My Gypsy childhood

Roxy Freeman never went to school. But at the age of 22, she decided to get a formal education, forcing her to face up to the prejudices that blight her Gypsy community – and to shackle her wandering spirit.

Roxy Freeman
The Guardian, Monday 7 September 2009

The receptionist looked at me with disdain when I walked into Suffolk College asking to enrol. Their access course for mature students didn't have any entry requirements as such, but the receptionist warned me it was an advanced, intensive course, and there seemed to be a blank space under "educational history" on my application form. When I explained that I wasn't a dropout, I just hadn't gone to school, she looked even more scornful.

I was 22 and had never spent a day in a classroom in my life; an alien concept for many people but common in Gypsy and Traveller families. There are more than 100,000 nomadic Travellers and Gypsies in the UK, and 200,000 who live in permanent housing. Many, like me, never attend school, while others are illiterate because formal education is not a priority in our culture.

My upbringing was unusual, but not unique. Until I was eight my family lived on the road, travelling around Ireland by horsedrawn wagon. I was one of six children, with three more half-sisters, and our family was considered small. Having 12 or 13 children was common among Travellers in Ireland.

Marrying first cousins is also common among Gypsies (and a potential genetic timebomb), my parents come from very different backgrounds. My mother was born into an upper-class American family. On her gap year she literally ran away with a Gypsy – my father, who bred horses. Both are extremely intelligent and open-minded people who wanted to bring us up in a stimulating, free and fulfilling environment.

Instead of going to school, my siblings and I, like many children from travelling families, were taught about the arts, music and dance. Our education was learning about wildlife and nature, how to cook and how to survive. I didn't know my times tables but I could milk a goat and ride a horse. I could identify ink caps, puff balls and field mushrooms and knew where to find wild watercress and sorrel. By the age of eight or nine I could light a fire, cook dinner for a family of 10 and knew how to bake bread on an open fire.

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SOLE STREET: Complaints about gypsies are 'racist' says farm owner

1:55pm Monday 24th August 2009

By Michael Purton

A FARM owner has hit back at criticism of her decision to rent a field to gypsies, saying the complaints are racist.

Last week Beverley Smit rented one field of her 50 acre home, Cranbourne Farm in Sole Street, to a travelling pentecostal gypsy church.

Around 300 people in almost 200 caravans stayed in the field off Copt Hall Road until Sunday (August 23), holding services and welcoming local residents to join them.

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However, many residents complained to Gravesham Council, with leader Councillor Mike Snelling saying he had been “inundated with calls”, and a Daily Mail article today called Mrs Smit a “villain”.

The 56-year-old, who has owned the farm for ten years, said: “The people who stayed in the field are Christians who want to spread the word of God, and they caused no trouble while they were here.

Slovakia latest flashpoint for anti-gypsy feeling

By Jan Cienski in Warsaw and Tom Nicholson in Bratislava

Published: August 10 2009 03:00 Last updated: August 10 2009 03:00

Tensions between Slovak nationalists and the country's large Roma minority escalated over the weekend when riot police had to break up an anti-gypsy march in the country's east.

About 200 members of the far-right Slovenska Pospolitost (Slovak Brotherhood) pelted police with rocks and bottles on Saturday in the eastern Slovak town of Sarisske Michalany.

The mostly shaven-headed young men were protesting against what they termed "Roma terror" in Slovakia. Five policemen were injured, along with two skinheads, and more than 30 arrests were made.

The march was called after Roma teenagers were accused of beating up an elderly man last week. The victim lost an eye and suffered a fractured skull and broken facial bones. Two boys, aged 15 and 16, are in custody on assault charges.

The unrest in Slovakia is part of a regional increase in attacks on Roma minorities by far-right groups, which began before the economic crisis but seems to have become worse as the region's economies have plunged into recession.

The Budapest-based European Roma Rights Centre says there have been firebombings and shootings against gypsies in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary over the past 18 months, and that eight -people have died.

In Hungary, police have set up a task force to catch what they believe is a gang targeting gypsies. Maria Balogh, who is thought to be the sixth victim of the group, was buried on Friday. Her 13-year-old daughter was wounded in the attack in which she died and remains in hospital.

In the Czech Republic, relations have become so poisonous that Canada re-imposed visa requirements for Czech citizens after hundreds of Roma applied for asylum.

Gypsy migrants in Italy, many of them from Romania, have also been the targets of attacks by local mobs.

Slovenska Pospolitost was formed in 1996 and is led by Marian Kotleba, a former secondary school teacher, who was among those arrested on Saturday.

Several gypsy organisations sent an open letter to Slovak authorities and to the European Commission, demanding action.

"The fear, which we - the Roma - feel when observing the situation in neighbouring Hungary, Italy and other countries of the European Union make us fear for our lives and the lives of our children, whom we send to schools, shops and streets in fear - only because we are Roma," reads the letter, according to Tasr, the Slovak news agency.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.

Burial for victim of attacks on Hungary's Gypsies

The Associated Press
Friday, August 7, 2009; 1:15 PM

KISLETA, Hungary -- Hundreds of people gathered Friday to pay their respects at the funeral of a 45-year-old woman, the sixth fatal victim in a series of attacks against Gypsies in Hungary.

Police say the attacks are linked, may have been committed by the same small group, and that the weapons used in Monday's shooting of Maria Balogh and her 13-year-old daughter in their home in Kisleta, a small village in eastern Hungary, had been used in at least two of the previous attacks.

Balogh's daughter survived the shooting and is recuperating in a hospital.

Police have 100 officers working on the crimes, the first of which took place in July 2008, and this week doubled the reward for information that could solve all the attacks to 100 million forints (euro370,000, $525,000).

The attacks usually have been carried out at homes at the edge of small villages near highways providing a quick escape route.

Balogh and her daughter were attacked Monday before dawn but were discovered only hours later when Balogh's sister came to pick them up for work at a tobacco farm.

Gypsies, or Roma as they sometimes prefer to be called, are among the poorest and least-educated Hungarians. They make up about 5 percent of Hungary's population of 10 million and many lost their jobs as the communist system crumbled and the large state-run factories which guaranteed employment were closed or privatized.

Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai expressed his condolences to the family and said that the murderers had attacked the whole Hungarian nation.

"To drive back extremism, to hold society together and to improve on the condition of Gypsies is not simply a government task," Bajnai said. "It is also a national responsibility."

Hungary Gypsy woman killed, daughter hurt

BUDAPEST, Hungary, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- A Gypsy woman was shot to death and her daughter was seriously injured Monday in northeast Hungary in what was characterized as a racial assault, police said.

The mother and her daughter, 13, were attacked in their home on the outskirts of the northeastern town of Kisleta, a local government official told the Budapest Times.

Kisleta Mayor Sandor Penzsesz said neighbors heard three to four shots.

Preliminary results on the crime scene indicate it was the latest in a series of racially motivated assaults against Gypsies in Hungary, a police statement said.

The girl was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries, Kisleta police spokeswoman Rita Fedor said, the Times reported.

At least six Gypsies, or Romanies as they are formally called, were killed in the past year in Hungary.

Councillor faces rap over gypsy comments

A SENIOR councillor's controversial comments about travellers are being reported to police.

Candy Sheridan, a Romany councillor for North Norfolk District Council, contacted the News to say she will be reporting Cllr Lister Wilson to police for "incitement to racial hatred".

It follows the Cambridgeshire county councillor's stinging attack on plans for 159 new travellers' pitches in South Cambridgeshire, which he said would make nearby properties "virtually unsaleable" and "near worthless".

He added that travellers had got away with a litany of crimes, including theft, vandalism and intimidation, saying: "Non-travellers cannot do these things and get away with them."

Branding his comments "cheap, unjustified claims", Cllr Sheridan said: "Cllr Wilson needs to be reminded about his code of conduct - he certainly would not be saying these things about Jewish people or any other nationality.

"He seems to think house prices will go down near traveller sites, which has never been proved in any study despite the Joseph Rowntree Trust work on this point.

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Gypsies, citizens without rights

Friday 22 May 2009

FRANCE 24’s reporter went to meet gypsies in Russia. Considered second class citizens, they are victims of numerous discriminations. This report was filmed in Chudovo, south of Saint-Petersburg.

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Czech neo-Nazis air anti-Gypsy TV ad

Published: May 21, 2009 at 10:42 AM

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, May 21 (UPI) -- The Czech public television network said Thursday it will sue a far-right party for submitting an anti-Gypsy racist ad so it will not have to air it again.

Czech television received the National Party video clip, which promises a "final solution" of the Gypsy problem, and broadcast it Wednesday, the first day of a publicity campaign for the European Parliament elections in June, Prague Radio said.

Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer condemned the anti-Romany video as illegal, the radio said.

A Czech television spokesperson said the station complied with a law that orders it to air all ads received from political parties in the pre-election period.

The spokesperson said the ad will not air again and the network will file a lawsuit against the National Party, accusing it of racism.

Michael Kocab, Czech minister for minorities and human rights said the station should have obeyed the criminal code, which bans distributing racial hate messages, instead of observing the election law.

Interior Minister Jan Pecina said he plans to try to ban the far-right National party.

Hungarian Blues

posted by Eyal Press on 05/18/2009 @ 3:03pm

I spent much of last year in Hungary, leaving just before the IMF cobbled together a rescue package to prevent the nation's economy from imploding. A full-scale implosion has been averted, at least for now, but Hungary is still in dire shape. Its economy is projected to shrink by 6 percent this year, unemployment is rising, and the country's disgraced socialist leader, Ferenc Gyrunscany, recently had to step down after several years of feckless rule that boosted the popularity of the Hungarian right.

This is bad news for all Hungarians, but especially for the country's Roma gypsies, a favorite scapegoat of the Hungarian Guard, a fascist group that has also seen its popularity grow in recent years. A number of gypsies have been killed recently in unsolved murders presumed to be the work of right-wing vigilantes, and the level of anti-Roma sentiment in Hungarian society has apparently increased dramatically. "You now hear anti-gypsy sentiment at every level of society," a prominent politician recently told the Financial Times.

I found this statement alarming in part because, frankly, I heard anti-gypsy sentiment at every level of society a year ago, including from young people in Budapest who thought of themselves as open-minded. In fairness, I also met Hungarians who marched in demonstrations against racism and intolerance. The current economic upheaval has not yet brought the far-right, much less the fascists, to power in Hungary. But it has made expressions of hatred more frequent and more casually permissible, an ominous development in a place where insecurity is rising.

Gypsy vigilantes operate in Czech Republic

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, May 4 (UPI) -- Gypsy vigilantes have been deployed in some regions of the Czech Republic in a bid to oppose rising extremism, Prague Radio said.

Gypsy activists, who call themselves Romanies, staged the first ever countrywide peaceful protests Sunday, sparked by an arson assault in mid-April on a Romany family that left a 2-year-old girl hospitalized with serious injuries, the radio said Monday.

Several thousand Gypsy protesters gathered Sunday in 14 Czech towns to demonstrate against discrimination of Gypsies.

In Chomutov, a town 50 miles northwest of Prague, police had to intervene when several dozen ultra-right extremists, shouting Nazi slogans, attacked one of the Romany marches.

Romany activists said they will not hesitate to fight back if their lives are threatened by neo-Nazis. Vigilante groups are now operating in some parts of the country, the radio said.

Murder Mystery: Who's Killing Hungary's Gypsies?

By John Nadler / Tiszalök
Friday, May. 01, 2009
Time.com

Jeno Koka's killers shot him in the chest moments after he had bid good night to his wife Eva and stepped from his house on his way to a shift at the nearby pharmaceutical factory where he worked.

The 54-year-old grandfather bled to death only a few paces from his doorstep.

Although Koka's wife said she never heard the shot that felled her husband, hundreds of thousands of others across Hungary did.

Koka's murder on April 22 was the fifth in recent months of a member of Hungary's 600,000-strong Roma community. Hungarian police believe that a small group of killers is targeting Roma, who are also known as gypsies and remain one of the most marginalized and neglected groups in Europe.

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ASYLUM IN CANADA IS NECESSARY UNTIL THE EU CAN GUARANTEE SAFETY

April 25, 2008

Roma Community Centre - Toronto

ASYLUM IN CANADA IS NECESSARY UNTIL THE EU CAN GUARANTEE SAFETY

The Roma Community Centre in Toronto wishes to bring to the attention of the current Canadian government and the Canadian people the surge in violence that is being perpetrated against the Roma minority in the eastern member states of the European Union. On March 21 in Kosice, Slovakia a group of young Roma boys were forced to kiss each other, slap each other, and then strip naked upon the orders of police who recorded this incident on video on their mobile phones, reminiscent of the events of Abu Ghraib. On April 22 in the town of Tiszalök, the fourteenth murder of a Roma citizen in Hungary was committed. Two weeks ago a Romany woman and her 2 year old daughter were burned severely in Vitkov, Czech Republic, where the daughter suffered second and third degree burns over 80% of her entire body and remains in intensive care. These are just the latest updates in a slew of pogroms that has plagued the region. It was also last week that our Canadian Minister of Immigration, Jason Kenney, claimed that the 993% increase in refugee claimants coming from the Czech Republic was due to unscrupulous commercial operations. We ask him to reconsider his statement prior to the Prime Minister's meeting with the Czech government on May 6, 2009.

Amnesty International has recently issued a statement calling on Prime Minister Topolanek of the Czech Republic to ensure that the authorities “duly enquire into all cases of racially motivated attacks, and to impose punishments on the perpetrators that would correspond to the seriousness of their guilt.” We agree with this statement and AI's call on Czech politicians to resolutely condemn all displays of hatred and intolerance, whoever their target. They must make it clear that such conduct is unacceptable and unlawful, something they have failed to do since 1989.

