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.'

Coastside Film Society screens a fresh and vibrant musical surprise, Friday

Feature: The Crazy Stranger (Gadjo Dilo)
French and Romany with English subtitles

Tony Gatlif is a wonderful French/Roma (Gypsy) film maker. When the Film Society screened “Latcho Drom”, Gatlif’s documentary about the many styles of gypsy music in Jan 2007, the audience asked for more. This month they are going to give HMB more.

On June 20th The Film Society is screening one of Tony’s feature films about the Roma (Gypsy) life. Gadjo Dilo (The Crazy Stranger) follows a young Frenchman who finds himself living among Romanian gypsies. This plot about a stranger living among the Rom gives Gatlif the chance to explore the passions of Rom culture, music, and mores in a way that he could not do using the documentary format of Latcho Drom.

This story touches upon adult themes and the Rom actors are not afraid of using authentically salty language. So the Film Society was a little concerned about screening it at their usual venue at the Methodist Sanctuary. So they are moving this screening this month down the road to their our old haunt South of town at the Depot at Johnson House.

When: Friday June 20th at 8:00 pm
Where: The Depot at Johnson House, Half Moon Bay 110 Higgins Purisima Road
Donation: $6.00

“A fresh and vibrant surprise. A film that pulsates with consistent energy, humor and an unexpected pathos. There have not been many films that succeed in capturing the reality of the gypsy life, and Gadjo Dilo works beautifully. It’s a classic fish-out-of-water story which miraculously evolves into a boisterous, sometimes comic look at a particular Romanian tribe.” Paul Fischer Urban Cinefile

Director Tony Gatlif’s award-winning film about a young French man trying to come to terms with his father’s death. Searching for clues about his distant Dad he travels to Romania hoping to meet the reclusive Nora Luca, a legendary gypsy singer whose music was his father’s greatest obsession.

In hopes of tracking down the diva he ingratiates himself with the local Gypsy community. Initially suspicious of the stranger, the villagers gradually come to accept him. He, in turn, falls in love with beautiful, spirited gypsy dancer. The film’s complex story line weaves around the couple’s affair, revealing the rich world of gypsy custom and musical culture.

“The performances are all startling, from the superb work of French actor Romain Duris, the magnificent Isidor Serban, who is hypnotic as the elderly gypsy leader with a lust for life, and the seductive, earthy and foul-mouthed Rona Hartner who lights up the screen as the sensuous Sabrina. All in all, an exhilarating experience not to be missed.” Paul Fischer

* Winner of the Caesar Prize for Best Music for a Film *

For more info and a streaming video trailer see: www.HMBFilm.org

Warning: This film features adult themes and language

Lives of gipsy travellers celebrated by museum

A CELEBRATION of gipsy traveller heritage and culture is being held for one day only at the County Museum.

The special event, called "Gipsies - who are ya!"on Sunday has been put together by the Worcestershire County Council Museum Service and the Worcestershire Gypsy Roma and Traveller Partnership.

Visitors will be able to see one of the country's largest displays of gipsy caravans, meet wagon painters and restorers, watch musical entertainment, displays of dance and demonstrations of traditional crafts.

Sue Pope, the county council's education and outreach officer, said: "This is a really exciting event where we have opened our doors and embraced the wider community and partners to jointly organise something that celebrates the lives and achievements of Worcestershire's gipsy, Roma and travelling communities."

Sergeant Allie Webster, gipsy and traveller diversity adviser for West Mercia police, said: "By working together the force can learn more about the gipsy and traveller communities and can help promote wider tolerance and understanding within non-traveller communities.

The event will take place between 11am and 5pm. Normal admission prices to the museum apply. For more information e-mail Sue Pope at spope@worcestershire.gov.

advertisementuk or telephone the County Museum on 01299 250416.

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.

Nebraska Debut Author, Christine Harris, Publishes The Gypsy in My Soul

LINCOLN, Neb.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The dark history of WWII provides a riveting backdrop for the story of a young Gypsy woman’s fight for life.

In her debut novel, The Gypsy in My Soul, Lincoln NE’s Christine Harris brings to life the persecution of the Gypsies (now known as Roma or Romani) through the eyes of a woman desperately seeking the truth about her grandmother against the backdrop of Cold-War Eastern Europe.

