.

"This winter there was a major flood in one of the camps and now the fire season is about to begin. Many of the illegal immigrants are targeted by the police for crimes such as thefts and receiving stolen goods," said Filippeschi.

Funds for the repatriation were taken from a European fund for immigration set aside for the region of Tuscany.

Under the agreement with the Roma-Gypsies the administration pays for a 'soft' return home, and in return, they commit not to come back to Italy for at least a year.

According to Filippeschi, it would be more costly for the Roma-Gypsies to return because their shacks have already been demolished and the areas already reclaimed.

There are 70,000 Roma-Gypsies in the country who are Italian citizens. Many others come from European Union countries such as Romania and Slovakia while others came from the Balkans.

Romanians are currently the largest immigrant group, and many Roma Gypsies have Romanian nationality.

From beggar to Big Brother: Italy's Gypsy celebrity

John Hooper in Rome
The Guardian,
Wednesday 22 April 2009

A 22-year-old Gypsy who as a child begged on the streets of Italy has been voted winner of the latest Italian Big Brother reality show on Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset network.

Ferdi Berisa's victory, which had echoes of the movie Slumdog Millionaire and Susan Boyle's appearance on Britain's Got Talent, won him €300,000 (£265,000) and the prospect of fame as a celebrity.

But he told a press conference in Rome yesterday he would spend the money on a house and "then go back to my job as a sous-chef" while studying for a place at university. Berisa, from Montenegro, entered Italy 13 years ago as a clandestine migrant after a night-time dash across the Adriatic in a high-powered launch. He said his father made him beg and take part in staged fights with other boys.

Aged 11, the young Roma was put into care in the town of Fano near Rimini and spent two years with foster parents.

He said he thought he had won because of "my diplomacy and my always keeping out of stupid argument". Critics agreed. The website of the daily Corriere della Sera speculated that the eight million viewers had been won over by "the sense of normality that, despite his stormy past, the mild-mannered Ferdi was able to convey".

His victory came as other Gypsies were under unprecedented pressure from the authorities who, in several parts of Italy, have demolished their settlements. Politicians in Berlusconi's Freedom People party routinely talk of a "Roma emergency".

The Big Brother producers delivered Berisa video messages from his estranged mother and sister, both of whom live outside Italy. He said he was ready for a family reconciliation, but added that now, "We live in different worlds".

Should India Speak Up for the European Romani?

April 20, 2009
Vinod Joseph

I heard of the Romani for the first time over a dozen years ago when I was still in college. Term was about to get over and we were all preparing to go home. A friend of mine was packing his bags to leave for Prague where his father, a diplomat, was posted. While we would catch a train or bus to get to our destinations, this chap would fly to Prague. Naturally we were all very jealous and it came as a surprise when my friend told me that Prague is not the nicest places on earth, for an Indian that is.

‘Why is that?’ I asked him.

‘Because Indians tend to get mistaken for Gypsies.’

‘Gypsies?’

‘That’s right. There are Gypsies in Prague who look like us.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah! And the Czechs don’t like the Gypsies.’

Apparently my friend was advised carry a book and wear glasses to show that he was educated and not a gypsy.

I didn’t give that conversation further thought till I came to the UK. Gypsies or Travellers are news items in the UK and they routinely hit the front pages, usually for the wrong reasons.

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Pope urges Romans to "welcome" immigrants

Richard Owen in Rome

Pope Benedict condemned "discrimination" at a council meeting with the mayor of Rome.

Pope Benedict XVI today condemned "intolerance and discrimination" and urged residents of Rome to be more welcoming towards foreign immigrants during an historic visit to the Campidoglio, the Rome city hall on Capitol Hill.

Pope Benedict - only the third pontiff to attend a Rome city council meeting, after Paul VI and John Paul II - greeted a crowd of well-wishers, including a group of Roma gypsy children holding up a "No to Racism" banner, gathered on the Campidoglio piazza in front of the office of Gianni Alemanno, the mayor of Rome.

Since gaining office in elections nearly a year ago which marked a shift to the Right both nationally and locally Mr Alemanno, a former neo-Fascist youth leader, has cracked down on crime and illegal immigration, dismantling illegal gypsy camps in the grimmer Rome suburbs. A series of rapes in the capital has been blamed on immigrants - above all Romanians - and has led to a series of vigilante attacks on targets ranging from vagrants to Romanian-owned businesses.

The perceived crime wave by immigrants has also given rise to "neighbourhood watch" patrols by residents, some authorised by the local authorities but others mounted autonomously by right wing groups. Addressing a special session of the city council in the Julius Caesar council chamber the Pope - whose titles include Bishop of Rome - said Rome had always been "a welcoming city, especially over the past centuries".

Growing immigration however had made it a "multi-ethnic and multi-religious metropolis where sometimes integration is difficult and complex". He added: "Rome will find the force to ensure that everyone respects the rules of civil co-existence and to reject every form of intolerance and discrimination". It would do this if it relied on "its ancient roots, based on Christian faith" as well as the "rule of law," he said.

The pontiff did not refer directly to recent incidents such as an attack by 20 masked men who beat up four Romanians at a kebab restaurant near a suburban park where a 14-old girl was raped, allegedly by two Romanians. Police say DNA tests have yet to prove that two Romanian men arrested for the rape were involved in it.

Instead Pope Benedict referred to "episodes of violence deplored by all which manifest a deeper unease." He said that "our city, like the rest of Italy and humanity as a whole" was facing "unprecedented cultural, social and economic challenges". Rome was increasingly populated by "people who come from other nations and belong to different cultures and religious traditions".

Mr Alemanno said the city planned to establish a centre for teenagers from troubled backgrounds which would be named after Pope Benedict in honour of his visit and as a sign of the council's "commitment to integration".

The German-born Pope, who before being elected pontiff lived for two decades in the Borgo, the medieval quarter adjoining St Peter's, as the Vatican's head of doctrine, said he had become "a little bit Roman" himself.

The last visit by a pontiff to the Campidoglio was that of John Paul II in 1998. Relations between the Vatican and the city of Rome have been complex ever since the end of papal rule and the formation of a united Italy in 1870. Relations between Italy and the Holy See were formally settled by the Lateran Pact of 1929, which defined relations between the two sovereign states. However some secular-minded and even anti-clerical residents continue to resent the influence of the Vatican in Italian affairs.

Gypsy vaccination scheme starts

By Guy Dinmore in Rome

Published: March 2 2009 01:32 Last updated: March 2 2009 01:32

Italy’s Red Cross has launched its biggest vaccination programme since the second world war, with the goal of immunising several thousand gypsy children living in camps around Rome.

The operation began at Casilino 900, a camp on the eastern outskirts of the capital that is believed to be one of the largest gypsy settlements in Europe. Some two dozen doctors were among 200 Red Cross volunteers that included clowns to provide entertainment in one of the big tents erected for the exercise.

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Extremist group calls for gypsy expulsions

An extreme right-wing organisation has taken to the streets of Rome calling for the expulsion of the entire Roma or gypsy population from Italy.

But there has been little public support for the Forza Nuova group which is pressing for the end of the Schengen agreement which allows passport- free travel in much of the EU.

Protest organiser Roberto Fiore said: “This is a situation that requires political will. We want to suspend the Schengen agreement, which is one of the main reasons for the disaster and we want to start all the expulsions of the gypsies and at the same time we think that all the people who have committed crimes in Italy. They should be sent back to their own countries.”

A series of sex attacks in Italy is being blamed on foreigners living in the country and three rapes last weekend triggered a media frenzy and a diplomatic row with Romania.

Italy’s conservative government rushed through a law toughening penalties for sex offenders and permitting neighbourhood citizen patrols.

The President of the Association of Romanians Living in Italy says the patrols should include Romanians.

Rome to dismantle illegal camps

BBC News

The authorities in Rome have begun dismantling illegal camps amid an outcry over three rapes last weekend that have been blamed on immigrants.

Mayor Gianni Alemanno supervised the demolition of about 30 camps, home to many Roma, or Gypsies, from Romania.

A 14-year-old girl was raped in a park in the capital on Saturday, allegedly by two men from Eastern Europe.

Meanwhile, a government minister has said surgical castration might be the best option for those who raped minors.

"In some cases, I don't believe that rehabilitation is possible," Roberto Calderoli, the minister without portfolio for legislative simplification, told the newspaper La Stampa.

"I think that chemical castration may be insufficient and that surgical castration is the only option left," he added. "Society has to protect itself."