The Czech Minister for Human Rights and Minorities, Michael Kocab, called this most recent attack on Roma citizens an act of terrorism. It would be nice to think that there has been a change of heart in the leadership of the Czech nation. Strong words need to be backed by strong actions and unfortunately there has been no evidence of any effort to respect the rights of minorities since the fall of communism, twenty years ago. The Czechs have been receiving the benefits of being a member of the EU without having to do the prerequisite work for it: creating a civil society. They have gained visa free access to Canada as a result of the bargaining power of the EU, yet they have not attempted to remove a pig farm from the site of a former concentration camp for Romanies during the Second World War. They are waiting for funds from the EU to pay for the cost of compliance with the Helsinki Accords. This welfare mentality must stop. Czechs need to live up to EU standards. If the EU failed to hold them accountable in the screening its new members, they need to take a more active role in ensuring compliance from its new member states.

Until then Canada should continue to grant asylum to Roma from the eastern EU member states. The Czech Republic is shirking its duty to all of its citizens, not just its Romany citizens who have been present in the Czech lands for over 300 years. Numerous violent attacks go unreported. Doctors often refuse to file medical reports in cases where their testimony is critical in reporting racially motivated attacks, due to fear or reprisal from vigilantes against the medical community. The police are systemically reluctant to act on racially motivated crimes. Twenty years of these types of precedents have created an environment of tacit complicity with the extreme right wing terrorizers. Until the leadership vacuum in the Czech Republic is filled with people willing to address this, the Roma will continue to leave. It is not Canada's job to solve the problems that Czechs, Hungarians, and others in that region have failed to address. Canadians nevertheless should not turn away those individuals who come here seeking safety. We urge Prime Minister Harper in his negotiations to hold the Czechs accountable for their actions while being mindful of the lives he can save by allowing the Roma to continue to come to Canada.

Contact:
Bill Bila
1412 - 11 St. Joseph Street
Toronto, ON M4Y 3G4
(647) 408-4695
http://us.mc01g.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=wlbila@gmail.com

Fifth gypsy murder raises ethnic tensions in Hungary

Published Date: 30 April 2009
By Matthew Day

THOUSANDS of Hungarian gypsies attended the funeral yesterday of the latest victim in a series of murders that have stoked ethnic tensions and prompted fears that far-right extremists are waging a bloody secret war against the country's largest minority.

Jeno Koka, 54, was gunned down last week in the courtyard of his home as he set off to his work in a factory.

It came weeks after a gypsy man and his four-year-old son were shot dead after fleeing their home, which had been set on fire by assa

Mr Koka's shooting brings the total of murdered gypsies to five in less than a year, and police suspect the killings are related. Matching DNA samples were found at some of the scenes.

"These are professional killers," justice minister Tibor Draskovics said. "Neither the police nor I will rest till we have caught them."

The clinical execution of Mr Koka – a single shot to the heart – implies, police say, that the murderer had firearms training, so inquiries include the armed forces and even the police.

But so far the only leads are that the killer, or killers, may use a black car, and live in Budapest, as the murders have taken place near a motorway.

Gypsy rights groups have accused the authorities of complacency when it comes to protecting gypsies, or Roma as they are known.

The killings have raised tensions between the country's gypsies, who make up 6 per cent of the population, and the Hungarian majority.

Relations between the two groups deteriorated in February after the murder of one of the country's leading handball players, allegedly by a gang of Roma, outside a nightclub.

Far-right groups launched a wave of anti-Roma demonstrations, and rights groups believe attacks on gypsies have risen.

Hungary suspects Gypsy assaults organized

BUDAPEST, Hungary, April 27 (UPI) -- Hungary's national police chief said he suspects killings of Gypsies in northeastern Hungary could be blamed on the same ring of extremists.

Jozsef Bencze said he increased an original reward of $45,000 to $227,000 for information that could lead to the killers of members of the Romany (Gypsy) minority, the Hungarian news agency MTI said Monday.

Bencze said two Romanies were killed in the town of Nagycsecs in November, a father and his 5-year-old son were shot dead in Tatarszentgyorgy in February and a 53-year-old Gypsy was shot and killed in Tiszalok Wednesdayas he was about to leave for work in a chemical factory.

A 70-officer police team has worked on the three cases. Police questioned about 2,000 people, Bancze said.

Jewish groups should lead condemnation of attacks on Gypsies in Europe

April 27, 2009

The Times says this front-page report by Nicholas Kulish about murderous attacks on Gypsies, or Roma people, in Hungary is the paper's second-most-emailed story. As well it should be. Attacks on Gypsies recall the Holocaust, when as many as 600,000 Roma were exterminated by the Nazis.
As Isabel Fonseca and Norman Finkelsteinhave demonstrated, the Holocaust Memorial/Elie Wiesel had trouble making room for the Gypsy victims of the Holocaust. Per Finkelstein, one memorial official said the idea was "cockamamie." (In Night, Wiesel said Roma attacked his dying father in Auschwitz.) Daniel Goldhagen's book on the Holocaust all but completely leaves out the Roma.

I have a sense Jewish official attitudes are improving (Mitchell Bard's virtual library seems to honor the Roma experience). The Holocaust Memorial states:

The fate of Roma in some ways paralleled that of the Jews.

Now when the Roma are facing pogroms and terror in eastern Europe, Jewish groups should express solidarity with their fellow-victims, and be in the forefront of condemning the violence.

Posted by Philip Weiss at 03:32 PM

As Economic Turmoil Mounts, So Do Attacks on Hungary’s Gypsies

NYT
By NICHOLAS KULISH
Published: April 26, 2009

TISZALOK, Hungary — Jeno Koka was a doting grandfather and dedicated worker on his way to his night-shift job at a chemical plant last week when he was shot dead at his doorstep. To his killer, he was just a Gypsy, and that seems to have been reason enough.

Prejudice against Roma — widely known as Gypsies and long among Europe’s most oppressed minority groups — has swelled into a wave of violence. Over the past year, at least seven Roma have been killed in Hungary, and Roma leaders have counted some 30 Molotov cocktail attacks against Roma homes, often accompanied by sprays of gunfire.

But the police have focused their attention on three fatal attacks since November that they say are linked. The authorities say the attacks may have been carried out by police officers or military personnel, based on the stealth and accuracy with which the victims were killed.

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Czech Gypsies to protest across country

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, April 24 (UPI) -- Activists of the Romany, or Gypsy, minority in the Czech Republic said they plan countrywide protests against rising extremism and discrimination.

Leaders of the minority, estimated at 300,000 members by Czech authorities, said the protests will be organized in some 15 towns and cities on Sunday, May 3, Prague Radio said Friday.

The protests are coming amidst increased political tensions sparked by the last week's neo-Nazi march in the northern Czech town of Usti nad Labem and the firebombing of a Romany family's home in the villlage of Vitkov, in the northeast region of Opava.

A 2-year-old girl was in critical condition with burns on 80 percent of her body after a petrol bomb was thrown into her parents' home. Her parents were also hospitalized with serious injuries.

The Romany activists have offered a reward for information on those responsible for the Vitkov attack, Prague Radio said.

Gypsies suffer widespread racism in European Union

Ian Traynor in Brussels
The Guardian
Thursday 23 April 2009

Racism and discrimination across the EU is far more widespread than previously thought, with Europe's estimated 12 million Roma, or Gypsy, population, being a special target, an EU agency warns.

In what is claimed to be the most comprehensive survey of victimisation suffered by Europe's minority and immigrant communities, the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency said "racially motivated crime is an everyday experience".

While all minorities reported disturbing levels of harassment, the Roma, scattered mainly across central Europe and the Balkans, and black people, were particularly singled out for abuse, the survey said.

Based on detailed questioning of almost 30,000 people in all 27 EU states, the survey found that 55% of immigrant or minority populations believed racism was rife in their countries, with more than one in three having suffered racist conduct, 12% being victims of racist crime and 4% being physically assaulted or threatened.

One in four Roma respondents said they had been assaulted, threatened, or harassed four times on average in a 12-month period. "They emerge as the group most vulnerable to discrimination," said Morten Kjaerum, director of the Vienna-based agency.

Levels of racism and discrimination were not reflected in police or official statistics, the report said, because of the victims' lack of confidence in the authorities.

Hungarian Neo-Nazi lead war on gypsies

22 April, 2009, 09:30

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

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

Their only crime was being Roma gypsies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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Roma group addresses prejudice through cingeneyiz.org Web site

"I am a gypsy. One thousand years ago, Byzantines called my people 'athinganoi,' which means 'untouchable.' They were so afraid that they avoided touching us. ... Every country labeled us with expressions in their own languages:

Zigeuner, Cigani and Çingene. They thought we were different. Yes, we are different; we are poorer and freer than other people. But, we are also humans like anyone else," reads the welcome message of a Web site recently launched by a group of gypsies residing in different Turkish cities. The organizers of the Web site -- cingeneyiz.org -- said they set up the site to introduce themselves to the world and to overcome the strong prejudice people feel in their minds and hearts against gypsies. Gypsies in Turkey, or Roma as they are more commonly referred to, were back on the agenda around two weeks ago as they were celebrating the International Day of the Roma.

The celebrations were subdued in İstanbul, however, as they recently lost the battle to save their neighborhood, Sulukule, from a renovation project being carried out by the Fatih Municipality and the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality.

The İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality plans to construct 620 new houses, a hotel and a culture and entertainment center in Sulukule and is gradually demolishing the unregistered houses of Roma people in the area.

The Roma people now wish to make their voices heard through the newly launched Web site, which has a moving message: "We know that we are really different from others. We are free, strong, humanistic and creative. We have been the most peaceful people throughout history. There is no reason to make us feel ashamed. Yes, we are untouchable; evil, treachery and humiliation cannot touch us. ... I am proud of what I am. I am a Gypsy."

Editor of the Web site, Ali Mezarcı, stated that the main reason behind the launch of cingeneyiz.org is to help solve the problem of misunderstanding between gypsies and the people of the countries they reside in. "The most common source of problems we experience with other people is a lack of understanding. People are afraid of ‘the different' and ‘the incomprehensible' and prefer to keep away from them. Many tragic events have built walls between gypsies and other people. However, all people are equal and this reality disregards ethnic background. When we fully understand one another, we will see that we are same," he remarked.

Gypsies all around the world have been subjected to various forms of discrimination throughout history. They have been regarded as work-shy people or social parasites. A major study, carried out in 2004 by a rights group in Britain, revealed that gypsies are the group of people who receive the most hostility from white people in Britain. Hostility toward gypsies is called anti-gypsy racism and is very deep rooted, according to the study.

‘We aren’t a minority; we don't ask for rights'

The cingeneyiz.org team believes that specific and distinctive rights granted to groups of people will not help overcome the troubles they have faced so far.

"Minority rights given to ethnic groups or communities will not solve problems. We consider ourselves as equal citizens of this country rather than as a minority," the team stated, adding that they don't pursue the aim of voicing their demands for cultural or ethnic rights over the Web site.

The Web site shows that gypsies living in Turkey are proud of the names given to them in different countries and cultures as they believe that makes them a trans-racial and universal culture. "We are happy to be a component of different countries and to stand as a peaceful element of humanity. We will be happier if we manage to solve the problems we are facing today," remarked the team.

Sulukule tragedy: a major blow to Roma culture

One of the major topics heatedly debated on the Web site is the demolition of houses belonging to the Roma people in Sulukule as part of the renovation project in the area. Cingeneyiz.org provides up-to-date information to its visitors on the ongoing demolition works and informs them about the struggle against the destruction of a longstanding culture in the area.

The demolition of houses in Sulukule and the relocation of its inhabitants have drawn the indignation of residents and that of the international community as Sulukule is considered a significant historical site that needs to be protected.

A UNESCO progress report on İstanbul prepared last year by a four-member delegation from UNESCO's World Heritage Center pointed out that the planned urban renewal program in Sulukule would result in the destruction of the area and the relocation of its inhabitants. The report also warned İstanbul that if it failed to take the necessary precautions to protect its historical sites, it would be relegated to the UNESCO List of World Heritage in Danger.

Similarly, the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Commission), an independent government agency created by the US Congress, stated last year that it was disturbed by developments in an urban development project threatening the homes of some 3,500 ethnic Roma in İstanbul's Sulukule area and called on the Turkish government to find a solution to the problems facing the Roma.

Ombudsman in firestorm over ‘gypsy crime’ comments

Written by Attila Leitner
Thursday, 16 April 2009

Although civil rights ombudsman Máté Szabó clarified his comments on “gypsy crime”, human rights associations continued to demand his resignation last week.

President László Sólyom met with Szabó, reportedly telling him that his remarks had endangered the public’s trust in his office and warned that the protection of rights can only be effective if the four ombudsmen work together.

The president expressed his hope that Szabó will manage to get the trust of the people back by continuing his civil rights work, which has already revealed numerous irregularities. A statement from the ombudsman’s office said Szabó felt the meeting had been instructive.

In an interview with the news weekly Figyelő, Szabó said that Hungarian society needs to be warned about “gypsy crimes”. According to the ombudsman “gypsy crime” is a special type of “livelihood delinquency”, often carried out in groups. “This is a collectivist, nearly tribal society, which stands in sharp contrast with the Hungarian society’s individualist approach”, Szabó said, adding that the state has a crime prevention role and “if a criminal profile is seen, then society needs to be warned, and it has to be called what it is”.