“As many as half a million Roma were displaced and murdered by the Nazis and their allies during World War II,” Harris said. “I’ve tried to make the narrative real and compelling by focusing on the story of one woman’s struggle to survive and another woman’s quest to learn the truth.”

In 1943 Warsaw, Sasha Karmazin is wrenched from her family by the Gestapo and sent to Auschwitz, Europe’s largest Nazi concentration camp. In 1984 Nebraska, her granddaughter, Beth Karmazin learns that her grandmother, presumed dead, is accused of having taken a Nazi lover and collaborated with the Nazi’s while at Auschwitz. Beth’s commitment to prove her grandmother’s innocence takes her on a three-year quest deep into Communist-controlled Eastern Europe at the height of the Cold War, a journey that changes not only her life, but also the course of history.

Seamlessly moving from the turbulent 1940s to the 1980s, The Gypsy in My Soul creates a riveting portrait of one woman’s devotion to family—and to uncovering the truth.

Author Christine Harris was born in Norfolk, NE, but spent several years in Germany as the daughter of U.S. army officer and traveled extensively throughout Europe and Asia during her business career as vice president of human resource for Harris Laboratories. She has received numerous professional and civic awards, as well as three gubernatorial appointments. Ms. Harris is active on community boards and committees, including Cedars Youth Services, the University of Nebraska Foundation, the Humanities Council and the State of Nebraska Nominating Commission for Juvenile Judges.

Ms. Harris has a degree in secondary education and history from the University of Nebraska and lives with her husband, Ron, in Lincoln, Nebraska.

The Gypsy in My Soul, a historical fiction novel, is published by iUniverse and is available for $17.95 at www.authorchristineharris.com or Barnes & Noble online. The Gypsy in My Soul is 274 pages. It was released in March 2008, ISBN # 0-595-47434-9.

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)

Museum celebrates Gypsy heritage

A CELEBRATION of Gypsy traveller heritage and culture is set to take place at Worcestershire County Council's County Museum in Hartlebury next month.

The special event, on June 15, has been put together by the county museum service and the Worcestershire Gypsy Roma and Traveller Partnership, which includes representatives of West Mercia Constabulary, Rooftop Housing, the Community Housing Group, Worcestershire Diocese and the West Midlands Traveller Education Service, pupils from Stourport high and Birchen Coppice, Stourport and Hartlebury primary Schools.

Visitors to the County Museum will be able to see and do the following things as part of the Gypsies - Who Are Ya! event:

See one of the largest displays in the country of Gypsy Vardos, including the recently-restored Esmerelda - one of the finest wagons on display

Meet Mary Horner, author and editor of the Romany Road journal and history society

Stalls to promote the partner organisations

Dance and exhibition displays by pupils from Stourport High School

Displays and demonstrations of traditional crafts

Meet wagon painters and restorers to find out how it is done

Have a their family photograph taken with wagons

Musical entertainment

Sue Pope, the county council's education and outreach officer, said: "This is a really exciting event, where we have opened our doors and embraced the wider community and partners to jointly organise something that celebrates the lives and achievements of Worcestershire's Gypsy, Roma and travelling communities.

advertisement"We are looking forward to welcoming plenty of people to the forthcoming one-day event."

People wanting to find out more should call Sue Pope, on spope@worcestershire.gov.uk or call the County Museum, on 01299 250416.

There wil be admission costs.

12:17 pm Saturday 24th May 2008 - The Shuttle

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%.

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.

Roma MEP on her people’s plight in EU

Written by Robert Hodgson

Wednesday, 16 April 2008

The right fight

International Roma Day last Tuesday saw celebrations of Roma culture around the world. At the same time, many NGOs, politicians and representatives of Roma communities across Europe discussed what is being done to address the seemingly intractable problems of social exclusion and racism. The Budapest Times spoke to Lívia Járóka, who in 2004 became only the second Roma to be elected to the European Parliament.