Vigilantes

The call by Mr Calderoli, a leading member of the anti-immigrant Northern League party, comes as the government prepares new measures aimed at dealing with both crime and illegal immigrants.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, his party colleague, said it would push through an emergency decree this week speeding up legislation aimed at creating "groups of unnamed citizens" in high-risk areas, who would "assist the police by bringing to their attention events which might be damaging to urban security".


The decree would also ban magistrates from releasing into house arrest those accused of crimes involving sexual violence, he said.

Critics say the measures could effectively legitimise vigilantism and xenophobia.

The Vatican has warned against anything that turns innocent foreigners into convenient scapegoats.

Police say a mob of around 20 masked men beat up four Romanians outside a kebab restaurant in Rome on Sunday in an apparent vigilante attack.

Crackdown

Investigators believe the violence is a response to a series of sex attacks in recent weeks, including the rape of the girl in Rome's Caffarella Park on Saturday.

Also at the weekend, a 21-year-old Bolivian woman was raped in Milan by a man described as North African, while in Bologna, a Tunisian who had just been released from prison was re-arrested for allegedly raping a 15-year-old girl.

While visiting Caffarella Park on Sunday, Rome's mayor said rapists had to know they would face "a definitive sentence" and that all illegal gypsy camps in the city would be dismantled.

A bill going through parliament includes a provision calling for a census of homeless people to be entered into a database held by the interior ministry. Doctors would also be allowed to report illegal immigrants to the authorities, something which is currently banned.

Italian police accused of aggression in gypsy camp sweep

By Guy Dinmore in Tor de Cenci, Italy
Published: February 4 2009 14:30 Last updated: February 4 2009 14:30

One moment Giorgio was returning from his morning job driving kids to school and the next, he says, he was forced by police to sit on the ground and sing “happy birthday” while security forces cordoned off and searched the camp where he and some 250 gypsies live on the edge of Rome.

Giorgio’s “punishment” – he said he was told to sit and sing “louder, louder” – was imposed after he had his arm twisted for questioning the police barring his way. An officer came later and admonished his “aggressive” deputy.

The operation at Tor De Cenci (Tower of Rags), a dormitory town just south of Rome, began on Monday and continued the next day as part of a wider sweep of gypsy camps around Rome.

Gypsies said they were told the operation was a “census”. They had their documents checked against a computerised list and their homes – built out of shipping containers – searched. About 10 men and women were taken away in a bus, with all but one later released.

Women complained of verbal abuse and said their children were terrified by the police dogs. They were angry that for about nine hours they were denied permission to leave the camp to buy food.

Police said they found a small amount of narcotics, some bullets and a stolen Porsche.

Similar operations have taken place at several gypsy camps around Rome over the past week.

Unusually, however, this time police are being joined by the army. The gypsies at Tor De Cenci - who all originate from former Yugoslavia - described the soldiers as “dressed like for war in Iraq”.

An army spokesman confirmed that units, possibly including Folgore paratroopers, had been deployed in support of police forces to help patrol and search “illegal” gypsy camps in Rome.

The centre-right government on Wednesday confirmed that the nationwide deployment last summer of 3,000 troops to help police “keep Italy safe” had been extended for another six months.

In Rome, which has 800 soldiers assigned, troops also guard embassies to free up police for other duties. In Naples – where a local politician was reported to have been shot dead on Tuesday by the Mafia - the army has been on patrol against organised crime and illegal immigrants.

Catholic volunteer aid workers say the operation this week at Tor De Cenci is aimed at “separating good from bad” among the gypsies, with the aim of establishing better living conditions for those allowed to remain, possibly in yet to be built “maxi-camps”. Some small illegal settlements have been destroyed.

Rome’s right-wing mayor, Gianni Alemanno, was elected last April on a promise to “expel” many gypsies who are widely blamed for spreading crime. Now he is active in trying to improve conditions at some camps and plans to build new ones. He has a budget of €23m.

It remains unclear exactly what criteria will be used to determine which gypsies can remain. Aid groups estimate that some 50,000 gypsies have arrived in recent years from Romania, adding to the 20,000 or so who had fled former Yugoslavia.

“Our government wants to remove some horrible camps and create new well-equipped settlements and fully integrate Romanian children into the school system, protecting them from all sorts of street crime,” one official said, quoting Roberto Maroni, interior minister.

Last week, Mr Alemanno reached an agreement with ex-Balkan gypsies from Casilino camp, which provided for the reconnection of water and electricity in exchange for cooperation when the time comes to move the camp. He also left open the possibility of allocating proper housing, which is what gypsy representatives ask for.

Municipal police are also drawing up pacts whereby gypsies will be allowed to stay in camps, but under monitoring that would include cameras, fences and regular patrols.

The issue of granting citizenship to children born in Italy still has not been resolved. One aid source said the National Alliance, a right-wing party in the ruling coalition, had wanted to include this in the recently passed security law. But it withdrew the clause before the vote, for fear of being accused of going soft.

Thomas Hammarberg, human rights commissioner for the Council of Europe who last month voiced his dismay at the appalling conditions in gypsy camps he visited, is urging Italian politicians to act carefully and not penalise a whole community because of a “few criminals”.

“They should rather stand up for human rights and respect for those who are different,” he said.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

Tensions rise over Italy’s gypsy migrants

By Guy Dinmore and Gabriella Bianchi

Published: January 26 2009 20:29 Last updated: January 26 2009 20:29

A political storm has erupted around Italy’s gypsy community after a series of recent attacks prompted Silvio Berlusconi, the country’s prime minister, to suggest deploying 30,000 troops nationwide to combat crime blamed on gypsies and other immigrants.

Europe’s open borders have led to a flood of Romanian gypsies into Italy, straining municipal services and stirring political tensions. Some church groups estimate 50,000 Romanian gypsies have arrived in recent years, adding to thousands of Balkan gypsies who had fled the former Yugoslavia. Many live in squalid conditions condemned by human rights groups.

Mr Berlusconi suggested the extra deployment of troops in response to the highly publicised cases of two women reportedly gang raped near Rome. Police have not publicly identified their suspects as gypsies.

But Carabinieri police units have searched 47 settlements and other places for the suspected rapists and one “Romanian” was arrested, local media said.

Police also intervened after a neo-fascist group demonstrated in Guidonia near Rome – where the rapes took place – during which thugs attacked Romanian and Albanian immigrants.

The possible troop deployment follows the decision last summer by the prime minister’s tough-on-crime ruling coalition to order 3,000 troops to back up police last summer, mainly in the fight against organised crime and illegal immigration.

Ignazio La Russa, defence minister, said today that Mr Berlusconi’s proposal remained a “hypothesis”, to be discussed further in high-level talks on Thursday.

Gypsy activists are investigating allegations that units of the Folgore parachute brigade were involved in making arrests and breaking up illegal shacks used by gypsies on Rome’s Via Gordiani last week.

An army spokesman said a unit of Sardinian grenadiers had been involved in checking identities of some 70 gypsies in an illegal camp.

Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, made his second inspection tour of camps near Rome this month.

He was visibly shocked at meeting with a Romanian who called herself Marinella, living in a tent with her two children, in the midst of rats and a swamp caused by torrential rain.

“The situation is unacceptable,” he told the Financial Times. “Nothing has changed since my last report in July. In fact living conditions are even worse. So much talk and media attention but nothing happens. This is a display of inept policy.”

Meanwhile, an official poster campaign sponsored by Gianni Alemanno, mayor of Rome, is boasting of “6,216 expulsions in 2008” and taking credit for a “20 per cent fall in crime”.

Formerly a neo-fascist, Mr Alemanno campaigned on a promise to crack down on crime, illegal immigrants and gypsies, capitalising on emotions that were running high after the murder of a woman by a Romanian gypsy near a railway station.

Mario Mori, a retired general who is security adviser to the mayor, sought to distinguish actual policy from the heat of last April’s elections.

Mr Mori said the 6,216 expelled by the prefect of the interior ministry were mostly illegal immigrants from north Africa and only a few had been gypsies.

He noted there was no national legislation on “regulating” gypsies and that policy had been left to individual cities.

Mr Alemanno wants to erase unauthorised camps and build new “maxi-camps” for gypsies who have the “right” to stay in Italy by proving they are EU citizens. Those without papers are liable for expulsion.

Mr Hammarberg said today: “I am concerned about reported plans to use soldiers for evicting Roma (gypsies) from their settlements.

“If evictions are necessary at all they should be conducted humanely and only after a satisfactory alternative for housing is found and offered.”

Nazareno Guarnieri, head of an organisation that represents gypsies, said: “They say we like living in camps. They invented camps. None of us lived in camps before. We want homes.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

The crime of surviving

By Miguel A. Seman


“When they are accused, they are found guilty of trying, in every possible way, to survive,” wrote John Berger.