“I am glad that the ombudsmen for data protection and minority rights would like to solve this problem, but without the majority commissioner, myself, this is not possible”, said Szabó adding again it is in the best interest of society to be warned if it is threatened by a specific group of criminals.

The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (TASZ) said that such comments coming from one of the most important persons in human rights protection were unacceptable and requested that the ombudsman put out a statement making it clear that his words were improper and offensive, instead of trying to blame the press.

In his statement the commissioner said an “unfortunate, but not malicious” headline was the cause of the outrage, adding that, just as before, he condemns racism in all its manifestations, whether in words or in actions.

A joint statement by a number of Roma and human rights organisations said that the interview and statement afterwards made it clear that the ombudsman cannot properly fulfil this high office.

The Eötvös Károly Institute noted that, besides the fact that the ombudsman’s comments were unacceptable, they make it clear that he believes the office is there to protect the majority against the minority, which shows that the ombudsman has no clear idea of what the protection of civil rights means.

In order to remove an ombudsman from office, the commissioner needs to resign or must be dismissed by a two-thirds parliamentary majority.

MOB ATTACKS GYPSY CAMP IN SOUTHERN CHILE

Written by Cathal Sheerin
Monday, 13 April 2009

A mob of more than 100 people attacked a gypsy encampment near southern Chile's Puerto Montt (Region X) last Friday. The attackers reportedly sought to avenge the death of a local resident, whom they wrongly believed was killed by a gypsy.

The crowd of locals used fire and stones as weapons against what authorities called a peaceful gypsy community that had been there since November 2008.

The crowd had been acting in the belief that a gypsy was responsible for the recent hit-and run accident which killed a local man, Juan Alvarado, 29. Police maintain there is no gypsy connection to the accident.

Four cars were set on fire, and tents and other property were destroyed as the gypsies fled to safety. During the assault, the mob tried to stop the gypsies from escaping. The police tried to help the gypsies, but the crowd turned on them.

When a local fire-fighting unit arrived at the site to put out the flames, it, too, was attacked by locals throwing stones.

District Attorney Sergio Coronado emphasized there was no connection between the gypsies and the car-death case. “The line of investigation does not lead to the gypsies. They were ruled out at the very start. The investigation is leading in another direction, and the family of the victim is aware of this,” he said. Local officials said the gypsy community was a victim of “prejudices” on the part of the locals who attacked them.

Francisco Estevez, the director of the Region X Division of Social Organizations, said he hoped to meet with Regional Governor Sergio Galilea in the next few days to discuss the matter. Estevez said the anti-discrimination initiative currently under discussion in a Senate committee will offer victims of discrimination special recourse in law and will provide special sanctions for those convicted of discrimination crimes.

The gypsies did not formally complain to the police after the attack, but did abandon their site.

Gypsy camp spokesperson Juan Carlos Farias said his group will travel to Santiago to meet with the “King of the Gypsies” in order to discuss the matter and consider what legal action they might pursue.

Locals have asked that the gypsies never be allowed back into Puerto Montt. Octavio Alvarado, head of a local neighborhood association, asked for concrete measures to be taken against the gypsies returning. “This place has been converted into a dump, full of waste and rats. The owner of the land should come and take a look,” he said.

Francisco Nicolich, a gypsy who fled the site on Friday said, “Gypsies have never killed anyone. Every time that something happens, gypsies are blamed.”

SOURCES: LA TERCERA, EL LLANQUIHUE
By Cathal Sheerin

Invercargill bad for abuse, gypsies say

12:21PM Tuesday Apr 14, 2009

A group of about 60 gypsies say Invercargill is among the worst places in New Zealand for abuse after visiting the city over Easter weekend for the annual Gypsy Fair.

About 60 gypsies travel throughout the country in mobile homes with their families for eight months each year.

A group of them told the Southland Times they had things thrown at them and were verbally abused during their weekend in Invercargill, as had been the case in past years.

"This is the worst town in New Zealand. We dread coming here, it's that bad," fortune teller Helena Beissel said.

They said people had been driving past their camp next to Queens Park hurling abuse, throwing eggs and bottles at their mobile homes and tooting their car horns throughout each night of their stay.

They had also wandered into their camp and banged against their mobile homes in the early hours, and a bike had also been stolen, the gypsies said.

The abuse was an annual occurrence in the city, they said, with the only city that compared being Palmerston North.

Gypsy Fair field manager Gavin Mackenzie said he believed there were about "10 to 20 bloody idiots".

"If they are not throwing eggs it's beer bottles," he said.

He also made mention of past bad behaviour in Gore.

"If you go to Gore it's dead rabbits they throw at you."

Gypsy Fair merry-go-round owner Cam Taylor said Invercargill residents were marvellous and some abuse was to be expected when you were a gypsy.

"The reality is we aren't all drug-smoking idiots."

- NZPA

Serbia: Gypsies' Houses Torn Down in Belgrade

Sunday, April 12th, 2009 @ 00:00 UTC
by Sinisa Boljanovic

This July, Belgrade will be the host of the 25th World University Games. Participants will stay in the newly-built University Village. There used to be some 350 Gypsy houses near that place, the majority of which were built illegally 30 years ago. Following an order of the City Department of Inspections, about 50 houses were torn down on April 3. A few dozen children, women, old and sick Gypsies spent the night without shelter.

Gypsies protested and asked city council for other lodging in Belgrade. Instead, the authorities offered them to be moved in temporary containers to Boljevci, a small settlement about 20 kilometers from the center of Belgrade.

But residents of Boljevci protested as well. They didn’t want to give shelter to Gypsies: they threatened that they would set fire to them and their containers.

Because of this, many NGOs, which supported the Gypsies, talked about racism.

(MORE)

Slovak police exposed over gypsy abuse

Published: April 8 2009 13:22 Last updated: April 8 2009 13:22

Wednesday may be International Roma Day, but Slovakia will not be celebrating any improvement in the status of its gypsies.

Instead, police inspectors will be poring over tapes depicting their colleagues humiliating Roma children in scenes reminiscent of Abu Ghraib.

Half a dozen videos apparently shot by police on March 21 at a local station in Kosice, eastern Slovakia show six Roma children being forced to strip naked, kiss each other on the cheek and then strike each other in the face.

In one shot, six young Roma boys standing in a tiny room begin pulling their clothes off. A voice from above shouts at them to be quick, that the last to disrobe will be punished. One thin boy hesitates to pull off his white underwear. “Take it all off!” a voice shouts. “Hands behind your heads!” The camera that is filming this humiliating scene closes in on the boys’ genitals and then pans out to capture one of them looking up at his tormentors.

In another scene, police in uniform are restraining dogs that are barking at the same six boys. One of them is hiding behind a desk. The sound of crying can be heard. “Shut up, stop crying!” shouts a voice. “Bunch of fucking gypsies.”

In still another, the boys are made to kiss each other on the cheek and then slap each other in the face. “Give him a good one! And now you, hit him back! Now kiss each other,” says the hidden cameraman. “Hit him and shut up. I’ll tell you when to stop. If he ducks, I’ll kick him.”

Uniformed police officers can be seen filming the action on their cameras and mobile phones. The police spectators laugh as the boys, uncertain, keep looking around for instructions. “What kind of a punch was that? Hit him as hard as he hit you!”

Contacted at home in Kosice, Ivan Kroscen, 13, said that he and his friends had stolen a purse at a Kosice shopping mall, and after being arrested had been taken by the police to a downtown precinct. Their parents were not called until after their interrogation, he said. They are all in their early to mid teens.

“They kept laughing at us, and told us not to be afraid of the dogs because they were young ones,” he said. “But one bit me on the leg and in the bum.”

At a press conference on April 7 after the videos surfaced, the country’s top policeman, Jan Packa, said that up to eight policemen would be fired as a result, and that they would be charged with abuse of power. “These individuals have seriously harmed the good name of the Slovak police corps,” he said.

This is not the first time the Slovak police have been accused of abusing members of the country’s second-largest ethnic minority. In 2001, a 51-year-old Roma man was beaten to death while handcuffed to a radiator at a police station in eastern Slovakia. Seven of his police attackers were found guilty of torture last year.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

Councillor faces action over 'anti-gypsy' remark

john.downing@cambridge-news.co.uk

A COUNCILLOR could face disciplinary action for saying travellers should be left to stew in raw sewage.

Cllr Deborah Roberts is alleged to have made an offensive remark to Dale Robinson, a South Cambridgeshire District Council officer.

They met when the council was about to use its default powers to clear raw sewage from an area near where children played at the Smithy Fen travellers' site.

Mr Robinson, who said he had previously had a "very good" working relationship with the "rather challenging" Cllr Roberts, was asked by her about the cost of the Smithy Fen work.

After she said money should not be spent on "them", Mr Robinson's note of the meeting says:

"She said: 'Let them stew in their own ****'."

Cllr Roberts later said her comment was: "Let them stew in it."

An investigation by the Standards Board for England has been referred to the local hearings panel - and it meets at the council's offices on Wednesday, April 15 to decide if Cllr Roberts breached its code of conduct.

A report from the council's ethical standards officer reveals that Cllr Roberts contacted the Standards Board to deny Mr Robinson's "outrageous" claims and complain that she was the victim of a "witch hunt".

After she met Greg Harlock, the council's chief executive, about the issue, he recalled that she was "very worked up" and "her emotions were all over the place". He said: "At no time did Cllr Roberts deny having said it. What she went into was to provide background information."

But when interviewed by an internal investigator on July 25 last year, Cllr Roberts said: "No I didn't (say that). I'm sure I did say: 'Let them stew in it'."

The council's ethical standards officer said Mr Robinson's account was written soon after the meeting on January 31 last year and he had "no difficulties" in hearing Cllr Roberts' words.

Cllr Roberts said the officer's report took a "selective approach" to evidence, but the officer said all relevant evidence was used in the investigation into whether Cllr Roberts breached the code of conduct, which states: "You must treat others with respect."

If found to have broken the code, Cllr Roberts would face disciplinary action, with the ultimate sanction of three months' suspension from the council.

Cllr Roberts, who was last night unavailable for comment, is no stranger to controversy. In 2007 she escaped punishment from the Standards Board despite saying that, if she had cancer, she would launch a suicide bomb attack on travellers in Cottenham.

She was thrown out of the council's cabinet and later apologised.

Serbia Gypsies moved to sleep in the open

BELGRADE, Serbia, April 7 (UPI) -- The eviction of a small Romany community from their shanties Tuesday triggered outcries against Gypsy discrimination by Serbian officials, observers said.

About 40 Romanies have been sleeping in the open for four nights between Belgrade's high-rise apartment blocs after officials pulled down their sheds, the Serbian news agency Beta said Tuesday.

Belgrade officials evicted the Romany families from 28 tin-and-cardboard shanties erected on state land close to a newly built housing blocks in the New Belgrade district.

The authorities tried to move the Romany families to prefabricated apartments on the outskirts of Belgrade but local residents blocked the area, keeping the Romanies from settling in. Many of the Romanies returned to the New Belgrade district.

More than 43 non-governmental organizations asked the Serbian and Belgrade officials to provide proper housing for the Gypsy families that were forced out from their shanties.

On the eve of April 8, the International Day of the Romany, a number of European organizations warned that strong opposition to foreigners is on the rise amid the current economic crisis in some countries. These organizations said they are concerned over discriminatory attitudes towards the Romanies, particularly over recent escalation of incidents motivated by hatred and racial rhetoric.

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

Saturday, 04 April 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Racist Leaflets Inspire Hatred for Minority

A story sent to me from September 30, 2005

By Irina Titova
Staff Writer

Human rights experts are worried by rising racist trends after leaflets calling for violence against Roma were circulated in the city of Pskov, 280 kilometers south of St. Petersburg, in September.

“We are calling for Russia to be cleaned up! No To Gypsy Drug Barons! Save Your Children!” read the leaflets posted at the city’s bus stops, the St. Petersburg branch of non-governmental human rights group Memorial reported Wednesday.

The leaflets accused the Roma of drug trafficking and compared them to spiders.

“Pskov residents! The most terrible disease of our times — drug addiction — is spreading in our city. Taking advantage of the authorities’ negligence, gypsy families have organized the unrestricted and widespread sale of drugs in Pskov. Every day, more and more of our children get become captives of drugs,” one of the leaflets read.

The leaflets were signed by a movement calling itself Free Russia, which called for Pskov residents to provide lists of names and addresses of Roma living in the city.

The leaflets also stated that police statistics cite Roma as being Russia’s “most active drug traders.”

The leaflets have alarmed Pskov Roma, who are afraid to go out, fearing they could be attacked, said Olga Abramenko, coordinator of the Northwest Center For Social and Juridical Defense of Roma at St. Petersburg’s Memorial, on Wednesday.

“The leaflets were absolutely racist, nationalist and aggressive. And it is not true that according to police statistics Roma are the main drug traders [in Russia],” Abramenko said.

The distribution of leaflets took place not long after the kidnapping and murder of a Roma man, Vladimir Berezovsky, on Aug. 30, leading to fears that the two events are linked.

A few days after the murder, another local Roma man, Alexander Mikhailov, was beaten up after attackers questioned him about his ethnicity.

The Pskov city prosecution has opened criminal investigations into both the murder and the attack, but neither have been solved, Abramenko said.

Abramenko also said Memorial could not be sure if the nationalist group Free Russia exists in reality.

Boris Pustyntsev, co-head of St. Petersburg’s human rights Citizen Watch said that some Roma do to turn to crime as they are unable to find lawful employment due to discrimination. He stressed, however, that not only gypsies are dealing in drugs.