The situation

The plight of the Roma people in Central Europe deteriorated rapidly after the change of system in 1989-90, when 50% of Hungarian Roma lost their jobs. Estimates of the number of Roma in the European Union vary from nine to fifteen million, but it is generally accepted that there are at least ten million. It is difficult to get a precise figure as people often do not declare their ethnicity. In Hungary the 2001 census suggested 190,000; the real figure is believed to be over half a million, or at least 5% of the population.

Many of Hungary’s Roma live in ghettos on the edge of towns and villages, and the level of segregation has – in some places – reached that of a sort of apartheid. Many communities lack even basic utilities such as sewerage and electricity. Unemployment among the Roma is estimated to be around 80%. Life expectancy for Roma is ten years lower than the Hungarian average.

Fight from within

Lívia Járóka, 33, grew up in Sopron near the Austrian border. After studying sociology on a Soros Foundation scholarship, she turned to politics and has made it her mission to push for reintegration of Roma into mainstream society. She became Hungary’s first Roma MEP in 2004 on a centre-right Fidesz party ticket.

Járóka said she found most European politicians to be ignorant of the issues affecting the EU’s Roma citizens when she arrived Brussels. Since the accession of 12 new member states in 2004 and 2007, the minority has increased such that it is now larger than the population of each of the EU’s 14 smallest countries – too large to be ignored.

“I knew I had to bring the Roma issue to the European agenda. I wanted to demystify what it means to be Roma,” said Járóka. She was aware of a paternalistic attitude to Roma during the pre-2004 accession talks. “Many people had a very prejudiced idea about how they live and what they want,” she said, adding that there had been very little real research into the situation. “Politicians were not ready to see this issue as a complex question. They try to change living conditions, or education, or healthcare, but they never see that it is a complex combination of all these, especially in totally segregated areas.”

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Roma reaching Roma Gypsies key for 10-million plus worldwide

BUZAU, Romania (BP)—Forfeiting a starting position on a professional soccer team didn’t make sense to the parents of Mihail Stoica, a talented young Roma Gypsy believer from the mountains near Buzau, Romania.

For the Roma—an ostracized, poverty-stricken people group dispersed throughout the world—Stoica’s chance to rise above his status was a rare opportunity too good to pass up. Yet, the influence of the professional sports lifestyle came at too great a cost to stay in the game.

In a squatter village near Medgidia, Romania, a group of Roma children play near the railroad tracks. A Roma Bible study meets each week in this village.
“I was playing soccer, my personal idol,” Stoica said. “I didn’t think it was a sin to play soccer, but then I realized the price that came with that. So I left playing soccer and just followed Jesus Christ.”

In the summer of 2006, Stoica obeyed God by joining eight other young believers from across Romania to travel to a foreign city to tell others about Jesus Christ. These growing disciples are the result of the International Mission Board’s most developed work with the Roma.

The result of Roma reaching Roma is a key hope for other Gypsy work that spans throughout Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East and, more recently, into South America.

The Roma people made their way to Europe in the 14th century after being evicted from their native India. As early as the 1500s, many were removed from parts of Europe and relocated to South America.

Others traveled into parts of Northern Africa and the Middle East by force or by choice.

Through these staggered diasporas, the Roma have put down roots among people who despise them not only for their dark skin, but also for their poverty, illiteracy and poor living conditions.

Wherever their travels take them, Gypsies tend to adopt the local language and beliefs while still maintaining their own. The Romani language, strong family relationships and lifestyle characteristics unite the 10 million-plus Roma worldwide.

Best known for their wagons, fortune telling, colorful clothing and parties, the Roma are a proud, passionate people who fight against the loss of their culture and family circles.

IMB workers and national partners reach out through literacy education, teaching job skills and using Bible storying to evangelize and disciple new Roma believers.

Today, although this scattered people group may vary in dialect or location, IMB workers are able to minister along family and cultural lines to bring the Roma to Christ and train them to reach their own people—to have their own leaders and missionaries.

“When the Roma begin to do their own evangelism, they begin to cross barriers so quickly,” said Jim Whitley, an IMB worker who recently transferred from Romania to work in South America among the Roma. “A real indigenous church-planting movement. ... [T]hat’s the ultimate goal.”

International Roma Day: Aladár Horváth on reality TV in Hungary

A leading activist denounces ghettos and the media-created ‘exotic trash’ images of Europe's biggest minority of eight million people, who celebrate their day on 8 April.