Eduardo Galeano is right when he says that if those who first started surviving in the darkness of the caves had been us, man would have barely lasted a little while on earth. Those first inhabitants were capable of lasting, when they were destined to disappear perhaps, because they joined forces to defend themselves and share their food.

Humanity as we know it today does not understand that the salvation of a few at the expense of many is like leaping into thin air. So much that it leaves them and it leaves us without land, water or sky. It pushes us out of the planet, which, like a very old animal, is already tired of us and wants to abandon us.

Hunger forces men to migrate from one continent to another. Some die at sea, other scratching at the doors of a world which steps on their hands so that they cannot even hold on to desert stones. The European Union has just established the right to suspend the rights of the “surplus” population by sending them, for up to eighteen months, to out-of-court confinement camps.

Sixty-nine immigrants have already died trying to reach the Spanish coast this year and forty percent of Spaniards are in favor of the criminalization of the illegal immigration.

In Italy, an important sector of the society is asking the government to clean the territory of the “trash”, while a splendid ancient fascism goes round the streets burning gypsy campsites. In the “Identification and Expulsion Canters”, where a great number of gypsy children die “accidentally”, there is a meticulous registering of minors. When the news was published, the online version of the Critica newspaper displayed many -- too many -- comments in favor of the expulsion of Romany, African, and Muslim people from the peninsula.

On June 20, the Argentine writer Jorge E. Nedich wrote a critical article for La Nacion newspaper on the resurgence of racism in Italy. What was striking, and also alarming, was that from ten messages at least nine attacked the author and the gypsies and justified the persecution.

Argentineans do not separate too much from Europe. The difference, perhaps, lies in the fact that we hide behind some makeup that shows us a little bit better to the world than how we really are. We pass laws on an equality of rights we do not believe in and we support international treaties we do not respect. The poor residents of our country, like in the history of all nations, are the internal foreigners. The rootless, the ones suspended in jails, those without sentence or destiny. The nomads that move from one province to another, from one city to another, only seeking work and food, those whose hands we step on, so that they cannot even hold on to the fences that separate them from the world.

We know nothing or almost nothing about our earliest ancestors. But our presence here, agonizing and irresponsible, is the last refuge of human life, and it testifies that sometime, back when everything lay in the open, they managed to make out what we cannot understand today: that life was a collective matter, that air and water belonged to everyone and that it was necessary to gather together around the fire, get warm, and share food.

Perhaps it was then that the earth and the sky began to love them.

The Spanish language original version of this article can be viewed at the web site www.pelotadetrapo.org.ar.

Italy wraps up its round up of the Roma

October 29, 2008, 13:09

Widespread negative public opinion of Roma gypsies recently prompted Italy’s conservative government to launch a controversial profiling campaign as part of a pledge to crack down on street crime and curb crime levels.

The internationally condemned measure, which included the fingerprinting and photographing of Roma minors and adults living in nomadic camps across the country, received enormous support from Italians, who have increasingly expressed fears over a rise in violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants, and gypsies, in particular.

Roma gypsies are routinely accused of, stealing, prostitution and child abduction, as well as a range of petty crimes, and their camps are widely seen as a breeding ground for crime and violence, where Roma children are ‘trained’ to become habitual criminals.

A survey conducted in May 2008 by Italian daily, La Repubblica, revealed that 75 per cent of Italians thought “nomads” were “a problem”. Most believed that the best way to deal with the gypsy problem was to “clear out gypsy camps and expel those found there”. Increasing intolerance among Italians has triggered a number of violent acts against gypsies. From April to July 2008, an estimated eight gypsy camps were razed to the ground in arson attacks.

Such ethnic intolerance soon permeated policymaking. At the height of the Roma profiling scheme in August 2008, police and soldiers routinely entered camps unannounced. They took fingerprints and photos of inhabitants, including minors, and expelled those without valid identification or permits. On several occasions, they forcibly evicted the members of illegal settlements, destroying their homes and personal possessions without offering assistance or providing alternative housing.

"They would come in the middle of the night, make us get out of bed and ask to see our identification. It was horrible. Why can’t they come once to see if we need help or to bring us clean water? Italians think we are all criminals and treat us badly, but it’s not true”, says a female inhabitant of one of Rome’s oldest and biggest settlements, the Casilina 900.

Most Italians who live near gypsy camps are against them, claiming they pose health risks. A woman who lives near a gypsy camp on the outskirts of Rome maintains, “They constantly burn their trash and other waste. It is toxic for the rest of us who live in the area. The camp is dirty and ugly. They should be given an area to live in that has sanitary facilities and basic services”.

Almost from the start, Italy’s census and fingerprinting scheme was admonished worldwide for being ethnically-based and discriminatory. From Roma activists to the United Nations and the Catholic Church, opponents of the campaign launched stinging accusations of xenophobia.

For months, the European Commission put pressure on Italy to carry out its profiling scheme in accordance with human rights laws, forcing policymakers to put an end to their fingerprinting and expulsion campaigns. In a complete policy turnaround, majority leaders now claim their main aim is to put gypsy children in schools and provide sustainable housing for gypsies living in unauthorised settlements.

Fact Box:

• Approximately 160,000 Roma live in Italy, 70,000 of whom are Italian citizens.

• Approximately one third of Italy’s Roma live in illegal settlements that lack running water, electricity and adequate sanitary facilities. Many of these Roma, often referred to as ‘gypsies’ or ‘nomads’, do not have residency permits.

• Running from July 15 to October 15, the Roma census was carried out in 167 camps in Rome, Naples and Milan (124 unauthorised camps; 43 authorised camps) by members of the Italian Red Cross.

• Census data shows that 5,436 camp inhabitants are children, only 20 per cent of whom have had basic schooling.

• Italian officials estimate that some 13,000 gypsies have fled the country, in an effort to ‘avoid identification’.

Brenda Dionisi for RT

Roma student offers beacon of hope

By Barnaby Phillips, Europe correspondent

A few months ago, I travelled to Naples, in Italy, to report on hostility against the Roma, or Gypsy, people.

Neapolitans blamed the Roma for a crimewave, and burnt down one of their camps.

The story was posted on You Tube by Al Jazeera:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=MlMFRamBVsk

Here is a sample of some of the comments posted in response; "gypsies are just parasites", "gypsies cannot adapt to a modern way of living and will never be welcome", "only a dead gypsy is a good gypsy", and so on.

Many comments are not printable, but you get the drift.

Now, it iss true that the anonymity of the internet has a depressing tendency to encourage people to publish offensive views.

But, reporting for Al Jazeera from Europe, I've been surprised by the widespread and deep-rooted prejudice against the Roma.

In Greece, and elsewhere, I'm often taken aback by remarks from otherwise broadminded people.

Sometimes it seems that the one form of racism that is still socially acceptable is that against the Roma.

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Italian party calls for licensing system for immigrants - with expulsions once they hit zero

Italy's anti-immigration Northern League party is under fire after it suggested a points system for would-be immigrants - with expulsions once people reach zero.

The Northern League, which is part of the ruling centre-right coalition, said it was making the proposal so it would be easier to expel immigrants and tougher for Italians to marry foreigners simply for the purpose of getting them citizenship.

Under the scheme, immigrants would start off with 10 points - but they would lose the points on a sliding scale if they committed crimes both criminal and civil.

Outlining the idea Northern League senator Federico Bricolo said immigrants who lose points could make them up by carrying out social work for the community - or taking Italian lessons.
Senator Bricolo added that once an immigrant reached zero points they would be immediately expelled.

"There can be no room for anyone living here outside the rules," he said.

"Ensuring that all illegals are expelled would be a success."

Bricolo, who is also the League's whip in the Senate, said that the cost of a 'points card' for immigrants would be 200 euros and this would bring in extra cash to government coffers.

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Italy: Many Roma Gypsies 'gone to permissive Spain' says minister

Rome, 3 Oct. (AKI) - Italy's Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said that Roma Gypsies have left the country and gone to 'permissive Spain' in an interview with Italian weekly L'Espresso.

"We thought there were 120,000 (Roma Gypsies in Italy). There are less. Many of them have spontaneously gone to the more permissive Spain of Zapatero," said Maroni, referring to Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

However, Spanish Minister of Work and Immigration Celestino Corbacho responded to Maroni on Friday by saying:

"I think that Roberto Maroni would do better by making his remarks and policies fit with what we agreed on, only 15 days ago, in the Council of Ministers of the Interior and Justice, which is the European Pact on Immigration and Asylum," said Corbacho quoted by Spanish daily El Pais.

