UN independent experts criticize Italy's fingerprinting of Gypsies

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

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

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

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

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

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Fingerprint all Italians, minister says: press

11 July 2008, 13:22 CET

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

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

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

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Hundreds protest Roma fingerprint plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Agence France-Presse 2008

EU lawmakers scold Italy for Gypsy fingerprinting

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

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

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

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

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

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Italian-EU Leaders Discuss Gypsy Issue

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

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

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

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

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

Italy assailed over plan to fingerprint Gypsies

IHT

By Elisabetta Povoledo
Published: July 3, 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Italy and gypsies: thumbs down

From THE TIMES

Italy must abandon plans to fingerprint all gypsies in the country

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Italy gypsies find echoes of Nazism in fingerprinting move

From THE TIMES
Richard Owen in Verona

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TRAVELLING PEOPLE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Italy: Court inflames Roma discrimination row

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Italian plan to fingerprint Roma gypsy children in bid to end begging sparks uproar

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 10:57 PM on 26th June 2008

Italy has announced controversial plans to fingerprint thousands of Roma gipsy children in a bid to clamp down on street begging.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said mass fingerprinting by police would allow them to identify those caught begging instead of going to school.

Their parents would then be questioned and risk losing custody of them.

Mr Maroni said this would protect the children by deterring families who sent them out to accost passers-by. But the scheme, which will also involve fingerprinting all adult Roma, was immediately criticised as unacceptable discrimination and 'ethnic screening'.

In recent months, there has been an angry backlash against Roma in Italy, with petrol bombs thrown at a camp in Naples and sporadic vigilante attacks.

Many Italians blame gipsies for the rising crime rate and Silvio Berlusconi's new government has launched a tough crackdown on crime and immigration.

There are estimated to be around 160,000 Roma gipsies in Italy, often living in appalling conditions in makeshift camps with little basic sanitation.

Officials plan to bulldoze all illegal camps and a recent opinion poll found that 68 per cent of Italians want all gipsies expelled.

Vincenzo Spadafora, of the UN children's organisation Unicef, said of the fingerprints plan: 'If this is being brought in to protect the rights of Roma children, Italian children should also be fingerprinted to protect them as well.

'Most importantly, children should not be treated as adults.' Opposition MP Rosa Bindi said: 'The minister may deny it's ethnic screening, but it is frankly unacceptable.'

Jewish groups also attacked the plan. Amos Luzzarto, a former leader of Italy's Jewish community, said: 'There is a latent form of racism which manifests itself in cycles in Italian culture.

'I remember as a child being stamped and tagged as a Jew and as such could not be trusted.

'I think Italy is forgetting its past here. The racism of this initiative is evident and unacceptable. This is not a new form of fascism - this is racism.'

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.

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.”

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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.

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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.

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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