“When someone has no other way to make money, he often gets involved in crime. That’s not just the case with Roma — it also happens with Russians and people of other ethnicities,” Pustyntsev said.

Barnet councillor Brian Coleman condemned for 'stay away gypsies' comments on BBC show

7:20am Monday 23rd March 2009

By Kevin Bradford

A Barnet councillor attracted controversy yesterday after claiming gypsies should “stay put in Ireland”.

The often outspoken Greater London Authority member for Barnet and Camden, Brian Coleman, condemned the traveller community during a debate on the BBC’s Politics Show about the potential for increased gypsy sites across London boroughs.

It came as the Greater London Authority prepares to discuss the results of the London boroughs’ gypsy and traveller accommodation needs assessment 2008, which suggests 553 new permanent pitches are required across the capital in the next five years.

Proposals could see up to 13 sites built in the borough, and managed by Barnet Council, to match the increased demand.

But speaking on the Sunday morning show, Mr Coleman said he would not welcome “one single site” in the borough, and claimed they would not be accommodating communities that had been in the UK for decades, but instead a group of people “who offer to Tarmac your drive”.

He said: “Successive councils in Barnet, Labour-controlled and Conservative, have examined the borough thoroughly and found no suitable sites.

“I do not know any councillor of any mainstream political party who would support traveller sites in their ward.

“We’re not talking traditional gypsies here, we’re not talking about this romantic vision of gypsies in attractive caravans, we’re talking about the itinerant Irish traveller community who come over and want to resurface people's drives and repair their roofs.

“This is a commuter who comes over from Ireland looking for work that should frankly stay put in Ireland.”


Father Joe Browne, chairman of the Irish traveller movement, who was also on the panel, said there is a shortage of legal sites in London which impacts negatively on gypsy groups, and went on to condemn Mr Coleman’s comments.

“I’m shocked Brian would take that attitude,” he said.

“It’s simply unacceptable to say they should stay where they are.”

Andrew Slaughter, Labour MP for Ealing Action and Shepherds Bush, responded on the show by branding Mr Coleman “loudmouthed” and saying the comments were “inflammatory and quite disgraceful”.

He said: “[The comments] would be completely unacceptable when talking about any other ethnic minority.”

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.

Giving and taking away

Phil Chamberlain The Guardian, Wednesday 25 February 2009

Travellers' rights champion recognised for forthright campaigning faces a battle of her own over eviction from her home

Bridgette Jones will be at Buckingham Palace next month to collect an MBE for service to her community.

A week later she will be at the high court hoping that her home outside Canterbury will not be taken from her.

"They give you a medal with one hand and they try and take your home away with the other," she says.

Jones, known to everyone as Bridie, has championed Traveller rights for the last 15 years. During that time she says that overt racism against Gypsies and Travellers may have diminished in the UK but discrimination still exists - nowhere more so than in planning regulations. Since 2001 she has been fighting to stay on the plot of land that she, her son, daughter and seven grandchildren call home.

"It has been seven long and depressing years," she says. "We have been given planning permission by the county council and by two inspectors but some villagers have set up a group to stop us and they keep appealing. It is very aggravating. You have children born and bred on that land."

Through her work with the Canterbury Gypsy Traveller Support Group, Jones gets a lot of calls from Travellers about similar planning problems.

"In some cases it is just ethnic cleansing," she claims. "In Basildon the council is spending £3m on bailiffs to evict Travellers from a site. There are 300 children on that site and some are sick and some are dying. We're supposed to be in a credit crunch and yet they spend all this money to put people off their own land."

Jones began volunteering back in 1992, working with young people in Kent. She found then that ethnic minority children didn't access traditional youth services so she tried to open up the services to the whole community.

"I've always tried to break down barriers and build bridges," she says. "When I get a phone call now I try to make sure they get the right services and go to the right people. It's about bringing people around a table and discussing problems."

When Jones got the letter in the post back in October with the royal motif on it, asking if she would accept an MBE she thought it was a joke. A follow-up letter inviting her to the palace in March was met by "complete out-and-out shock".

Jones has been to Downing Street to petition for Traveller rights on several occasions, but she just plans on enjoying this trip. She is saving her energy for the high court battle.

"People get very angry when they see what is happening in Italy with [Roma]Gypsies," she says , "but I don't think people know that it [discrimination] is on their own doorstep."

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.

‘Gypsy crime’ versus ‘political crime’

Written by Jan Mainka, Publisher

Monday, 16 February 2009

The Veszprém murder made it clear that protection rackets remain a problem in Hungary. Secondly, and more emphatically, it demonstrated that relations between ethnic Hungarians and their fellow Gypsy citizens are at breaking point.

In public debate this social tension has overshadowed the real motive for the crime – namely extorting protection money. Enraged citizens were less worked up about the state’s inability to protect its citizens from the crime than the fact that the Veszprém knife killers were “once again” Gypsies. The focus was less on their terrible act of murder, than on the climax of an escalating ethnic conflict.

“Gypsy crime” was denounced, rather than inadequate public safety. The murderers of the Veszprém handball idol Marian Cozma and their relatives earned the hatred and the thirst for revenge of the majority of society, not only because of their crime, but also because they are Gypsies. All the pent-up frustration of highly problematic daily interaction seemed suddenly to find an outlet with the new martyr figure of Cozma. The prominence and widespread popularity of the victim, as well as the brutality of the crime caused the floodgates to open. The fronts in Hungarian society have rarely been so clearly personified. On one side there was the good-hearted sportsman who came to the aid of a restaurant employee in trouble, and on the other side the three ruthless killers whose faces the whole country has now seen. In view of this clear division of roles, regard for political correctness was abandoned and the public expression of anger became uninhibited.

Political correctness

Anyone daring to make mention of racism or ethnic prejudice in the current charged atmosphere is also guilty! Carried along by the wave of anger, politicians of all colours who generally take an evasive approach, particularly in the case of the Gypsy question, have now turned their attentions to this taboo topic more conspicuously than at any other time. After all it must gradually be dawning on them that Hungary is sitting on an ethnic powder keg that could explode at any time. Again we can see how little has been done in the two decades since the change of regime to put an end to this smouldering conflict. It is increasingly clear that the billion-forint social transfers of the past years have had barely any effect, and may even have exacerbated the issue. Not to mention the ridiculous attempt to solve the Gypsy problem by using the neutral term Roma when the Gypsies in Hungary describe themselves as Gypsies. It is surely no consolation for the relatives and friends of Cozma that he was stabbed to death not by invidious Gypsies, but by Roma citizens. In any case, if the problem is not tackled at its roots, then the term “Roma” will soon also be on track for political incorrectness.

In dubio pro reo

The term “Gypsy crime” that is increasingly used in populist and fundamentalist circles similarly ignores the crux of the problem. Even in the case of statistically proven correlations between skin colour and crime rates, we should be wary of making such unfounded generalisations in the heat of the moment. Regardless of the fact that this form of prejudgement cannot be reconciled with the principles of a state based on the rule of law, this term is misleading and tendentious. Verbally it turns a more-or-less probable correlation into a certainty. It suggests that there are only two types of Gypsies: criminals and future criminals – which, fortunately, is not the case.

Speaking sweepingly of “Gypsy crime” is just as misplaced as speaking of “political crime”, instead of referring to the suspected crimes of a certain János Zuschlag or György Hunvald, to mention the two most prominent cases of the past week. Even the fact that purely statistically there is more talk of politicians in connection with corruption and embezzlement than, for example, teachers or postal officers, does not give us the right to prejudge them.

The comparison with politicians throws light on a surprising parallel: the lax handling of state funds has contributed to both groups becoming problem groups. Access to tax money was and is made too easy for these groups, whether we are speaking of social benefits in the first case, or subsidies (Zuschlag) and revenues from the sale of state assets (Hunvald) in the second case. It is said that opportunity makes a thief. In the case of the two problem groups, this consists of too easy, opaque and inadequately monitored access to funds. Members of the underclass – not only those of Gypsy origin – continue to receive excessively generous direct and indirect social benefits without sufficient controls or requirements to do anything in return (for example ensuring that children attend school or carrying out community work).

In this way, such citizens are kept quiet, but are given no preparation for playing a successful part in the labour market. Their peripheral position in society is further cemented by this form of help. Likewise, through too easy access to state funds and positions, politicians lose their motivation to improve their material situation primarily through exemplary service to their country. Expecting this situation to change itself is just as naive as waiting for a cat that until now has been comfortably fed on pet food to suddenly turn from a cuddly toy into a proper mouse hunter.

The fundamental problem is that at the expense of society a standard of living has been put in reach of both groups that is higher than can be justified by their actual contributions to society. What was morally dubious in times of reasonably sound state finances, now simply cannot be financed any more. The state can as little afford to indiscriminately throw around social benefits, as it can to satisfy all officials on the take.

The gradual reduction of funds to both groups will lead to unwanted, but unsurprising side effects. The underclass which is comparatively lacking in motivation to work and training will increasingly try to compensate for the reduction in social support in other ways, and will do so not only by entering into employment relations on the labour market which in any case is shrinking. The possibility of violent protests, similar to those of a few years ago in Slovakia, cannot be excluded. In the case of politicians the drying up of illegal additional income sources will probably result in even stronger negative selection. Increasingly incapable politicians will have to struggle with even bigger problems. There is little that a few idealists can do to change that.

Thousands protest gov't boycott of conservative daily

By Hungary Around the Clock

Over 2,000 people demonstrated on Friday afternoon against Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány's call to cut off state advertising in and subscriptions to Magyar Hírlap over a commentary that referred to the Roma killers of Romanian handball player Marian Cozma as "murderous animals".

Addressing the gathering outside the Prime Minister's Office on Kossuth tér, Magyar Hírlap owner Gábor Széles called Gyurcsány incompetent as prime minister and said he will go down in history as having caused more damage than 1950s dictator Mátyás Rákosi. Széles accused Gyurcsány of ruining the economy, the countryside and health care and of pushing Roma into misery.

Farkas Flórián, representing Roma group Lungo Drom, said the newspaper comments were not offensive to Gypsies and that Gyurcsány, by hiding behind Gypsies, had violated freedom of the press and expression by calling for a boycott of Magyar Hírlap.

Editor István Stefka said Gyurcsány intended to shut his newspaper's mouth. Lawyer Krisztina Morvai, MEP candidate for the far right Jobbik party, called Gyurcsány "an insane Nero" whose action had again united people.

Zsolt Bayer, author of the commentary, said Gypsies have been called by that name for 700 years and this must remain so as "they are our friends". At the same time those who attack teachers, as well as murderers, robbers and thieves who happen to be Gypsies should also be called by that name, he said.

Government spokesman Dávid Daróczi told reporters elsewhere that the call for a boycott was the right decision, as it was borne out by the tone set by those addressing the rally, and the way they spoke about the state of public affairs.

Roma leader blames politicians for anti-Gypsy sentiments

By MTI

The head of Hungary's National Roma Self-Government (OCO) blamed parties in parliament for the anti-Roma sentiments experienced lately in Hungary at a press conference held in Budapest on Thursday.

Orban Kolompar was speaking in response to a debate in the press over the past few months about the existence of "Gypsy crime" or whether the ethnic background of criminals should be noted in connection with crime. The issue flared up again when suspects of the stabbing of international handball players last weekend were said to be part of or associated with a gang of Roma criminals.

Police have not found evidence for this connection, but they did take testimonies from witnesses and former gang associates which suggested a link.

The government has disassociated itself from the use of the term "Gypsy crime" and for membership of an ethnic minority to be singled out in crime statistics.

Kolompar said parties have been noncommittal about the problems of the Roma and were partly responsible for a collective blame for crimes on the Roma community. He added that they have done nothing to help the Roma create a credible political representation for dealing with important economic and social problems among their community.

Kolompar called on the Roma to think about how they see the next ten years for themselves.

He said the remarks by opposition leader Viktor Orban on Wednesday regarding Roma and crime were unfortunate.

Orban said there was no "Gypsy crime" but there were criminals that belong to the Roma minority and the serious crimes committed by Roma was on the rise, which cannot be ignored.

Kolompar asked the help of the media in "creating a normal human atmosphere which focuses primarily on the person, not political interests."

He said parties should support a Roma programme, to be designed by OCO, which would help bring about peace in society. He added that there were plans for a three-way agreement between the OCO, police and the National Association of Civil Self-Defence to train 3,000 Roma and non-Roma civil self-defence personnel as well as social workers to help improve communication among citizens.

‘Time Bomb’ Ticks in Hungary as Roma Tension Rises (Update1)

By Zoltan Simon and Balazs Penz

Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Hungary is contending with rising resentment toward its Roma, or Gypsy, population as the economy sinks and unrest grows.

A police chief who last month blamed Roma for crime in his city was fired by the government, then reinstated after more than 1,000 people protested. Anti-Roma demonstrations also erupted in western Hungary last weekend after media reports that Roma men were responsible for the murder of a local athlete. A court in December banned a two-year-old uniformed nationalist group sworn to tackle what it called “Roma crime.”

As in other European countries, Hungary’s Roma live in the poorest areas and endure the highest rates of unemployment, said Janos Ladanyi, director for the Center of Social, Regional and Ethnic Conflicts in Budapest. Clashes will become more frequent as the economic crisis engulfs the region, unless the rule of law can be enforced, he said.

“This is a time bomb,” said Ladanyi. “I hope the alarming events of the past few weeks will make the sensible majority and especially the political elite recognize that we can’t go down this road. This road is a dead end. It leads to the Balkans.”