The pact, set to be approved by European Union leaders this month, will make it harder for member states to grant mass amnesties for illegal migrants. It will also urge EU states ensure that foreigners without papers are removed.

Italian rights groups and charities such as the Comunita San Egidio say the Berlusconi government deliberately exaggerated the numbers of Gypsies living in Italy to justify its "emergency measures" against the them.

Such measures include a Gypsy census involving fingerprinting, and the dismantling of illegal encampments.

"The numbers (of Roma Gypsies) were somewhat inflated, but thousands of Roma Gypsies have decided to leave the country, fleeing from harassment and persecution," said rights group, Everyone, quoted by El Pais.

At least 70,000 Roma Gypsies are Italian citizens, and many others come from European Union countries such as Romania, while others came from countries of the former Yugoslavia.

"In the Gypsy camps, we have found Roma Gypsies of Romanian origin, Roma and Sinti Gypsies of Italian origin, non-EU citizens that are not Gypsies, as well as Italians.

"We found everything. The shocking aspect is that half are children without parents. We will send them to school," said Maroni.

In June, Gypsy camps in Naples were set on fire in arson attacks after a teenage Roma Gypsy girl was accused of trying to steal a baby.

The Roma census was compared by both Jewish and Catholic groups in Italy to Nazi racial discrimination and persecution.

The Italian government argues that the census is intended to stop Gypsy children begging and stealing, but also to help them gain access to the Italian health and education systems.

Maroni has defended the dismantling of illegal Roma camps and other measures targeting illegal immigrants, including expulsions.

He claims the government wants to identify those who have the right to stay in Italy and make sure they can live in "decent conditions".

Italy must face legal action for anti-Gypsy measures, says Soros

TERESA KÜCHLER
17.09.2008 @ 10:21 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Billionaire philanthropist and financier George Soros has said at a top-level EU conference on the problems facing Roma people in Europe that he supports legal action against Italy over recent anti-Gypsy measures, particularly the fingerprinting of adults and children.

"Certainly, fingerprinting, racial profiling and so on is unacceptable and, I believe, illegal, and I hope that the European Court of Justice will take up the case and declare it illegal," the Hungarian-born founder of the Open Society Institute said on Tuesday (16 September) in a press conference at the first "European Roma Summit" in Brussels, an event jointly organised by the European Commission and the Soros foundation.

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EU Summit Tackles Gypsy Plight

Brussels, Sep 16 (Prensa Latina) European Union authorities discussed on Tuesday the complex situation of gypsies in the continent, amid a controversial collection of immigrants' fingerprints promoted by the Italian government.

Leaders of EU bodies, the civil society and the gypsy community attended the summit held in Brussels, Belgium.

President of EC (the European Commission), Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, said member countries of the bloc are directly responsible for the gypsies' integration policy. Therefore, the plight of this ethnic minority cannot be solved from Brussels, he added.

As the EU leader was giving his speech, representatives of the Roma ethnic community stood up to protest the census promoted by the government of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and supported by the EC.

In an effort to defend himself from these denunciations, Durao Barroso said the EU rejects racial discrimination. Each person can live his/her life free of affront, he added.

During the EU summit, the strongest defense of the gypsies came from US businessman of Hungarian origin George Soros, who termed illegal the ongoing fingerprint collection in Italy.

IT should be banned. I hope the European Court of Justice will intervene to step in, said Soros.

The controversial step is part of a decree-law promoted by Interior Minister Roberto Maroni against gypsies from East Europe, mainly Rumanian, mostly living illegally in the peninsula.

According to a report released in Brussels in July, high unemployment, extreme poverty and life expectancy below that of the rest of the European citizens characterize this nomadic community.

Preparing for a 'Gypsy Summit'

TIME.com
By Jeff Israely
Monday Sept. 15, 2008

Coming to a stop in his two decade-old Fiat, Bologna social worker Claudio cut the ignition and yanked up the emergency break. "Get ready," he said. It was January 2007, and as part of my reporting for an article on immigration I was about to meet some 15 Roma families who'd emigrated from the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Claudio's warning was partly to prepare me for the rough conditions — rusting doors and walls, leaking pipes, power cuts — that I would encounter over the next hour as the longtime city caseworker showed me around the fenced-in cluster of aluminum trailers.

But it was also designed to brace me for a human situation that is far more complicated than your typical residents' gripes over municipal services or talk-show outrage about minority rights. And different than the other immigration stories I was seeing. Get ready, Claudio seemed to be saying, to be both appalled and surprised.

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Thousands lead invisible life in Italy

By ARIEL DAVID – 2 days ago

ROME (AP) — They speak Italian, eat Italian and cheer for Italy's soccer stars, but they are not Italian. In fact, it's hard to say what they are.

Thousands of people are living in Italy without citizenship or identity documents from any country. Most were citizens of countries that no longer exist, like Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union. But they never received citizenship from the new countries that replaced their broken-up nations, and they also fail to meet the requirements to become citizens of Italy.

It's hard to know how many there are because they survive on the margins of society, but the Sant'Egidio Community, a Rome-based Catholic organization, puts the number at about 10,000 to 15,000. They are often hunted by authorities, who try to deport them as illegal immigrants even though they have nowhere to go.

Life in limbo can be particularly harsh for those who were born and went to school in Italy. Once they turn 18, they become little more than illegal immigrants under the law.

"We are not Yugoslav, we are not Italian. We are like clouds," said Toma Halilovic, who lives with his parents, wife and children in two containers in a makeshift camp on the outskirts of Rome.

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Italy: Euro MPs to visit Gypsy camps in Rome

Brussels, 4 Sept. (AKI) - A delegation of MPs from the European Parliament are planning to visit several Gypsy camps in the Italian capital, Rome, later this month.

Belgian MP Gerard Deprez told Adnkronos International (AKI) he will lead the group of seven European members of Parliament who will visit Rome from 18-20 September.

The fact-finding mission is taking place as the Italian government is carrying out a controversial census of Roma Gypsy camps in major cities, which includes fingerprinting.

Deprez said "practical difficulties" had forced the European Parliament delegation to scale back its visit, which was originally due to include Gypsy camps in the southern city of Naples and the northern industrial capital, Milan.

The visit is taking place in consultation with Italy's Interior Minister, Roberto Maroni, and will include meetings with members of the Italian government, Rome's Mayor, Gianni Alemanno, and the government's top public order representative, the Prefect of Rome, Carlo Mosca.

Italy's conservative government said on Thursday that it had been "fully vindicated" after the European Commission said the fingerprinting of Roma Gypsies in Italian camps did not amount to ethnic discrimination and was in line with EU law.

European Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot's spokesman Michele Cercone said earlier on Thursday the Italian census did not seek ''data based on ethnic origin or religion."

The Italian government's fingerprinting of Gypsies has the sole aim of ''identifying persons who cannot be identified in any other way,'' he said.

The fingerprinting of children was only being carried out ''in strictly necessary cases and as the ultimate possibility of identification,'' Cercone said.

However, the Commission would continue to monitor the way the survey was being carried out, Cercone said.

The fingerprinting campaign has been criticised by human rights organisations, the UN children's charity UNICEF, the European Parliament and the Romanian Government, on the grounds that it had inflamed anti-immigrant feeling in Italy and encouraged vigilante attacks.

In June Gypsy camps in Naples were set on fire in arson attacks after a Roma Gypsy girl was accused of trying to steal a baby.

The Roma census was compared by both Jewish and Catholic groups in Italy to Nazi racial discrimination and persecution.

The Italian government argues that the census is intended to stop Gypsy children begging and stealing, but also to help them gain access to the Italian health and education systems.

Maroni has defended the dismantling of illegal Roma camps and other measures targeting illegal immigrants, including expulsions.

He claims the government wants to identify those who have the right to stay in Italy and make sure they can live in "decent conditions".

There are an estimated 160,000 Roma Gypsies in Italy, nearly half of whom were born in Italy and have Italian citizenship.

Govt hails EC gypsy ruling

2008-09-04 18:56

(ANSA) - Rome, September 4 - The Italian government on Thursday hailed a ruling from the European Commission that a controversial census of gypsy camps was OK.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi said he had always been certain that the census would be approved by the European Union.

''I had no doubt, I was certain about this response from the European Union, given that our measure was in line with EU law,'' Berlusconi said after the EC said the census did discriminate against gypsies.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said he was also certain that the EU would approve the measures, which included fingerprinting norms criticised by human rights groups. ''Today's confirmation makes up for all the accusations and insults I have received,'' Maroni said.

Maroni added that he was expecting three other decrees to be approved.