Sitting down to seltzer water in Aladár Horváth’s dimly lit office by the ‘Keleti Pályaudvar’ metro station in Budapest, I have to rely on a professor to translate what the chair of the Roma Civil Rights Foundation and the Gandhi Public Foundation is saying. His fight is demanding and intense, yet his air is tempered with hospitality and humility. The broad-shouldered activist gives detailed, thoughtful answers, making it easy to see why he was once an advisor to prime minister Peter Medgyessy.

In the last days of János Kádár’s communist regime in 1988, Horváth participated in the Lakitelek meeting of reformists and maverick politicians, considered the starting point of changing the communist regime. The Roma successfully fought alongside a group called ‘The Anti-Ghetto Committee’, one of the first civil rights movements in eastern Europe which paved the way for greater minority freedom. In one case, they fought against the building of a ghetto in Miskolc, the third most populous city of Hungary, where the Roma population is one of the highest in the country. At 29 square meters apiece, the plan for 168 flats with no heating or plumbing promised racial segregation to potential residents with no choice but to live there - 20 kilometres away from the city.

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Faces from the fringe

Green Bay photographer's trip to Slovakia opened her world to plight of Roma 'gypsies'

By Thomas Rozwadowski
trozwado@greenbaypressgazette.com

A year ago, Slovakia was nothing more than a name on a map to Tina Bechtel.

Now the country has faces. Faces that remain nameless, but ones that stared intently while pressed up against the other end of her digital camera because they didn't know what it meant to have their picture taken.

As Bechtel walks through her "Gypsies (Roma) of Slovakia" photo exhibit at the ARTgarage in Green Bay, she points to the face of a young, married woman looking too childlike to be holding her own malnourished baby.

Another is of a father happily embracing his child.

Although they were reluctant to acknowledge her presence, Bechtel began snapping photos of four men standing against a wall and approached them with reserve so they could see the finished product. The man, who had never seen himself in a photo before, graciously requested a picture of his young daughter.

There are the signs of poverty and hospitality Bechtel noted, like the out-of-place satellite dish propped next to hanging laundry, piles of garbage and an outhouse. Or the way several boys began playing a Casio keyboard and dancing spontaneously for her. Or children becoming overjoyed at the sight of visitors in their settlement.

There are the gut-wrenching inequities — most notably, driving back to a hotel in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava and eating a nice dinner after seeing the poverty of the Roma people, better known to Americans as gypsies.

"No running water. No septic. No heat," said Bechtel, a local artist based in Door County. "At the worst one, houses were put together with whatever material they could find.

"I couldn't imagine living there. I don't know how they survive."

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BBC says it has no plans to cut broadcasting to the Gypsy and Traveller community

London, 4.4.2008, 17:05, (Media Network Blog)

According to the Roma Network via Romea.cz, Rokker Radio, the two-hour radio programme established two years ago by the BBC for the Gypsy and Traveller community, is to be axed at the end of April. Romea claims that, as the show prepares to celebrate two years of broadcasting across local BBC radio in the East of England and across the world on the Internet, the BBC has decided not to fund the programme beyond the end of April. However, the BBC Press Office has contacted Media Network to say that this story is incorrect.

The programme began on BBC Three Counties Radio on Romany Nation Day in 2006 and has since grown to broadcast on 6 local radio stations across the East of England. Each Sunday night, between 7 and 9pm it broadcasts to Britain’s 300,000 Gypsies and Travellers, many of whom must drive long distances to hear it because they cannot receive it in their area or listen to it on the Internet.

Over the last two years, BBC Rokker Radio has attempted to address the lack of proper representation of Europe’s largest ethnic minority community in the media in Britain. It has raised issues of importance to the community whilst literally providing a common wavelength through which Gypsy and settled communities can begin to understand one another.

The BBC has sent us the following statement:
“There is no intention to close Rokker Radio. It is true that we have had discussions with the presenter about a range of options for the programme, including whether there might be potential for expanding the range and scope of programming covering these issues - for example by offering programming to other radio stations across the BBC local radio family. We will continue to look at how best we can refresh our coverage and to ensure that we are achieving best value for our listeners, but we can reassure listeners that there is no plan to close the programme down at this time. We are, however, keen to find new ways of reaching underserved communities, including the travelling community.