The government is trying to balance public resentment and the need for order. Justice Minister Tibor Draskovics on Feb. 8 ordered police to increase patrols and the cabinet the same day decided to direct extra funds to security forces.

Need to Act

“We have to act while we can, not wait until the prejudices and the urge to vigilantism distil into unmanageable social phenomena,” Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, 47, wrote on his Web site. “We have to act against violence most decisively.”

The opposition Fidesz party, which is leading the governing Socialist Party in opinion polls ahead of elections next year, said the government should focus more on catching criminals than on worrying about prejudice.

“We have to tell it like it is: the number of serious crimes committed by people of Gypsy origin is rising at an alarming pace,” Fidesz said in a statement yesterday. “We demand that the government, instead of finding excuses based on the origins of the perpetrators, find the perpetrators and protect the rights and interests of the victims.”

The situation isn’t helped by the decline of what was once eastern Europe’s economic dynamo.

Unemployment probably rose to 8.3 percent in January, the highest in at least 10 years, according a Bloomberg survey of economists. Official data is due on Feb. 27.

IMF Aid

Last year, the government was forced to turn to the International Monetary Fund to avert a debt default, and the economy is forecast to contract as much as 3 percent this year.

Marian Cozma, 26, a Romanian national handball player, was stabbed to death in front of a dance club in the town of Veszprem in western Hungary on Feb. 7. Two of the three suspects were detained in Austria late the next day, Hungarian police said in a Feb. 9 statement. The third is being sought.

“Everyone in the whole wide world knows that those murderous animals were Gypsies,” wrote columnist Zsolt Bayer in daily Magyar Hirlap. “A huge number of Gypsies have given up on coexistence and given up on their humanity.”

Gyurcsany ordered state institutions to cancel subscriptions to the daily, his office said in a statement yesterday.

‘Discrimination and Persecution’

Albert Pasztor, the police chief in Miskolc, claimed at a Jan. 30 press conference that all the December and January burglaries in the city of 180,000 were committed by Roma. Draskovics reinstated him after street protests from a crowd estimated at 1,500 by state-run MTI news agency.

With about 10 million people, the Roma have made up the European Union’s largest ethnic minority since the bloc started expanding eastward in 2004. The EU operates an integration program, with traineeships and funding for anti-discrimination groups, according to the European Commission’s Web Site.

“Roma communities in Europe have long faced discrimination and persecution,” the site said.

Rob Kushen, managing director of the European Roma Rights Center, blames the media and growing support for nationalist political parties for fueling hatred.

“What you have is a political climate that plays up ethnic tensions and attempts to demonize the Roma minority,” said Kushen, whose center is in Budapest. “That’s a serious concern. You create the climate for an increase in tension.”

Members of the nationalist group, Magyar Garda, wore 1930s- style uniforms and armbands. It was established in 2007 by the nationalist party Jobbik, which has organized a demonstration for Feb. 13 in Budapest to protest “Roma crime.”

Flag Wavers

During the past two years, members marched in Budapest and villages with a large Roma population under a red-and-white striped flag similar to one used by Hungary’s Nazi-allied government in World War II. The group was banned in December for inciting fear among minorities.

The biggest population of Roma in Europe is in Romania, estimated at as much as 2.5 million people, according to the Roma rights center.

The Roma in Hungary number 200,000 to 700,000, or 2 to 7 percent of Hungary’s 10 million people, Ladanyi said. While many don’t state their ethnicity in the census, about 40 percent are considered “permanently excluded” from society, he said.

“My concern is for the 15 percent or so of Roma who have managed to leave the shantytowns, who are trying to join the middle class but whose tentative grip may slip now during the economic crisis,” said Ladanyi.

To contact the reporters on this story: Zoltan Simon in Budapest at zsimon@bloomberg.net Balazs Penz in Budapest at bpenz@bloomberg.net .

Last Updated: February 11, 2009 06:08 EST

Angry Gypsies take to the streets over posters

Saturday, 10 January 2009

Angry Roma residents of Rakamaz in northeastern Hungary took to the streets on 2 January to protest against anti-Gypsy posters plastered around the village by members of the extreme right paramilitary Magyar Gárda organisation. Some were armed with gardening equipment, and the police found one man with a samurai sword after they intervened to keep the peace. The would be swordsman is being prosecuted. The local Gárda "commander", Tamás Seres, denied this. "Some in Rakamaz believe the local Gypsy leaders want to win back voter support by trying to create conflict," he told the local news website Borsod Online. "It is unacceptable that hundreds should arm themselves, attack and lynch innocent Hungarians, and demonise the Magyar Gárda," Seres added. The spontaneous demonstration passed without incident, and the crowd of several dozen had returned home by midnight, said a police spokesman.

It is not racist to state that gypsy camps frequently cause an increase in crime and mess - it is a statement of fact

By Harry Phibbs
Last updated at 9:22 AM on 06th January 2009

The Government has issued a decree to local Councils to provide more caravan pitches for gypsies. Their argument seems to be that people have a 'right' to be gypsies and that if councils provide more authorised sites there will be less of a problem with gypsies occupying land illegally.

This is a policy of appeasement of lawlessness. If people want to spend their lives travelling around in caravans then they must operate within the law. They should also rely on finding people willing to accommodate them - not expect special favours from the state.

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EUROPE: Roma Pay the Price for Far-Right Rise

By Zoltán Dujisin

BUDAPEST, Dec 29 (IPS) - The alarm bell is ringing in Central Europe: as the region braces itself for an economic crisis, extremism grows and gains popular sympathy by targeting the Roma.

The collapse of social rights in post-communist central-eastern Europe has been most harsh on the Roma, a minority that is believed to have migrated to Europe from India since the 14th century.

While anti-Roma prejudices are strong in Central Europe, so far no political force has managed to garner support by rallying the population against them. But extremists now see a window of opportunity in mobilising anti-gypsy feelings.

"The gypsy theme doesn't create political divisions, it's an everyday thing for people on the left or right, and they (extremists) are trying to use this to gain some power outside of politics," Hungarian anthropologist Gergo Pulay told IPS.

This is the case with the Hungarian Guard, a quasi-paramilitary group created in August 2007 and whose 2,000 or so members get physical training and promise to preserve Hungarian traditions and protect its citizens.

In October Czech extremists followed suit, setting up the pseudo-paramilitary National Guard, also about 2,000 member strong.

Conditions are set for a spiral of violence: extremists accuse their countries' police forces of failing to protect citizens from "gypsy crime", while members of Roma communities say they are ready to set up their own militias to protect themselves.

Several provocative marches by Hungarian Guard members in Roma-inhabited settlements have coincided with sudden new attacks on Roma inhabiting Hungarian villages. The Roma constitute 6 percent of Hungary's 10 million population.

In one incident in November, grenades were launched into a Roma-inhabited house in Pecs, 250 km south of Budapest, killing two adults and injuring two children. The Hungarian police was criticised for ruling out the possibility of a racist motive in the attack before launching an investigation. They later retracted the statement.

Such scenes are also becoming familiar to Czechs following successive clashes between extremists and the Roma in the Janov housing estate in Litvinov in the northern Czech Republic.

In one incident, supporters of the far-right Workers Party tried to invade the heavily Roma-inhabited estate Nov. 17. Policemen, extremists and locals were involved in the clashes where Molotov cocktails were thrown and police cars put on fire.

Many were appalled by the large number of elderly locals who sided with the extremists, signalling that far-right extremism is not isolated. Encouraged by signs of local support, Czech far-right supporters have spoken of further action.

There are some 300 Roma ghettos across the country. Many of them have appeared as a result of a recent spree in evictions. Approximately 80,000 inhabitants of these ghettos are often unemployed, welfare-dependent and uneducated.

Often they are moved to better quality but more isolated flats, hindering their integration in mainstream society.

In the neighbourhoods where they are placed, they are usually received with fear and suspicion by locals, feelings fed by the many Czech politicians who express blatantly anti-Roma opinions.

"I am absolutely disgusted by the latest events in Litvinov and especially by the lack of reaction from the Czech political elite," Cyril Koky from the government council for Roma affairs told media in November.

Politicians in the region, and especially in the Czech Republic, have reacted mildly to anti-gypsy incidents. They tend to depict the Roma as living off welfare and as having been overprotected under the defunct communist state.

"If they take welfare benefits and don't work, they are more likely to keep stealing from people," Istvan Kovacs, one of the few protesters willing to speak to journalists at one of the far-right rallies in Budapest told IPS.

He denies that the clearly anti-Semitic and anti-gypsy utterances of younger protesters around him are fundamentally racist. "We just need to help them become better Hungarians," he says with a kind smile.

The Hungarian Guard denies any involvement in the latest incidents. It boasts some "honorary" Jews and Roma among its ranks, and handed out Christmas presents to Roma children to fence off accusations of racism.

Extreme-right movements are beginning to relinquish Nazi symbols, opting instead for more home-grown imagery and ideological patterns, while increasing international cooperation with similar movements.

In a region where left-wing politics is stigmatised due to a failure to deal with the heritage of socialism, the anti-globalisation mood has been channelled by a nationalistic right that accuses domestic elites of selling out state property to multinational corporations.

Authorities in the region have promised to monitor the activities of such groups, especially paramilitary ones, but they have become highly skilled in avoiding breaching the law, and legal shortcomings mean that even a ban can be easily circumvented.

Moreover, far-right groups like those in Hungary intimidate opponents by publishing the full names, telephones and addresses of lawyers, judges or journalists who get in their way.

In Slovakia a far-right party has even made it into the governing coalition in 2006, and since then racially motivated crimes have increased exponentially in what some consider the result of the state legitimating xenophobic views. (END/2008)

Downturn Boosts Far-Right Groups

5:09pm UK, Tuesday December 23, 2008

Greg Milam, Europe correspondent

Far-right groups across Europe could be gaining support as the financial meltdown continues.

The warning comes at a time of increased racist violence and attacks on gypsy communities across Europe.

A far-right group called the Hungarian Guard, which has been accused of persecuting gypsies, says it will defy attempts to ban it, as governments become increasingly concerned at the rise of the right.

It is feared that extremist parties could make significant gains in European elections next June, particularly in eastern European countries.

In an interview with Sky News, a senior member of Hungary's right-wing Jobbik party said the financial crisis was making people look to parties they might once have called extremist.

Zsolt Varkonyi said: "They realise that they have been lied to by our leaders, our politicians, our economic experts, so perhaps it is time for them to listen to us.

Jobbik also defends its official links with Hungarian Guard. "It was formed because there is no security in Hungary for people in villages; they are robbed and they are killed.

"Talking about the image is just scratching the surface. What they wear, how they look, it's not really important."

Hungary has been among the countries hardest hit by the financial crisis. The government was forced to turn to the international community for an emergency bail-out.

Hungary has established its first national police force to deal specifically with crimes against the Roma gypsy community.

Political analyst Krisztian Szabados told Sky News: "We expect that public support for right wing extremists, which has been around 1%, will rise to at least 7%. We expect violent clashes between right-wing extremists and the gypsy population."

There have also been significant increases in violent racist attacks reported in the Czech Republic and Italy.

Hungary's far-right to defy court

A far-right group in Hungary accused of persecuting the Roma (Gypsies) minority has said it will defy a court order banning the organisation.

The Hungarian Guard Association said it was a movement not a party and could not be dissolved by a court order.

The organisation regularly marches in uniform through Roma-populated areas in protest at what it calls "Gypsy crime".

On Tuesday, a Budapest court ordered the group to be dismantled for racial discrimination against the Roma.

The Hungarian government and Roma groups welcomed the verdict.

But the Guard Association - which claims to have 1,500 adherents - said it would continue its activities as before.

The group's president, Gabor Vona, told the BBC that the court ruling was a blow to Hungarian democracy.

"As with all previous attacks, this will only increase the number of our recruits," Mr Vona said.

Critics say the association - which was formed last year - is fascist, but its supporters describe it as patriotic.

Budapest court rules to dissolve paramilitary Hungarian Guard

The Budapest Municipal Court ruled on Tuesday to dissolve the right wing paramilitary Hungarian Guard.

The court judge, while explaining the decision, referred to a march staged by the group last December in Tatarszentgyorgy and said that speeches about "Gypsy crime" made during the event had insulted the dignity of the local Roma minority, the Hungarian News Agency MTI reported.

The judge said that Hungary's public dignitaries and the parliamentary parties had all condemned the event and such speeches.

The general public might be misled to get an impression that "here comes the Guard and it will restore order," which cannot be accepted under the constitution, the judge said.

Triggering fear in itself was a violation to the rights of others, the judge said.

Gabor Vona, chairman of the Hungarian Guard, said that his group would appeal against the rule.

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.

MEPs attack Facebook over anti-gypsy hate groups

LEIGH PHILLIPS

Today @ 09:13 CET

Socialist deputies in the European Parliament have condemned Facebook, the popular social networking service, for hosting anti-gypsy groups on its site.

Facebook groups attacking Roma people and bearing such names as "Let's burn them all", "Turn gypsies into fuel" and "Useful work for gypsies: testers of gas chambers" have been roundly condemned by the Party of European Socialists.

German MEP and Socialist group leader Martin Schulz said: "The existence of these groups is repulsive. I call upon Facebook to remove them immediately."

Mr Schultz highlighted seven such Facebook groups - all Italy-based - saying that "known fascist" organisations were behind them.

Nazi salutes appear as illustrations on some of the group webpages.

With Facebook, any user can set up a group that others can sign up to. Normally, groups bring together people with common interests or professions, or from the same town or who went to the same elementary school.

Political groups also make use of the Facebook feature. Both candidates for the US presidential race, Barack Obama and John McCain, had their own Facebook groups.