The centre-left opposition said that the EU had approved a version of the census that had been revised to address human rights concerns.

The Italian Red Cross said Thursday that the first major camp census, across Rome, had so far covered 25 camps and identified more than 1,500 people.

The survey started at the beginning of August and is slated to end by October 15.

In its ruling, the EC said the census does not discriminate against the Roma community and is in line with European Union law.

An analysis of an Italian report on the census showed it did not seek ''data based on ethnic origin or religion,'' said Michele Cercone, spokesman for European Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot.

A controversial fingerprinting programme has the sole aim of ''identifying persons who cannot be identified in any other way,'' he said.

The fingerprinting of minors was only being carried out ''in strictly necessary cases and as the ultimate possibility of identification,'' Cercone said. Rome had worked with Brussels to ''correct measures that could give rise to protests,'' he said..

Barrot will continue to monitor how the survey is being implemented and what its results are, Cercone said.

Maroni launched the camp scheme this summer to clean up camps and get a picture of who was living in them by fingerprinting occupants including children.

Maroni, a leading member of the rightwing Northern League, has consistently defended himself from charges of discriminating against Roma.

He has insisted the census was not aimed against any specific ethnic group or spurred by a wave of crime-linked anti-immigrant feeling.

The fingerprinting campaign has been slammed by the European parliament, human rights groups and the Romanian government.

In the face of protests, Italy agreed with the European Union to make sure the scheme complied with human rights norms. It also announced it would require all Italian citizens to have their prints put on ID cards starting in 2010.

But the Council of Europe (CE), Europe's rights body, said last month that Italian politicians had lacked ''the moral leadership'' to face down the kind of anti-gypsy sentiment that led to incidents such as the torching of camps in Naples in June.

Berlusconi defended the scheme as a means of helping Roma integrate as well as stopping gypsies forcing their children to beg and steal.

Also Thursday, the Vatican urged the EU to carry through on public commitments they had made to safeguard ethnic minorities like gypsies.

EU states should treat gypsy communities as they would other institutions, Msgr Agostino Marchetto, head of the Vatican department that deals with migrant and traveler issues, told Vatican daily l'Osservatore Romano.

''This 'institutionalisation' brings with it the advantage of spurring (EU) states to become aware of the EU programmes that have been approved,'' Marchetto said at the end of the World Congress on the Pastoral Care of Gypsies in Freising, Germany.

Pontecorvo wows Venice with Romanian gypsy film

By Peter Popham in Rome
Friday, 29 August 2008

In 1966, the year he was born, Marco Pontecorvo's father Gillo won the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion with one of the greatest postwar Italian films, The Battle of Algiers. Forty-two years on, the soft-spoken cinematographer stood with a look of stunned bemusement on his face as the Venice audience gave him a standing ovation and 12 minutes of applause for his first film as director.

He wasn't to know it when he conceived the project seven years ago, but Parada, which opens in Italian cinemas in September, is cruelly relevant to Italy's most pressing national debate. For more than a year the country has been obsessed with what to do about the surge of impoverished immigrants from Romania.

Pontecorvo's debut offering - a feature film not a documentary - is about these people, and the true story of how a Franco-Algerian clown responded to them after a chance meeting in Bucharest. That true story belongs to Miloud Oukili, who flew to Romania in 1992 intending to stay for just a couple of months, but ended up staying for 13 years.

In Bucharest he discovered the “boskettari”: the thousands of children who were the tragic victims of Ceausescu's rule, and of the chaos that followed its dissolution: refugees from families too poor or violent to stay with or from abusive orphanages, who lived like rats in the city's substrata, in tunnels alongside the mains hot water pipes, sleeping on putrid mattresses in cardboard boxes, feared and spurned by their society. They stayed alive by petty theft, drug-dealing and prostitution. Many, even the tiny ones, had become hooked on glue-sniffing.

Miloud was transfixed by their plight, unable to tear himself away. He set about doing something for the boskettari, using his circus skills, and with the help of magic and clowning he slowly overcame their distrust. The result, years later, was Parada, a professional circus troupe made up of former boskettari which travels the world. More than 1,000 children have succeeded in graduating from the sewers with his help.

“It was a story that got to me,” Pontecorvo says, “and when a story gets to you, that gives you the energy to meet the challenges of turning it into a film. It wasn't easy: the fact that we started in 2001 and completed the film in 2007 gives you an idea of the problems we faced.”

Pontecorvo dedicated the film to his father, who died two years ago. “His advice to me while I was making the film was to be careful because it was a difficult film. He liked it a lot, he said, but it was very difficult.” The risk was of descending into pathos and sentimentality, of “polluting” the story as Pontecorvo puts it. The consensus is that he has pulled it off.

“It's a story of love and friendship,” he says. “Because Oukili himself came - not from the sewers but from a similar background. It was a dream he realised through love and respect. Respect was one of the things he taught them, but also perhaps learned from them. Because remember, he himself was only 20 when he arrived, only a little older than the children. They grew up together.”

The challenge of coaxing these children, condemned by their own society as irredeemable, to learn to respect themselves and to stand tall contrasts harshly with what has happened in Italy over the past months, where left and right have competed to propose ever harsher solutions to the “security problem” with the “Rom” pose. Among the most controversial proposals is that of the Berlusconi government to fingerprint all Roma in the country, children included.

“I find this an extremely shocking proposal,” commented Jalil Lespert, the actor who plays Oukili, “one which belongs to the distant past. The fact that people are talking about such things again is a dangerous sign for Europe.”

“The thousand children who have been saved are nothing compared to the thousands still living on the streets who know nothing of joy or hope,” Miloud told the festival audience at Venice. “You don't have to go to Bucharest,” Pontecorvo pointed out. “It's enough to go to the suburbs of Paris or any other great metropolis to find children whose childhood has been denied.”

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.

'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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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.

Italy: Gov't rejects claims of police violence in Gypsy camps

Rome, 29 July (AKI) - Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni has denied claims made by a top human rights watchdog that police forces carried out violent raids against Roma-Gypsy camps.

"I reject with indignance, the accusations by (Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights) Thomas Hammarberg. They assert that violent acts were perpetrated against Roma encampments without effective protection by the police forces, and that they carried out violent raids against the settlements." said Maroni on Tuesday, addressing the Lower House.

"These are outright lies, the police have never committed any act of violence of this nature. Commissioner Hammarberg, tell us what these acts are."

A note by Maroni's office, also rejected the claims by Hammarberg.

"It concerns us, the assertion that police authorities carried out violent raids against nomad (Roma-Gypsy) settlements," read the note from the Italian government.

"The Italian government has already answered the memorandum sent by The Council of Europe following the visit to Rome by the Commissioner for human rights, Thomas Hammarberg, providing all the data that show how the worries about the lack of human rights are completely groundless."

The note is in response to an earlier report by The Council of Europe, published in full in the organisation's website, stating:

"The Commissioner is following closely and is deeply concerned at anti-Roma and anti-Sinti manifestations in Italy which have been occasionally extremely violent resulting into setting on fire Roma camps, reportedly without effective protection by the Police which has also carried out violent Roma camp raids," said the report.

Rome census reveals the hopes and fears of gypsies

by Emmanuelle Andreani

Italy's policy towards immigrants -- notably ethnic Romanians, many of them Roma -- has come under intense scrutiny since Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said last month that security forces would fingerprint gypsies.

About 50 people, mostly gypsies, or Roma, live in one camp outside Rome without water or electricity, among rats and in shocking hygiene conditions.

"Have you come to hunt us or help us?" asked Rogi when Red Cross volunteers arrived at his camp to conduct a census as part of the Berlusconi government's controversial crackdown on immigrants.

Like other inhabitants of the camp, Rogi, a member of the Roma minority from Romania, greeted the volunteers with suspicion.

The 10 volunteers made their way between the tents, shacks, bits of furniture and mattresses in the camp hidden among the tall grass and reeds between a road and railway track in southwest Rome.

While gypsies have been fingerprinted in Milan and Naples, authorities in Rome are opposed to the policy.

"Will you answer some questions?" a Red Cross worker asked Ramona Nae and her brother Remus, two Romanians aged in their thirties.

"No. Why have you come here? What we need is a better life and we aren't going to get that by filling in questionnaires," said Remus, throwing a suspicious glance at the Italian and foreign press covering the operation.

"Hang on," said another woman. "They are here to provide us with medical help, milk for the children, not turn us in to the police. Maybe we'll get a house through them."

Like her, most residents agree to answer the questions of the volunteers, who are not accompanied by police officers as they had expected.

"We ask them their name, age, nationality, if they have been vaccinated, if they have been sick, and if their children are going to school. They are not obliged to answer," said one young volunteer.