It’s important to explore options to provide wider and better coverage of the issues and concerns of this community across the whole of England, not just the East. Technology is delivering a wide variety of new ways to deliver content to audiences and we will continue to explore a number of innovative ideas to help give the travelling community a voice and to improve understanding with the settled community of their issues.”

Choreography contest winner borrows from Gypsy culture

Nelly van Bommel walked away with the cash in March 2007 as the clear winner of the Milwaukee Ballet's Genesis Choreography Competition.

Now she's back to claim the other half of her prize: a commission for a new work, which the company will perform on a mixed-rep program Thursday through Sunday at the Pabst Theater.

"O Clemens," her prize-winning octet, was smart, buoyant and elegant, like its accompanying Vivaldi concerto and Pergolesi "Stabat Mater."

Van Bommel, who has her own modern Noa Dance Company in New York and never danced in a ballet troupe, made a dance that showed the dancers' balletic lines to advantage and for the most part kept them comfortably vertical.

The second time around, she would stretch the vocabulary more, but still respect the dancers' training and style.

"It's light, it's dancey," she said of her new work, during a break at the Milwaukee Ballet's Walker's Point studio. "This is a little wilder, I think, than last time, but still very much a piece for them. I probably wouldn't have made it for my dancers.

"The experience last year was good. I learned a lot about the process, and ways to make it more efficient."

Building from a base

Like many modern choreographers, van Bommel has a core of regulars. Their shared history and aesthetic turns dance-making into a collaborative give-and-take over extended periods of time.

Ballet dancers and ballet companies don't work that way.

"Usually, I don't start from the beginning," she said. "I start with a draft and move things around. That can be confusing to dancers. This year I tried to be more clear about that, so they know where we're going."

Van Bommel said some of her 12 dancers worked with her on "O Clemens," and that gave her a head start this year. Instead of standing around waiting for her to dictate steps, they're pitching in some, in the modern-dance way.

"It took a couple of weeks, but now I can take from what they give," she said. "It's like cooking. You take what they give, add spices and shake it up."

Seven Romanian Gypsy songs were their starting point.

The music reflects a long-standing interest in Eastern Europe in general and Gypsy culture in particular.

Van Bommel grew up in France and lived there until moving to New York in 2002. She had some contact with Roma people in France and on trips to the East.

The title of the piece is "Gelem Gelem," after the song a Gypsy congress that convened in London in 1978 adopted as a national anthem.

"Every year, a Gypsy camp formed in our neighborhood," she said. "My mother was a teacher, and sometimes the boys - always boys, never girls - would attend her classes for a month or two before they moved on."

Getting in the mood

In preparing for this piece, she listened to a lot of Roma music and looked at a lot of Roma dancing on video.

"There is this wonderful research tool, now - it's called YouTube," she said. "The girls shake their shoulders a lot. The guys have a lot of percussive footwork. And the movement is always driving down."

Some of that seeped into her new 30-minute ballet, but she does not intend to mount a stylized folk dance.

"I always wanted to use Gypsy music in a way that is not folky," she said. "It's more my fantasy about Gypsies and the Roma diaspora.

"I'm especially interested in the women. In traditional culture, they're subservient until they're married. Then they gain some prominence. I'm interested in how Gypsy women are portrayed in literature. Often, they're like Esmeralda, beautiful and strong. I wanted to explore that, and I have such a female character in the piece."

While the dance hints at characterization, it doesn't tell a story.

Van Bommel is more after the specific moods of the seven songs. Like most Roma tunes, they evoke either sentimental yearning or dancing and partying.

"I want to move between nostalgia and fiesta," the choreographer said.

The music's powerful rhythm posed the biggest challenge. The path of least resistance would be to simply move with the thrust of the beat, complicated and compound as it might be.

"I'm in love with this music," she said.

"It's fun, but it's more than fun. You can't just go with the music, you have to go away from it and come back again. I want the bodies to be strong, strong enough to compete with the music and resist it.

"But sometimes you can't help it, and you're carried away."