However, the company has repeatedly run into trouble for hosting groups that are considerably more unsavoury.

Last August, a cross-party assembly of members of parliament in the UK condemned the site for hosting four Facebook groups backing the fascist British National Party. The groups' webpages included images of Ku Klux Klan members posing with a sword under the caption "Local BNP meeting, blacks welcome" and called on people to "hang gollywogs" and to join to "help them fight evil and win the war of cleansing Britain."

Facebook has been loth to remove such groups, citing freedom of speech. Despite the UK campaign, and the subsequent decision by six corporations, including Vodafone and Virgin Media, to yank their advertising from the site when the groups were discovered, the social networking site to this day is still hosting them.

Speaking on Tuesday, the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War, the euro-deputy said: "It is shameful that on the day Europe marks the deaths of those who fell in war, Facebook is helping those who want to take us back to those dark days."

Backed by the leader of the Italian Socialists in the European Parliament, Gianni Pittell, Mr Schulz called on Facebook users to contact the company and demand they close down the groups.

Mr Pitelli, for his part, said it was "a day of shame for Facebook."

Two Roma die in Hungary shooting

Police in Hungary are investigating the deaths of two people in a shooting that a Roma (Gypsy) member of the European Parliament is calling a racist attack.

The victims were a Roma man and a woman in their 40s, who were shot through the window of a house in the village of Nagycsecs, in north-eastern Hungary.

Petrol bombs were thrown inside before the shots were fired, police said.

The Hungarian MEP, Viktoria Mohacsi, said she had evidence pointing to a "racist motivation" for the attack.

A second house was also attacked early on Monday, police said.

Other Roma properties had been firebombed in north-eastern Hungary before Monday's incident.

A spokesman for Hungary's National Gypsy Authority, Janos Bogdan, was quoted as saying two pubs run by Roma in nearby Sajoszoged and Sajooros had been attacked with petrol bombs overnight on Sunday, shortly before the Nagycsecs attack.

Nagycsecs has some 1,000 residents, many of whom are Roma, the Budapest Times newspaper reports.

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

Extremists increase their influence over society

Written by Political Capital & the Hungarian Anti-Racist Foundation
Sunday, 19 October 2008

The past two years have brought a quality change in anti-Semitic and racist public discourse in Hungary. Far right activism since the autumn of 2006, racist reactions to the incident at Olaszliszka and the emergence of the Hungarian Guard have crossed lines in Hungarian public life that in the past for the most part managed to check the public articulation of prejudices.

These developments have greatly increased the far right's potential social base and political scope for action. Increasingly open anti-Semitism entering the public arena continues to be a major identity-building force for the radical right. With all that, steadily rising tension between the Roma and non-Roma populations, clearly the country's major social conflict, represents a much larger threat in Hungary. Increasing conflicts between a majority and a minority are often an inevitable concomitant (and catalyst) in the struggle for social equality. However, to current situation does not point in the direction of a solution thanks simultaneously to the head-in-the-sand policies followed by parliamentary parties, the lack of adequate government programs, the aggressive symbolic actions of the Hungarian Guard, as well as the weak identity of Hungary's Roma population and a resulting low organizational level.

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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".

Exploring Bulgaria’s Minority Population: The Gypsies

Many people searching for property in Bulgaria are advised often by Bulgarian real estate agents to avoid villages with high gypsy populations. However many people who find themselves living in areas with many Roma residents have found that crime and social problems are low and no different to any other rural area in Bulgaria. In fact, many people have become firm friends with their gypsy neighbours and whilst it would be unwise if not impossible to move into a true gypsy ghetto, living in an area with a high ethnic population is not as detrimental as Bulgarians make out.

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Travellers’ children face bias

Wednesday, 1 October 2008

As a result of a recent petition from Roma in Romania, the Strazburg Court concluded that a separate education system was ultimately detrimental to the wellbeing of its Gypsy population.

That country is retraining all teachers to disabuse them of perceptions that the poor in the community are of an inferior race. The Equality Commission here was ignorant of this ruling, which essentially makes it illegal to pursue separate education.

Besides the European Ruling, the Ireland Act gave a privileged position in law to Travellers.

There would also appear to have been recent incidents where Traveller children were rejected by the ‘Irish' schools, a situation which is totally illegal.

It is obvious that the massive funding which is directed at these schools, giving a comfortable existence to well paid teachers, whose pupils are not tested, could be more appropriately directed into the general education system.

Roma protest loaded survey question on "gypsy crime"

By MTI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

(MORE)

Czech far-right party activist to address BNP

Jo Adetunji
The Guardian, Saturday August 16 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(MORE)

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."

Jewish group urges Bulgarian president to withdraw prize to alleged anti-gypsy

SOFIA (AFP-EJP)---The Simon Wiesenthal Centre called Tuesday on Bulgaria's president to withdraw a journalism prize awarded to a columnist it says compared gypsies to animals.

A statement from the Jewish human rights organisation's director for international relations, Shimon Samuels, protested the country's choice of recipient for its 2008 Chernorizetz Hrabar journalistic award.

"The laureate, Kalin Rumenov, is reported to have written racist articles on a regular basis, attacking the Roma Gypsy community in the national newspaper Novinar," Samuels said, urging President Georgy Parvanov to withdraw the prize.

The newspaper was not immediately available to comment but Samuels quoted excerpts of articles where Rumenov compared the gypsies to "cattle" and said they were "multiplying like sheep."

"This language is so redolent of the 1930s and 1940s when both Jews and Gypsies were marked for Nazi extermination," Samuels said.

The award was received by Kalin Rumenov at an official ceremony in Sofia in May in the presence of leading politicians, members of Parliament and journalists.

Several Bulgarian professional groups set up a petition for the prize to be publicly withdrawn, calling on the President and the Prime Minister of Bulgaria, who were present at the ceremony, to make a public declaration that they do not share the values represented by the racist author.

An estimated 700,000 gypsies or Roma live in Bulgaria, forming nine percent of the country's population. The community is poverty-ridden and isolated in ghettos, largely illiterate and often discriminated.

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.

From gypsy moths to the Roma

...Which is just fine, a biological method of eradicating gypsy moths. But why does it have to be gypsy moths? Why not some other regular moths. Gypsies are taking a beating this year. The people who go by the term Gypsies, who prefer the appellative Roma (yes, prepare for a non-sequitur)...

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Lolo Diklo : Roma Against Racism

Bookmark this blog - they (like myself) are trying to raise awareness about the Roma history, culture and worldwide racism.

http://www.lolodiklo.blogspot.com/

Thanks!
Allie :)

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.

(MORE)

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 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.

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.

(MORE)

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.

(MORE)

Gypsies claim racial bigotry

By Joe Ware

GYPSIES who are fighting to keep their community at Minety have been treated with hypocrisy by council bosses, an inquiry heard this week.

The second public inquiry into the unauthorised building work at the site in Sambourne Road, heard by planning inspector Karen Ridge, got under way at North Wiltshire District Council on Tuesday.

Gypsy families were among those attending the inquiry, with Minety residents who have fought the development.

Representing the gypsies, Alan Masters said his clients want the same treatment as Minety residents. He said: "The Minety travellers have been victims of hypocrisy.

"The village of Minety is deemed as an area suitable for development by the council but the nearby appeal site is not.

"The gypsies have settled in the area and their children attend local schools. The council's approach is a failure to follow the Race Relations Act."

Earlier Mrs Ridges called for respect and outlined the main point of the investigation. She said: "This is a planning inquiry not a public meeting. I'm aware the subject is emotive but please do not interrupt or shout out. Please be respectful. This inquiry is here to determine the effect of the development on the local area given the nature of its affects on neighbouring parties."

Saira Kabir Sheikh, representing North Wiltshire District Council, said: "The appeal scheme does not represent a sustainable form of development. The development is significant in size and is unduly intrusive in the countryside.

"The scheme causes significant harm and has a detrimental impact on the character and amenities of the countryside. The scheme is also harmful to adjoining residential property."

Most of the opening morning was taken up with the cross examination of planning expert Simon Chambers, the council's sole witness.

He said: "As stated I believe there has been no physical change in the circumstances since the previous appeal was assessed and there has been substantial progress towards the assessment of gypsy and traveller accommodation needs and potential delivery of sufficient land to accommodate that need.

"There are a number of factors contributing to the unsustainability of the appeal site compared to the village.

"One of the reasons is village residents have better access to transport links whereas the appeal site is isolated making access to public transport much more difficult."

10:56am Thursday 10th July 2008

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.

(MORE)

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

'No blacks, no dogs,no Gypsies'

The Independent

By Rachel Shields
Sunday, 6 July 2008

Gypsies and Travellers in the UK are uniting to form a nationwide coalition to fight what they describe as rapidly escalating levels of racism and discrimination. The leaders of the nation's largest Gypsy and Traveller organisations will hold an unprecedented gathering later this month with the aim of bringing together the country's 300,000 Roma, Irish, Welsh and English Gypsies and Travellers in a national federation.

Two of the UK's largest Gypsy and Traveller associations – the Gypsy Council and the Southern England Romany Gypsy and Irish Traveller Network – are involved in the initiative.

Studies in recent years have shown that Gypsies and Travellers experience more racism than any other group in the UK, including asylum-seekers. The most recent Mori poll on the issue revealed that a third of UK residents admitted to being prejudiced against Gypsies and Travellers, while a European Commission report published last week demonstrated that millions of people of Roma origin are still subject to persistent discrimination.

"Travelling people are travelling people, no matter what their ethnicity – we are all marginalised and tarred with the same brush," said Richard Sheridan, president of the Gypsy Council.

"I don't think that the situation in the UK has changed much since the 1960s – those 'No blacks, no dogs, no Gypsies signs' are not very far away.

"Joining together will make us go further – if we have more people on board it will make it easier for us to stand up for our rights" said Mr Sheridan.

John Johnson, chair of the Southern England Romany Gypsy and Irish Traveller Network, added: "We want to be seen as a cohesive community."

According to the British Medical Association, the community has the lowest life expectancy and highest rate of child mortality in the UK. Nomadic Gypsies fare particularly badly when it comes to health care, as the absence of a permanent address makes registering with a GP far more difficult. Ofsted has also reported low levels of educational achievement and high rates of illiteracy among Traveller children, due to a disrupted education and bullying.

The British National Party has said in previous local election campaigns that it will evict Travellers, while the campaigning organisation Minority Rights Group International reports that there have been racist attacks on campsites in the UK, many of which are not reported to the police.

"In my experience, racism against Travellers has definitely got worse over the past 40 years. In some bits of Europe, this is due to the fall of Communism and rise of nationalism, but in the UK, it's probably linked with anti-immigration feelings," said Grattan Puxon, founder of the Gypsy Council and the author of a number of books on the Traveller community, most recently the 2007 novel Freeborn Traveller.

"There is a lot happening within the Gypsy community at the moment.

"Unification will allow for more effective lobbying" he said.

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".

Anti-gypsy view cruel

The coverage of the protests about the proposed gypsy sites makes very disturbing reading and I would appeal to everyone involved in this process to think very carefully and sincerely about what they are saying.

While I understand the worries of the protesters, I am very upset by the sentiments some have expressed. While it is entirely appropriate to say: "I am worried that having a site near my home/school might lead to problems with noise, I am afraid it will appear unsightly, and I am concerned the comings and goings might cause problems and disturbance" it is another matter entirely to say, as one Calne mother you quoted did: "I want the councillors to look into my baby's eyes and tell her she will be growing up next to gypsies."

The gypsies are an ethnic and cultural group. They are human beings and this attitude towards them is racist and very cruel. How would this quote read if the word Jews' or Somalis' replaced the word gypsy?

Half a million gypsies were slaughtered by Hitler during the Holocaust. We think it is appalling how one group of people could dehumanise another group in such a way that it extends to genocide - but consider how dehumanising this comment is? How would a gypsy child feel, reading that a mother wouldn't want her child to grow up alongside him or her? Are gypsies worth less than non-gypsies?

I trust the Gazette, as a bastion of fairness and a promoter of racial equality and human rights, will not let such views and expressions go unchallenged.

Sarah Singleton, Patterdown, Chippenham

We won't be Berlusconi's scapegoats, say Gypsies

Tom Kington in Rome meets families evicted by the city's new right-wing mayor at their isolated camp and hears them demand 'a few rights'.

Tom Kington in Rome
The Observer, Sunday June 15 2008

In a desolate field just beyond the Rome ring road, a single line of caravans is a stark sign of the times in the new and increasingly anti-immigrant Italy. The vehicles are the modest homes of 25 Gypsy families, who have become the first victims of a campaign waged by the city's new right-wing mayor to crack down on foreign criminals and illegal Gypsy camps.

Oblivious to their parents' distress, children laugh and duck behind cars, squirting water pistols at each other as the adults contemplate an uncertain future. But the white sheets waving on clothes lines seem to symbolise a mood of surrender and gloom. Police, accompanied by dogs, have just chased this community from the city centre site it had occupied for 20 years.

'We work for a living, but in a couple of hours, everything we had created, the relationship we had built with locals over decades, was wiped out,' said Alessandro, 36.

The eviction, against the advice of Rome's police chief, was the latest sign of the disturbing groundswell of resentment building across Italy against the 150,000-strong Roma population. In Naples, a camp was recently firebombed. Near Venice, well supported demonstrations have mobilised locals against a proposed new camp agreed by the council. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's promise to get tough on the perceived lawlessness of Gypsies and foreigners earns him huge approval ratings and gives the green light to right-wing allies, such as Rome's mayor, Gianni Alemanno, to take drastic action.