"Mostly they have worms, gastro-intestinal illnesses and bronchitis," said another worker, who was nursing a small boy with a fever. "Very few of the children have been vaccinated or enrolled in school."

A short distance away, other members of the Red Cross were taking the gypsies one by one into a truck. After being photographed, they are given a health card.

"With this document they can go to health centres. For our part, we build up a wealth of data that only the Red Cross can access. As for the authorities, we can provide them with anonymous information so that they are able to assess the camps, hygiene and health conditions," explained one of the workers.

Italian Red Cross President Massimo Barra said the census was "a way of getting to know the inhabitants of the camps better."

"It isn't a police operation," said Fernando Capuano, president of the Rome branch of the Red Cross. "In its decree ordering a census in the travellers' camps, the government left it up to the local authorities to decide whether to use a non-governmental organisation, and whether or not to take fingerprints.

"Unlike in Naples where it's the police doing the census and taking fingerprints, the Rome authorities called on the Red Cross because of its experience on the ground," he said.

Personal security was a top campaign issue in April's vote in the wake of several high-profile crimes implicating Romanian immigrants.

According to the Sant'Egidio lay Catholic charity, between 130,000 and 150,000 Roma live in Italy.

Many have Italian citizenship, while those of Romanian nationality have freedom of movement within the rest of the European Union.

The Red Cross estimates the census in Rome, which has 70 camps, will take until September.

Italy scales back Gypsy fingerprinting campaign

ROME (AP) — Italian officials carrying out a survey of the country's Gypsy population will only fingerprint those who don't have a valid ID, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday, apparently dropping plans to fingerprint all Gypsies after critics called it discriminatory.

The ministry said the new guidelines were sent to local authorities in Rome, Milan and Naples, where tens of thousands of Gypsies live in hundreds of shabby encampments built on the cities' outskirts.

Officials in the cities had already begun taking information from the inhabitants with varying methods after the government ordered the census as part of a crack down on street crime, which Italians blame mostly on foreigners.

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Italy: Gypsy camp set on fire in Rome

Rome, 23 July (AKI) - Firefighters and police in the Italian capital Rome began investigating an attack on a Rome Gypsy camp in the city early on Wednesday.

The camp was set on fire by unknown assailants late on Tuesday. It is believe that the fire was started by young Italians.

The camp, called the Via Candoni camp, is considered a 'legal' camp and is located in the southwestern part of Rome.

Witnesses said a group of young Italians aboard three cars threw incendiary devices, and the fire quickly spread throughout the camp, reported Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

"We will bring to light what happened. If there is someone responsible for this, they will be severely punished," said Rome's mayor Gianni Alemanno, who visited the camp after the attack.

This attack on a Roma Gypsy camp comes a day after Italian authorities carried out the so-called 'census' in the camp to identify who lives there.

Italy's Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said last week that he would go ahead with the controversial 'census', which involves fingerprinting Roma Gypsies in Italy.

The procedure is already underway in Naples, Milan and Rome, despite criticism from international rights groups and the European Union.

In May, an Italian mob twice carried out arson attacks against a Gypsy camp outside the southern Italian city of Naples - incidents that drew criticism from rights groups, members of the Catholic church in Italy and the opposition.

The census of Italy's Gypsy population is part of the new Italian conservative government's promise to crackdown on illegal immigration.

Special Roma Gypsy commissioners have been appointed in several of the country's major cities.

Of the approximately 150,000 Roma-Gypsies in the country, 70,000 are Italian citizens, and many others come from European Union countries such as Romania, while others came from the countries that make up the former Yugoslavia.

Italian doctors refuse to treat a Romanian Gypsy suffering of cancer

de A.C. HotNews.ro
Miercuri, 23 iulie 2008, 13:47 English Regional Europe

A new shocking case in Italy: Italian doctors in Pesaro, East Italy refused on Tuesday morning to treat a Romanian Gypsy suffering of cancer. The main motivation was that she did not have a stable address, an association defending the rights of immigrants announced, quoted by Romanian news television Realitatea TV.

EveryOne association officials declared that Mia Copalea, of Gypsy origin, requested a medical examination and a treatment for her severe headaches. Apparently, her pain was caused by her breast cancer.

The woman's daughter declared that doctors refused to offer the woman medical attention because they do not reside in Pesaro. She added that doctors refused to give them a prescription for some pain killers.

EveryOne association urged the Italian Health minister Maurizio Sacconi to take urgent action so that the woman be treated in the hospital, like any other human being.

Italian media appalled by Neapolitan tragedy

(CNN) -- The Archbishop of Naples barely disguised his disgust: "Indifference is not an emotion for human beings." Cardinal Crecenzio Seppe wrote in his parish Web site blog Sunday that "to turn the other way or to mind your own business can sometimes be more devastating than the events that occur."

On a windy Saturday afternoon a group of Roma girls were selling trinkets on a beach outside of Naples. Sometime during lunch time, the girls set down their wares and ventured into a rough sea. Two of the Roma, cousins Violetta and Cristina, aged 12 and 13, according to Cardinal Sepe, struggled to stay afloat amid a strong rip tide.

Emergency services responded 10 minutes after a distress call was made from the beach and, according to local press accounts, two lifeguards attended the girls upon hearing their screams. But they were too late. Cristina and Violetta drowned.

Their bodies were pulled from the sea, covered with towels, feet exposed. Witnesses say they lay on the beach for hours -- and so did many of the sunbathers who allegedly watched the drowning and, according to some press accounts, did little but stare and carry on with their Saturday afternoon.

"Two Gypsy [Roma] girls drown in the midst of the indifference of bathers," shouted the headline of La Repubblica. "Children drown, their bodies amidst the bathers," read Corriere della Sera's first page. "Few left the beach or abandoned their sunbathing."

The coffins of the girls, carried on the shoulders of police, exited the beach "between bathers stretched out in the sun," it reported. It also pointed out that the drowning of an Italian man off the coast of northern Italy in 1997, prompted a similar reaction.

Pictures of bathers chatting on cellphones and taking in the rays just meters from the lifeless bodies were posted on dailies across Italy on Sunday. The photographer told CNN the atmosphere among the sunbathers was indeed indifferent -- but "what were they supposed to do?" he asked.

The girls were from one of the many Roma camps in Naples, part of a population of nearly 150,000 across Italy mainly in and around Naples, Rome and Milan. The group have long been considered a nuisance by many in Italy and frequently blamed for criminal activity.

In a recent government survey, nearly a quarter of Italians said they believed the Roma were thieves. More than 90 percent said the believed they exploit their children.

Under a new, controversial anti-crime measure, every Roma, including their children will be registered in a census and either photographed or fingerprinted -- a move condemned by the European parliament, the U.N., the Catholic Church and civil liberties groups as racial profiling.

The Berlusconi government says the initiative will help keep track of the group and better protect the rights of its children who under Italian law are entitled to free health care and education if they are documented.

Authorities who attended to the Roma girls at the beach last weekend said they did not have any identification and were not on any local records. Police left the girls' bodies on the beach until they had located their families.

Rome begins Gypsy census without fingerprints

By ARIEL DAVID – 2 days ago

ROME (AP) — City officials and Italian Red Cross workers began a census of Rome's Gypsy population but said Friday that they will not participate in a national push to fingerprint all Gypsies unless they encounter someone suspected of a crime.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi's government has drawn a stream of criticism from the European Union and human rights groups since announcing last month it wanted to fingerprint the tens of thousands of Gypsies, children and adults alike, who live in hundreds of encampments built mainly around Rome, Naples and Milan.

A government ordinance required a census of the camps but left authorities in each city leeway on how to identify the inhabitants. Rome Prefect Carlo Mosca, the government's top security official for the city, has been skeptical of mass fingerprinting.

Officials with the Italian Red Cross began the census at a camp on the outskirts of the city Thursday, taking down details on the health, education and family status of a few dozen inhabitants. Police didn't take part in the process, but stood by to provide security.

Mosca said at a news conference Friday said that Gypsies will not be fingerprinted unless there is suspicion they may have committed a crime, in which case police will carry out the process after approval by a magistrate.

"When there is suspicion of a crime ... fingerprints can be taken as for any Italian," he said on Friday.

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UN independent experts criticize Italy's fingerprinting of Gypsies

ROME: Three U.N. experts accused Italy on Tuesday of discriminating against Gypsies by going ahead with a controversial plan to fingerprint them, saying that Italian politicians are creating a climate of anti-Gypsy sentiment.

The criticism by the independent U.N. experts in Geneva came as the EU chief, Jose Manuel Barroso, addressed the issue during talks in Rome with Premier Silvio Berlusconi.

Barroso said he was confident that Italy would comply with EU principles and treaties; Berlusconi defended the measure.

Italy has drawn widespread criticism this month as it began fingerprinting Gypsies, including children, as part of a crackdown on street crime.

The European Parliament called the measure a clear act of racial discrimination and urged Italian authorities to stop it, while many human rights groups criticized it as racist.

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Fingerprint all Italians, minister says: press

11 July 2008, 13:22 CET

(ROME) - Italy's defence minister suggested all Italians be fingerprinted so the government would not be accused of racism for fingerprinting gypsies, in comments published Friday, rejecting EU lawmakers' cries of discrimination.

The minister, Ignazio La Russa, suggested "taking the fingerprints of everyone, for at a time like this everyone needs to be identified," in comments quoted by the daily Il Messaggero.
"Let's do it to remove any suspicion of racism... In this framework it will be possible to take the fingerprints of Roma children," said La Russa, who is also chairman of the right-wing National Alliance party.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni announced on June 26 that he planned to send police into all "nomad camps" around the country to collect the fingerprints of everyone there, adults and children.

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Hundreds protest Roma fingerprint plan

Fingerprinting would 'prevent phenomena such as begging': member of PM's party

Agence France-Presse
Published: Monday, July 07, 2008

ROME - Hundreds took to the streets of Rome on Monday in protest at a controversial Italian government scheme which has seen the fingerprinting of Roma, often referred to as gypsies.

The demonstration was organized by the ARCI cultural association, which encouraged participants to give their own fingerprints in a petition of protest called the "imprint of racism."

Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni on June 26 announced that the fingerprinting of Roma would be carried out by police and in cooperation with the Red Cross.

A member of the right-wing Northern League party in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition, Maroni said that children would be fingerprinted "to prevent phenomena such as begging."

The lay Catholic Community of SantEgidio said last week that troubling ethnic and religious details had also been gathered from inhabitants aged 14 and upwards at a camp near Naples.

When organizing the protest, ARCI denounced the gypsy ID measure as "an act of discrimination and of persecution" and called on sympathizers to express their "indignation."

EU Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot on Monday demanded an explanation from Italy about the proposed measure.

"It's important for me that there is an extremely precise and clear investigation," he said. "My job is to ensure that fundamental rights are respected in Europe."

Barrot said Maroni promised to send him a report before the end of July explaining the government's actions and what it plans to do next.

He also said the minister had assured him that the head of the UNICEF children's agency had accepted Rome's plans.

The large number of Roma in Italy became an election issue in Berlusconi's ultimately successful campaign to return to the Italian prime ministership earlier this year.

© Agence France-Presse 2008

EU lawmakers scold Italy for Gypsy fingerprinting

The Associated Press
Monday, July 7, 2008; 6:13 PM

STRASBOURG, France -- European Union lawmakers on Monday condemned Italian plans to fingerprint tens of thousands of Gypsy adults and children, calling it a discriminatory action that smacked of Nazi Germany.

Legislators called for an EU-wide policy that would help integrate Gypsies into mainstream society.

Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, a member of the anti-immigrant Northern League party, said last week that fingerprinting was needed to fight crime and identify illegal immigrants for expulsion. Italian officials have been blaming Gypsies for rising crime.

Members of the European Parliament said the plan smacked of Nazi methods.

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Italian-EU Leaders Discuss Gypsy Issue

A top Italian minister says that misunderstandings with the European Union over a census of gypsy camps have been cleared up.

Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said that he will send the EU a report by the end of the month on government plans for what he termed the ''gypsy emergency.'' Previous plans to take the fingerprints of all gypsies during the census have come under criticism for discriminating against an ethnic minority, the news agency ANSA reported Monday.

European Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot's spokesman, Michele Cercone, said the meeting at a gathering of EU justice and interior ministers had been ''very constructive.''

''It opened dialog on the concrete application of measures carried out by the Italian government, which is what the European Commission is most concerned about,'' he said.

Maroni has previously pledged to dismantle all illegal camps as well as authorized camps that do not have adequate health facilities. Italian government plans also call for the expulsion of any immigrant found to be in Italy without legal paperwork. (c) UPI

Italy assailed over plan to fingerprint Gypsies

IHT

By Elisabetta Povoledo
Published: July 3, 2008

ROME: The Italian government's plans to fingerprint Gypsies living in camps, including children, drew fresh criticism Thursday when a Catholic human rights organization warned that identifying people according to ethnicity would set a dangerous precedent.

"We are very worried about discrimination according to race or religion," said Marco Impagliazzo, president of the organization, the Community of Sant'Egidio, which is based in Rome. "It evokes painful memories, like the Vichy regime."

As part of a broader crackdown on crime, the conservative government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has pledged to take a census of all Roma and Sinti people, as they prefer to be known, who are living in some 700 camps in Italy. The census, which has a mid-October deadline, also identifies individuals' religion and ethnic group.

Evoking a "Roma emergency" in large cities like Milan, Rome and Naples, the government has also said it plans to shut down unauthorized camps by May 2009 and repatriate people who are in Italy illegally.

On Wednesday, Interior Minister Roberto Maroni told Parliament that the idea behind the census was to "put an end to illegal camps and guarantee security to Italian citizens, but above all to the minors who live in these camps." In many cases, he said, people are living in "sub-human conditions, where children are forced to live with rats."

"There is no national emergency," a spokesman for the organization, Mario Marazziti, said. "What is an emergency is that in the 21st century the life expectancy of a gypsy living in Italy is under 60 years of age."

Rather than take a census, he said, the government would do better to "come up with something to improve their lives."

The government has defended its stance, saying that it has been acting within the boundaries of existing Italian law and EU directives.

The European Commission, the EU executive body, issued a report this week on the discrimination and social exclusion of the Roma. It said that their life expectancy was 10 to 15 years lower than that of other Europeans.

On Monday, the European Parliament is scheduled to discuss the Italian census proposal.

Italy and gypsies: thumbs down

From THE TIMES

Italy must abandon plans to fingerprint all gypsies in the country

Anyone in Europe with a sense of history should feel a shudder of apprehension at the news that the Italian Government is to begin fingerprinting all Roma in the country, including children under 14.

It is only two generations ago that such a coldly administrative measure was the prelude to mass deportations, imprisonment, torture and death. Gypsies were among the first victims of the Nazis, and Italy's apparent amnesia of its own dark wartime history is obtuse.

Those proposing this step, which could begin as early as tomorrow, vigorously deny any racist intent. They point to the help of the Italian Red Cross in this new census of the Roma population, which they say is intended to give those identified access to social and health services while ensuring that children are sent to school. Too many Gypsy children, they argue, are being sent out to beg or steal by parents who have arrived illegally in the country. Only by identifying children under 14 - by fingerprints or preferably by photographs - can such an abuse be halted and the wave of juvenile crime be reduced.

Few people would argue that the recent arrival of large numbers of Roma, mostly from Romania and the Balkans, has not caused huge social and economic problems. Most of the arrivals, who have few skills or qualifications, live in 700 temporary camps, set up to cope with the influx but with poor sanitation and facilities.

The high levels of street crime associated with the Gypsies have angered many Italians, and the mood has been exploited by the anti-immigrant Northern League party to campaign for a harsh crackdown on all immigration. Extremists, skinheads and thugs have seized the opportunity to give free rein to their prejudices, and the disgraceful firebombing of one camp near Naples was followed by the eviction by the right-wing Mayor of Rome of a Gypsy camp near the capital.

There are an estimated 152,000 Roma in Italy, and their presence has inflamed an already ugly debate about immigration. Italy's previously lax border controls and long coastline have made it a magnet for thousands of illegal migrants from Africa and the Balkans. Within a few years, a previously relaxed attitude to foreigners has been replaced by a sharp new xenophobia, especially in the larger cities. The mood has been reflected in electoral support for parties promising a much tougher attitude to all immigration, even to the extent of trying to make legal migrants feel unwelcome. Italy will be one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the French EU presidency proposals to tighten up immigration controls across the Continent and close loopholes that have enabled too many migrants to slip through loose controls in the Schengen states.

None of this, however, excuses blanket sanctions that target groups of people by race and ethnicity, especially when the sanctions are underpinned by popular prejudice. Ten years ago two cities in the Czech Republic planned to build a wall around two apartment buildings housing Gypsies, accusing them of antisocial behaviour. There was a swift outcry - as there was against Britain's proposals to set up a visa regime in response to a sudden influx of Gypsies. Both measures were dropped. Italy's fingerprinting plans should also be abandoned. People must never be branded as groups. That way danger lies.