The tide of ill-feeling against the Gypsies has become so strong that, for some, Friday's Euro 2008 match between Italy and Romania, which ended in a 1-1 draw, became an opportunity to offer support for the beleaguered minority. Some government critics declared they would support the Romanians as an expression of solidarity with the geographical roots of many of Italy's Gypsies. A group of protesters also took to the streets in the capital, including Roma women dancing in traditional dress, Italian intellectuals and slow-marching Jewish survivors from Germany's death camps.

Marking the first such demonstration in Italy, the protesters wore the same black triangle bearing the letter Z as worn by Gypsy inmates at the camps. 'We don't want to be scapegoats,' said Roma singer and academic Santo Spinelli, who helped organise the march. 'Italians are not racist, but we must put an end to the misinformation, mystification and media violence in this country.'

Such sentiments cut little ice with the likes of the mayor. The fact that many of those targeted are Italian citizens also appears to offer little protection. Alessandro, like the rest of the Gypsy group, was born in Italy and carries an Italian passport. Not surprisingly, he is furious. 'I did my military service, I vote and I would like a few rights,' he said.

The community to which he belongs has been in Italy for three generations, migrating in 1936 from Fiume, which was then Italian territory and is now part of Croatia. 'Those who stayed behind died in German concentration camps,' said their spokesman Aldo Hudorovich.

The group initially kept on the move, then, two decades ago, they settled in Rome's Testaccio neighbourhood and their children were sent to local schools. Now they believe that they, and others like them, have become scapegoats for the Berlusconi government, which has pledged a crackdown on crime. 'The government cannot keep control of foreign criminals entering the country and we are the easy target,' said Hudorovich.

A recent survey found that 68 per cent of respondents wanted all Italy's Gypsies expelled, while another poll, commissioned by newspaper La Repubblica, discovered that 77 per cent now want all unauthorised camps demolished.

In Testaccio, the Gypsies gradually formed bonds with locals, coming to be accepted. But the new ugly mood in Rome was apparent even prior to the forced eviction. 'Even with the new atmosphere we continued to be on good terms with locals,' said Sonia, 43, 'but outside the area people began to shout "Ugly Gypsy" at me.' Elsewhere in Rome there have been reports of petrol bombs being hurled into camps.

'It's OK for the men to go around,' said Alessandro, 'but because of their traditional long dresses we are afraid to be in public with our wives.'

For the children, it has been a bemusing and painful experience. The police arrived in Testaccio on the last day of the school term and were persuaded to give a stay of execution until the children returned from school. 'Our friends did not change their views towards us, and came along with teachers to say goodbye when we were evicted,' said Isacco, 13.

Then the group drove out of the centre of Rome to a new, temporary site located in a field near Rome's Tor Vergata university campus. Hudorovich said none of the men in the camp were venturing out to work yet. 'Right now we have the kids to watch and we are staying put to see how we are accepted,' he said.

The signs are not good. The university's rector had one simple reaction: 'It's university property. When will they be evicted?'

Italy: Most want Gypsy camps disbanded, says report

Rome, 9 June (AKI) - Eight out of 10 Italians want Roma Gypsy camps dismantled, according to a survey released on Monday by a leading Italian research institute.

Demos-Coop, an institute that conducts social and political research, interviewed 1300 people across Italy in May. It found almost half of those surveyed were afraid of foreigners and wanted more police on the streets.

Hundreds of people protested in Rome on Sunday after local police dismantled a Roma Gypsy camp in the central area of Testaccio on Friday.

Roma Gypsies interviewed by Adnkronos International (AKI) before they were removed from Testaccio said they were being unfairly targeted by the government and being forced to move from their land.

"We are Italian citizens, we want to live like everyone else," one man told AKI. "We have suffered enough and we don't want our children to go through the same," said 'Mike', a Kalderash Roma.

The new Berlusconi government is committed to step up security and keep an electoral pledge to clamp down on illegal immigration and crime, while Rome's mayor has vowed to dismantle illegal Gypsy camps.

One Roma Gypsy, facing eviction on Friday, told AKI: "We want to live in a house like everyone else."

"We can afford rent, if they want us to pay, we can, we have no problem, but they keep promising us housing and nothing happens," said the woman.

According to the Roma interviewed and experts on the matter, Italians will not rent or sell land to the Roma Gypsies.

Police in riot gear waited at the entrance of the Testaccio camp on Friday and later escorted families in a convoy of caravans to Tor Vergata, on the eastern outskirts of Rome.

Many of the children attended school in Testaccio and families claimed it would be difficult for the children to attend if they were moved outside the city centre where they had lived for almost 20 years.

The dismantled camp had housed 150 people, including 50 children. Several told AKI they were all Italian citizens and had lived in the neighbourhood since 1989.

In an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI) Karen Bermann, an American professor from Iowa State University, spoke to AKI about the widespread discrimination and the unfair treatment the Roma Gypsies face.

Bermann said they had been moved from nearby Campo Boario, where they had lived legally for about 20 years, while they waited for better accommodation, promised by the city government.

"About two and a half years ago, city authorities went to them and told them they needed the space," Bermann told AKI.

"The city said they would have another place to live, and that it would be in the zone of Testaccio, because the children go to school there.

"But (they said) we will in no way evict you until a mutually satisfactory location has been found."

Bermann claims to have a copy of the letter sent by the city government.

"The promise was not kept, and when the day came, the city came with police and told them it was time to go," she told AKI.

Bermann, from Iowa State University, works with Laboratorio Architettura Nomade, studies the living conditions of Roma Gypsy settlements in Rome, as part of an EU-Roma project.

The Gypsies were relocated from Testaccio to an area of land belonging to the University of Rome - Tor Vergata.

On Monday, the university's chancellor said that the government must act quickly to resolve the situation of the Roma, so the area they occupy can be used by students.

"The university reserves the right to protect its interests and assets of whom it owns," said chancellor Alessandro Finazzi Agro.

Tens of thousands of Roma Gypsies have entered Italy in the past few years since Slovakia and Romania joined the European Union, and they are blamed by many Italians for a recent rise in crime rates.

Many Roma Gypsies come from Romania and of the 150,000 Roma gypsies who live in Italy, about 70,000 have Italian citizenship.

Pub anti-traveller sign removed

BBC News

A senior police officer has raised concerns about a "bigoted and unpleasant" sign banning travellers from entering a pub.

North Wales Police assistant chief constable Ian Shannon was on a licensing visit when he saw the notice.

Writing in his blog, Mr Shannon said it was worrying that the owner did not recognise the sign was inappropriate.

The matter was reported to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the sign has been removed.

Mr Shannon did not name the venue, but said it was in the force's eastern division, which covers Flintshire and Wrexham.

He wrote: "I was on patrol with a neighbourhood officer on our eastern division and made a licensing visit to a pub and was greeted by a sign on the door saying 'Polite notice- positively no travellers'.

"For starters this hardly seemed polite - bigoted and unpleasant is closer to the truth.

"The fact that the pub manager and others did not recognise this is worrying."

Mr Shannon mentioned the outbreak of violence against travellers and Gypsies in Italy which has been in the news recently.

He commented: "Whilst I do not suggest that the extreme violence that has manifested itself in Italy is coming to north Wales we cannot complacently believe that the prejudice that underlies the violence is not lurking in the background here."

The politics of fear return to Italy

From The Times
May 29, 2008
Richard Owen

Immigrants are under attack from the resurgent Right - and even from vigilante mobs.

Is Italy succumbing to a wave of racism and xenophobia under its new centre-right Government? To Senada Salkanovic it looks that way: as she cuddles her daughter Brenda, 7, on the step of her shack at a Gypsy camp on Via Casilina, on the eastern outskirts of Rome, she wonders where she and her six children will go when the bulldozers arrive.

The rubbish-strewn camp, consisting of wood and corrugated-iron cabins and dilapidated caravans, sits next to a disused airfield and is due for demolition as part of a new crackdown on illegal immigration and crime. Already nearly 40 huts have been dismantled, and 150 of the camp's 800 inhabitants have left.

“Where are we supposed to go?” asks Senada, who came to Italy from the former Yugoslavia 20 years ago. Her makeshift home, equipped with cupboards, a sink and a stove, is neat and well kept, in contrast to the dusty squalor outside. “They say we are all thieves, but I work as a cleaner.”

“This Government is stoking up fear,” says Najo Adzovic, her husband. “Most people in this camp are refugees from crises in the Balkans. We are used as scapegoats when what we need are jobs, housing and status. We need to find our voice.”

Across town, at another Roma camp made of converted containers next to a bus depot in the southwestern suburb of Magliana, I find Riccardo Di Segni, the Chief Rabbi of Rome, talking to Hanifa Rustic, an elderly Bosnian who tells him that she came to Italy at the age of 13, fleeing pro-Nazi Croatian Fascists in an earlier era of intolerance.

“There are alarming signs of racism in Italy today,” says Di Segni, who is visiting the camp to express Jewish solidarity. Jews and Gypsies both ended up in Hitler's concentration camps, he points out. “We have to be on the alert, not only because of what is happening but because of what could happen. First one group is singled out, then another. This must be stopped now.”

“We are treated like criminals even though most Roma people are honest,” says Mioara Miclescu, a Romanian at the Magliana camp who runs a laundry employing Roma women. “We are living in fear.”

Many illegal immigrants are not the muggers and pickpockets of popular nightmare but badanti - cleaners and carers for the elderly who cannot obtain residence permits because of bureaucratic obstacles.

The plight of Italy's Roma population made headlines two weeks ago when youths on motorcycles and scooters hurled Molotov cocktails into a nomad camp at Ponticelli, outside Naples, a city brought to its knees by the unresolved problem of how to dispose of its rubbish. Smoke from the burning camp joined that already rising from mountains of rubbish set on fire by desperate locals.

The Naples arson attacks - apparently co-ordinated by clans of the Camorra, the Naples Mafia, which is also behind the rubbish problem - were sparked by an alleged attempt by a teenage Roma girl to abduct a baby from a flat near the camp. When the new Cabinet of Silvio Berlusconi, who won a sweeping election victory last month, met in Naples last week, one of the provisions in its emergency decree on crime and immigration was the arrest of Gypsies who use children to steal or beg.

The Berlusconi coalition combines his Forza Italia with the anti-immigrant Northern League and the “post-Fascist” Alleanza Nazionale. All agree with Berlusconi that “Italians have the right not to live in fear” - which means targeting those who make Italians afraid.

Illegal immigration is about to become a crime for the first time, punishable by up to four years in prison, with new detention centres to hold clandestini prior to their expulsion. Another measure, aimed at the thousands of Romanians who have poured into Italy since Romania joined the EU, states that EU citizens will be expelled if they cannot show that they have the “economic resources” to stay for longer than three months. Vigilante “neighbourhood patrols” have sprung up in many Italian towns, and mayors are being given special powers to “ensure public safety”.

In Rome, where the election of Gianni Alemanno of Alleanza Nazionale a month ago was greeted by Fascist salutes from some supporters and cries of “Duce, Duce”, there were clashes on Tuesday between extreme Left and extreme Right supporters at Rome University. Last weekend masked youths went on the rampage in the hitherto peaceful and trendy multiracial quarter of Pigneto, smashing the windows of Asian businesses and beating up Indian and Bangladeshi shopkeepers. The pretext was an allegation that one of the shopkeepers was harbouring a North African who had stolen a purse, but witnesses had no doubt that this was a racist attack.

Kabir Humayun, a Bangladeshi shopkeeper, said; “I'm terrified that it will happen again. I'm worried for my wife and children.”

“Where will this all end?” asked Islam Serajul, whose launderette-cum-phone centre was trashed. “And why now? I have been here six years with no problems.”

(MORE)

Italy’s Unwanted

With anti-immigrant violence rising, Amnesty International condemns Rome's new 'climate of discrimination.'

By Barbie Nadeau Newsweek Web Exclusive
May 28, 2008 Updated: 6:18 p.m. ET May 28, 2008

The Pigneto neighborhood is one of the most culturally diverse in Rome. City residents consider it bohemian and flock to its ethnic restaurants and quaint stores. But last weekend the trendiness turned to ugliness when a group of around 20 balaclava-clad men, some wearing bandannas with swastikas, demolished shops and beat up non-Italian shopkeepers—mostly Chinese, Indian and Bangladeshi—with lead pipes and baseball bats. CCTV footage captured much of the violence, and residents reported that the gangs chanted "Get out, bastard foreigners."

Xenophobia is hardly new to Europe. But blatant hostility toward immigrants has taken a nastier turn in Italy since Silvio Berlusconi's rightist government took power last month. Amnesty International, in a report released Wednesday, warns that Italy's new "climate of discrimination" is a dangerous trend, encouraged by the country's ruling political parties. "We are facing a wave of racism affecting all immigrants in Italy, including those who are documented," Daniela Carboni of Amnesty International's Italian division told a press conference after the report was released. "The erosion of everyone's rights threatens to turn Italy into a dangerous country, currently for Roma [sometimes called gypsies] and Romanians and in the future potentially for all of us."

The first violent incident took place on May 1 in the northern city of Verona, when 29-year-old Nicola Tommasoli (a Jew of Romanian descent) was beaten into a coma. Tommasoli eventually died of his injuries, and five members of a neo-Nazi gang called the Veneto Skinhead Front were arrested in connection with the assault. And while no one is suggesting any official sanctioning of the beating, Flavio Tosi, the mayor of Verona, is a member of the extreme right Northern League, which repeatedly and publicly calls for violence against immigrants and socialists. (Tosi has since criticized the attack, saying that Verona "is not a city of neofascists and it does not deserve this shameful label.") Nor are these hate crimes confined to the right. A week later in Turin, during a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel, a group of left-wing activists burned the Israeli flag and attacked some Jewish members of the celebrating crowd.

(MORE)

The Italian schoolchildren's drawings which illustrate a chilling hatred for Roma gypsies

The colours are bold and the lines simple, a typical drawing by a nine-year-old.

But the sentiments it reveals are shocking, a glimpse of the xenophobia creeping across Italy.

The picture is one of a number drawn by youngsters at a school outside Naples depicting firebomb attacks on a nearby Roma gipsy camp. Other children at the school exposed their hatred of the immigrants in written work.

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Opposition leader denounces attacks on Gypsy camps as gov't readies crime crackdown

ROME: Italy's top opposition leader on Monday denounced attacks on Gypsy camps, as Premier Silvio Berlusconi's new government prepared a crackdown on immigration and the European Parliament agreed to a debate on how Gypsies are treated in Italy.

Center-left leader Walter Veltroni, who lost to Berlusconi last month in elections, urged the government to balance security concerns with human rights.

Last week, attackers set fire to shacks where Gypsies lived on the outskirts of Naples, following an alleged attempt by a Gypsy youth to kidnap a baby from a home in a Naples suburb. The camps were evacuated.

There have been increasing calls by conservative politicians for harsher measures against foreigners in Italy. Surveys in the runup to the parliamentary elections that swept Berlusconi and right-wing allies into power indicated that many Italians blame immigrants for crime.

Berlusconi will lead a Cabinet meeting in Naples on Wednesday. Among measures expected to be decided at the meeting is a crackdown on illegal immigration and on foreigners who commit crimes.

(MORE)

UN Dodges Gypsy Questions as Camps in Naples Burn in Seeming Blind-Spot

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, May 19 -- Gypsies and immigrants were attacked last week in Naples and elsewhere in Italy, and apparently no part of the UN system had anything to say about it. On May 16 at the UN's noon briefing, Inner City Press asked about " reports of mass arrests and also violence against immigrants in Italy, and in Naples, there was mob violence, and the Government has started deporting people very quickly. Has anyone in the UN system had anything to say about this?"

Ban Ki-moon's Spokesperson Michele Montas replied, "No, not yet." But as Friday ended, there was still no comment. Over the weekend, the Spokesperson was quoted by UN News that Ban would go to Myanmar, then the Spokesperson's office demanded that UN News Service take down the article. Still no word on the burning of homes around Naples, nor the mass deportations. Nor on Monday. What gives?

The UN has been the venue of talks about the rights of gypsies, Roma and Sinti. Inner City Press has interviewed top officials of the UN's refugee agency, who said they are constantly monitoring and speaking out on attacks on immigrants. Why nothing on this one?

A month after Ban Ki-moon became Secretary-General, a group of Roma and Sinti came to the UN, including the Association of Roma in Poland, the Kiev-based International Charitable Organization of Roma Women Fund, the Budapest-based European Roma Rights Center, the Council of NGOs of the Slovak Romani Communities, and the Committee for the Compensation for the Romani Holocaust.

Inner City Press asked what they would like the UN to do, and what they knew of Ban Ki-moon's position. Video here. In response, Romani Rose summarized the petition and requests the delegation was delivering, along with a book describing the "horrifying" refugee camps for Roma, including Plemetina, run by the UN in the Mitrovica region of Kosovo. The next day, Inner City Press asked Ban Ki-moon's spokeswoman for his position on the Roma petition. She said she couldn't yet say, they haven't received it. Video here. Is it still somehow missing?

Or could the UN be running scared, of criticizing certain countries? Italy's Berlusconi government has already bristled at a critique from Spain. Still, the UN Secretariat routinely expresses concern and calls for restraint. Why not here?

El Pais: Naples’ Mafia organizes Gypsy chase

18 May 2008 09:32 FOCUS News Agency

Rome. Italian authorities claim that the mafia group Kamora in Naples have organized the attack with Molotov cocktails against a Roma camp in the Ponticelli suburb and chased away its inhabitants, the Spanish daily El Pais reports.

At the beginning of the week a group of men, women and children attacked the camp, which houses about 100 gypsies from Romania, forcing them to leave the town under police escort. The reason for the attack is an attempt by a young gypsy girl to steal a baby from the home of an Italian woman. Other experts, however, believe that the Kamora group has interests in chasing the gypsies away since they intend to start construction on the same site where the camp was.

68% of Italians want Roma expelled - poll

Tom Kington in Rome
The Guardian
Saturday May 17 2008

· Government accused of stoking racial tension
· Yobs boast of ethnic cleansing after attacks

Sixty-eight per cent of Italians, fuelled by often inflammatory attacks by the new rightwing government, want to see all of the country's 150,000 Gypsies, many of them Italian citizens, expelled, according to an opinion poll.

The survey, published as mobs in Naples burned down Gypsy camps this week, revealed that the majority also wanted all Gypsy camps in Italy to be demolished .

About 70,000 Gypsies in Italy hold Italian passports, including about 30,000 descended from 15th-century Gypsy settlers in the country. The remainder have arrived since, many fleeing the Balkans during the 1990s.

Another 10,000 Gypsies came from Romania after it joined the European Union in January 2007, according to an Italian human rights organisation, EveryOne, part of the approximately half million Romanians believed to be in Italy.

Romanians were among the 268 immigrants rounded up in a nationwide police crackdown on prostitution and drug dealing this week, after new prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's likening of foreign criminals to "an army of evil".

But Romanian officials have sought to distinguish between the Romanians and Romanian Gypsies entering Italy.

Flavio Tosi, the mayor of Verona and a member of the anti-immigrant Northern League party, said his city had the biggest Romanian community in Italy, 7,000 strong, "working as builders, artisans and domestics. And they themselves say the Roma are a problem," he said.

In a second poll, 81% of Italian respondents said they found all Gypsies, Romanian or not, "barely likeable or not likeable at all", a greater number than the 64% who said they felt the same way about non-Gypsy Romanians.

Young Neapolitans who threw Molotov cocktails into a Naples Gypsy camp this week, after a girl was accused of trying to abduct a baby, bragged that they were undertaking "ethnic cleansing". A UN spokeswoman compared the scenes to the forced migration of Gypsies from the Balkans. "We never thought we'd see such images in Italy," said Laura Boldrini.

"This hostility is a result of the generally inflammatory language of the current government, as well as the previous one," said EveryOne director Matteo Pegoraro. "Italian football stars at Milan teams assumed to have Gypsy heritage, such as Andrea Pirlo, are now also the subject of threatening chants."

Commenting on the attacks in Naples, Umberto Bossi, the head of the Northern League party said: "People are going to do what the political class cannot."

The defence minister, Ignazio La Russa, said yesterday he would consider deploying soldiers to Italian streets to help fight crime, while a group of Bosnian Gypsies in Rome said they were mounting night guard patrols of their camp to defend against vigilante attacks.

Europe's leading human rights watchdog urged the government to prevent attacks on Roma communities. Christian Strohal, head of Vienna-based OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, said: "The current stigmatisation of Roma and immigrant groups in Italy is dangerous as it ... increases the potential for violence."

· This article was amended after publication on Saturday May 17 2008 to correct the figure in the eighth paragraph from 61% to 64%.

Anti-Gypsy sentiments out of control in Italy

by EveryOne Group
Friday May 16th, 2008 2:40 PM

The case of Angelica, the Roma teenager accused of attempting to kidnap a six-month-old baby in Naples, in the Ponticelli district, is a hoax.

Anti-gypsy sentiments out of control in Italy. The truth about the “kidnapping” in Naples.

The case of Angelica, the Roma teenager accused of attempting to kidnap a six-month-old baby in Naples, in the Ponticelli district, is a hoax. The version given by authorities and media is false. EveryOne Group has made an in-depth investigation into the episode that has triggered off an authentic “gypsy hunt” - which from Naples has spread like wildfire to the rest of Italy. “Right from the beginning the dynamics of the kidnapping appeared unconvincing, because those who are familiar with the building the crime supposedly took place in, know that it is practically inaccessible, both because of the gate and because of the careful surveillance by the building’s tenants,” say the leaders of EveryOne, Roberto Malini, Matteo Pegoraro and Dario Picciau.

“There are also discrepancies between the versions given by Mrs Martinelli, her father and the neighbours. When questioned the woman first declared that the door to her apartment had been forced, later she remembered leaving it open. After realising that the door was open, she went to check the baby’s cot and then returned to the landing where she caught – after at least twenty seconds had gone by – the young Roma girl with the baby in her arms. And not only that: she had time to catch up with her and snatch the baby away from her. Therefore the gypsy girl must have moved in slow motion, enabling the baby’s grandfather, Ciro, to catch up with her on the floor below, grab her and slap her. Some of the neighbours told the authorities that Angelica was still carrying the baby when they blocked her. And that’s not all, because in the days before this episode, the tenants of the building had got together several times with one item on their agenda: how to get rid of the gypsy families in the Ponticelli camp”. After careful analysis, EveryOne Group – who are able to count on activists and local organizations – carried out further checks, both on site and at the jail, where an official, after listening to the evidence that would clear the so-called child kidnapper admitted: “You’re right, it’s not easy for us either, because this case is not very different from many others but someone has transformed it into a nationwide case”.

The tenants of Ponticelli have closed ranks: they don’t want the Roma there any more. Some people, however, show signs of having a conscience, but are frightened to speak up, because a lot of pressure is being put on them and it is too dangerous to go against the Ponticelli “committee”. Angelica actually knew one of the families that live in Via Principe di Napoli, where the episode took place,” continue the activists of EveryOne. “She pressed the entryphone button and was spotted by some tenants. A few seconds later the trap was sprung and the fury of the tenants was unleashed on her – they caught up with her in the street, grabbed her, slapped her and handed her over to the police. There are witnesses who know the truth and two of them are willing to talk to the magistrate. It is important that Rosa Mazzei, the lawyer defending the Roma girl, does not allow herself to be intimidated and ensures the truth comes out in court.
One of the activists from Naples, however, imagines that her line of defence will be that of admitting to the theft but not to the kidnapping”. The consequences of the Ponticelli case (with the media reporting it in newspapers and TV networks) have been very serious - a clear indication of why it is necessary to abandon racism and xenophobia and rediscover the path of human rights “It is important that the local human rights organizations now watch over Angelica’s well-being, as she is subjected to intolerable and terrible pressure. Safeguarding the girl’s well-being means safeguarding the truth of the Ponticelli case, which is the tragic truth of yet another injustice, false accusations, other inhuman violence the Roma people in Italy are subjected to - people already hit by marginalization and segregation, persecuted by unjust measures”.

The activists of EveryOne conclude with some considerations that should lead people to reflect: “For years we have been sounding the alarm against the racist campaign underway in Italy. Thanks to the support of transnational political parties active in the field of human and civil rights we have obtained European Parliament Resolutions and guidelines from the United Nations which has reprimanded Italy for its racist policies. The Roma in Italy are not criminals, they are families living in conditions of great hardship. Out of the 150,000 “gypsies” present in our country, 90,000 are children. The average life expectancy of the Roma in Italy is 35 years, compared to the 80 years of the other citizens.

Infant mortality among Roma children is 15 times higher than that of other children. These figures are the result of persecution. As for crimes committed by Roma citizens, the figures are of little significance, as may be seen from the data published by the Ministry of the Interior, and assaults by Roma on Italian citizens are practically inexistent. The Giovanna Reggiani case was yet another deception, because the alleged murderer, Romulus Mailat is not a Roma at all, he is a Romanian of the Bunjas ethnic group which has no connection to the “gypsy” population. We informed the investigators and the media of this at the time but our dossier was ignored. Racism is a convenient decoy for a swarm of people, political parties, media, and organized crime, with an annual turnover of many billions of euros. On this point, we wish to point out that Roma citizens involved in crime are nearly always in the pay of the Italian Mafia, which – due to the conditions of hardship and segregation the “gypsies” live in – has reduced them to slavery. The authorities are aware of that, so are the politicians - and it is about time all Italians became aware of it”.

info [at] everyonegroup.com
http://www.everyonegroup.com

Gypsy camps destroyed as Italian intolerance flares

Richard Owen, Naples May 17, 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Times

Roma gypsy camp set on fire in Italy after kidnapping claims

ROME, May 14 (RIA Novosti) - A crowd of angry Italians set a gypsy camp on fire in the outskirts of Naples following reports of an alleged kidnapping by a Roma girl, national media reported on Wednesday.

According to eyewitnesses, a crowd of several dozen people threw stones and Molotov cocktails at the Roma camp, forcing its inhabitants to seek police protection at a larger encampment.

The violence broke out following the alleged kidnapping of a local child by a 16-year-old Roma girl. According to the child's mother, the Roma girl entered the house while the door was unlocked, picked up the child and tried to escape, but was subsequently caught.

Italians blame immigrants, particularly the Romanian community, many of whom are Roma gypsies, for rising crime in the country.

The Roma camp in Naples was previously razed to the ground in 1999 when skinheads attacked the camp after a Roma driver hit two females riding on a scooter.

According to different estimates between 300,000 and 500,000 Romanians currently live in Italy, and their numbers have dramatically increased following Romania's entry to the EU.

In the most recent incident, Italy expelled 210 Romanian nationals with criminal records in an attempt to ease anti-Romanian feeling following the murder of the wife of a top navy commander near a Roma gypsy camp on the outskirts of Rome in November 2007.