Italy gypsies find echoes of Nazism in fingerprinting move

From THE TIMES
Richard Owen in Verona

“This is like the Shoah, the Holocaust,” says Vanda Colombo as her 11 children splash around in an inflated paddling pool in the searing heat of a Gypsy camp on the outskirts of Verona. “The Nazis exterminated Gypsies as well as Jews, and this kind of discrimination is how it started. If they come here and try to fingerprint our children we will stop them.”

With the help of the Italian Red Cross (CRI), the centre-right Government of Silvio Berlusconi is about to start fingerprinting Roma people - including children - as part of its promised crackdown on crime.

The process could start tomorrow, although the deadline may slip after accusations of xenophobia from Unicef, the European Commission, the Catholic Church and the Italian Left.

The idea, according to Roberto Maroni, the Interior Minister and a leader of the anti-immigrant Northern League party, is to take a census of Italy's Roma population “so we can tell who is entitled to be here and who is not”. Those with the right to stay could then live “in decent conditions” rather than “with rats”, Mr Maroni said. The rest would be deported.

Gypsies identified in the census will receive a card giving them access to Italy's social and health services, but Roma parents who keep their children out of school and send them to beg on the streets will lose custody.

“Perhaps the Left dreams of an Italy populated by lots of Oliver Twists exploited by the Fagin of the day,” Osvaldo Napoli, a centre-right deputy, said. “But we are not in the Victorian England of Dickens, and children cannot wander abandoned through the streets of our cities.”

The criticism has been fierce. Famiglia Cristiana, Italy's most widely read Catholic magazine, condemned the scheme this week as racist and indecent. Maria Rita Verardo, head of the Association of Juvenile Court Magistrates, called it “an odious form of racial discrimination”.

Carlo Mosca, Rome's chief of police, said that he was against fingerprinting Roma children under 14, who “might be photographed instead”. Adults would only be fingerprinted if they were unable to produce a passport or residence permit, he added.

The Right blames much of Italy's street crime on the Roma, in particular on children sent out by adults to rob and steal. The fingerprinting drive, expected to last until October, will begin in Rome - where there are an estimated 9,000 Gypsies - but then widen to other cities.

There are an estimated 152,000 Roma in Italy in 700 camps - which Mr Maroni hopes to dismantle. Forty per cent have Italian citizenship but the rest are immigrants, many from Romania and the Balkans. In Verona this week eight Roma men and women of Croatian origin were arrested for allegedly using children in hundreds of robberies throughout northern Italy. Marco Odoriosio, who led the Verona police operation, said that one of the arrested women had a record of 123 detentions for theft in different towns, using 93 different aliases. The culprits were caught when their mobile phone calls to the children giving them instructions on what to steal, and where, were intercepted (a practice Mr Berlusconi, paradoxically, is trying to restrict.)

Verona, the orderly and prosperous city of Romeo and Juliet, is currently full of tourists enjoying the summer open-air opera season at the Arena, its celebrated Roman amphitheatre, and a month-long Shakespeare festival.

Out beyond the old city walls, on the baking asphalt of one of the vast car parks adjoining the football stadium, you will find a makeshift Gypsy camp, washing hanging from camper vans and shacks.

“Our children do not steal,” Mrs Colombo insists. “The older ones go out to do honest work. We are Italian Gypsies, not foreigners. We are scapegoats.”

Her husband, Marziano, sees nothing wrong with the idea of a census but bridles at the fingerprinting plan. He blames “Gypsies who have come here from the Balkans and Romania. They have given us all a bad name.” He says he used to make a living from running a sweet stall at travelling fairs, “but because of constant harassment we cannot even do that any more”.

Flavio Tosi, the Mayor of Verona and a Northern League member, agrees that “there are Gypsies who want to live a normal life, but those who live in Gypsy camps become habitual criminals and they force their children to become criminals too. Then when the children grow up they, in turn, force their children to enter a life of crime. It is a vicious circle which must be broken.”

This week it emerged that the Court of Cassation, Italy's highest appeal court, had overturned the conviction of Mr Tosi and five others for “racial discrimination” for declaring in 2001 that “the Gypsies must be ordered out because wherever they arrive there are robberies”. Mr Tosi had shown prejudice but was not guilty of stirring up racial hatred, the judges ruled.

Mr Tosi's move against Gypsy crime in Verona after he won office a year ago was a harbinger of the national swing to the Right in April, when elections brought Mr Berlusconi back to power with far-right allies on a law- and-order platform. Mr Berlusconi is accused by the Opposition of exploiting fear, and of rushing through security laws designed to save himself from corruption charges rather than deal with the causes of street crime.

“The only way to solve the Roma problem is to find them jobs, housing and education,” says Tito Brunelli, a former Verona councillor in charge of social policy and immigration, who set up a Roma camp on a disused airfield - later closed down by Mr Tosi. Mr Brunelli, a Catholic activist, says that he was dismissed for being “too tolerant” toward the Roma and trying to bring them into contact with Italians.

He suspected that Gypsies were being identified only “so that they can be expelled. Some Gypsies rob - but so do some Italians”.

Massimo Barra, the head of the Italian Red Cross, insisted that the aim was to integrate Roma people into Italian society. If children were fingerprinted, it would be done “as a game”, he said. Mr Barra said the Red Cross “always respects human rights. We are building bridges, not walls.”

Mr Maroni has said he is unfazed by the row, which had been drummed up by hypocrites. “There is no breach of European rules, or of the charter for childhood rights, no violation of any regulation” he told parliament.

Franco Frattini, the Foreign Minister, said: “We are not talking about raids against Roma, only an attempt to identify those living in our country. These things are done by many other countries in Europe without causing any scandal.” For Mrs Colombo, the census has echoes of Europe's darkest days. “When we see a uniform, we feel terror,” she said. “It's in our blood. We feel threatened.”

TRAVELLING PEOPLE

— The Roma left northwest India in the first millennium AD, spreading to most of Europe by the 16th century

— Some scholars believe that the word Gypsy, deriving from Egyptian, was adopted by the Roma people to conceal their origin and avoid persecution

— Estimates of the number of Roma killed in the Holocaust range from 220,000 to 500,000

— In 1957 the Romany language and Romany music were banned from public performance in Bulgaria

— The practice of encouraging or enforcing the sterilisation of Roma women was officially ended with the fall of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia in 1990

— An estimated 100,000 Roma refugees fled from Kosovo in 1999

— In Naples camps were evacuated in May after attackers set homes on fire and residents protested against the alleged kidnapping of a baby by a Roma woman

Italy: Court inflames Roma discrimination row

John Hooper in Rome
The Guardian, Tuesday July 1, 2008

Italy's highest appeal court has ruled that it is acceptable to discriminate against Roma on the grounds that they are thieves.

The judgment, made public yesterday, comes amid a nationwide clampdown on the Roma community by Silvio Berlusconi's government. Last week his interior minister, Roberto Maroni, announced plans to fingerprint all of Italy's Roma, including children.

The ruling by the court of cassation, which appears to provide judicial backing for the government's policies, was handed down in March, but reported only yesterday. The judges overthrew the conviction of six defendants who signed a leaflet demanding the expulsion of Verona's Gypsies in 2001.

Among those convicted of racially discriminatory propaganda was Flavio Tosi, an official of the anti-immigrant Northern League, who has since become Verona's mayor. He was quoted by a witness at his trial as having said afterwards: "The Gypsies must be ordered out because, wherever they arrive, there are robberies."

The court of cassation decided this did not show Tosi was a racist, but that he had "a deep aversion [to Roma] that was not determined by the Gypsy nature of the people discriminated against, but by the fact that all the Gypsies were thieves". His dislike of them was "not therefore based on a notion of superiority or racial hatred, but on racial prejudice". The judges scrapped the two-month jail sentences and ordered that the case be reheard.

Their ruling was published hours before police in Verona arrested eight Roma of Croatian origin accused of having induced minors to carry out burglaries in northern Italy. The arrests were co-ordinated by the prosecutor who charged Tosi and the others seven years ago.

Franco Frattini, the foreign minister, who until earlier this year was the European commissioner for justice and human rights, applauded the fingerprinting initiative, saying: "These things are done in many other European countries." He and other government supporters said the main beneficiaries would be Roma children at risk of being forced to break the law.

But an opposition MP, Gian Claudio Bressa, said the government was enacting measures "that increasingly resemble those of an authoritarian regime". On Sunday Maroni's top aide was reported to have imposed a vow of silence on three special commissioners appointed to deal with what the Italian media calls "the Roma emergency".