A knock-out blow for British racism?

Thought Leader
Tony Jackman

The word is not as incendiary as “kaffir”. It does not offend the ear as would “nigger” or “jewboy”. It is, in fact, a rather beautiful word. But in the United Kingdom, utter the word “gypsy” and rooms go quiet; looks are exchanged, brows furrowed and lips pursed. And arguments rage.

A gypsy is to many an Englishman or -woman what a “kaffir” was to many a white South African or a “nigger” to a Southern plantation owner: one to be marginalised, one presumed lesser than oneself, one who could not be trusted, one best not associated with.

The country that (correctly) had so much to say to South Africans about racism in the apartheid years is yet to address its own attitudes to a marginalised people on its own doorstep: Romany gypsies, more often euphemistically referred to as “travellers”. This moniker will bring an ironic smile to the lips of South Africans who remember how the Nats, in the Eighties, came up with the idiotic “plurals” and the even dafter Afrikaans equivalent, “plurales“, for black South Africans.

Every fight worth fighting needs a catalyst, and the gypsy community in the UK has been presented with the perfect trigger, on a golden platter, for highlighting its own marginalism within that country: a young Romany gypsy boxer, Billy Joe Saunders, has been selected for the British team to the Beijing Olympics. His trainer is Terry Edwards, who guided Amir Khan to his own Olympic glory earlier in the decade.

And he’s apparently a true Romany gypsy, rather than a “diddicoy“, the (offensive?) term used for people in that part of the world who live as gypsies without necessarily being true Romany gypsies.

What a name the lad has. He sounds as though he’s stepped right out of an American trailer park, or he could be the star turn at the Grand Ole Opry. In fact, a trailer park isn’t far from the truth, for many gypsies in the UK live in prefabricated homes set up, often illegally, on informal land. The old, romantic image of gypsies clad in scarves and much jewellery and living in wooden caravans in sylvan glades, treading toadstools underfoot, is only the stuff of fairy tales today.

Billy Joe Saunders now bears on his young shoulders the chance to bring pride and glory to arguably Britain’s most sidelined community, shunned by “proper” Brits as a bunch of inveterate rubbishes, criminals and worse.

When I lived in the south of England, in West Sussex, a clan of travelling gypsies set up camp on a farm near our small town. I’m not going to argue the appropriateness of them settling on land they may not own. What interested me, however, was the reactions of locals to this unwanted community on their doorstep. Their attitudes reminded me so much of racist white South Africans’ attitudes to other races.

They were “those people”, “them”, “not like us”. I remonstrated with a newspaper colleague at the time. But they’re just people, I said. I mean, if you passed a Romany gypsy in the street, you wouldn’t even know it. They aren’t even recognisable by physical characteristics. They’re just people with their own traditions and ways.

Not at all. I was given a stern lecture on why these people were not to be regarded as you would ordinary people. They were morally corrupt, useless, good-for-nothing thieves. To a man, woman and child. And as a group.

I pointed out that to classify an entire group in such terms was virtually the definition of prejudice, but was met with derision. Obviously I had no experience of the gypsy community or I wouldn’t say that, she told me.

Now imagine if you or I were to say the same things about “blacks” or “Jews”? The same people would instantly chide us and correct our racist attitudes. But many Britons simply do not see it in the same way.

Here and there while in the UK I brought up the subject of gypsies with other people, and always I was met with a similar response.

The support of many Britons for the anti-apartheid cause was a superb and hugely helpful thing, and I treasure it, but isn’t it about time that nation addressed its own prejudices towards Romany gypsies? And, for that matter, for “diddicoys“?

Go to the blog entry and comment:
http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/tonyjackman/2008/03/12/a-knock-out-blow-for-british-racism/

Travellers' tales

We need to know who our Gypsy pupils are...

Janette Owen
Tuesday March 11, 2008
The Guardian


In June, schools across the country will have the opportunity to take part in the first Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History Month, aimed at raising awareness and exploring the history, culture and languages of these communities. But the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) hopes that the themed lessons will have an additional impact.
According to the schools minister Lord Adonis, many Gypsy, Roma and Traveller pupils are among the lowest-achieving in our schools and the situation is not improving. Fear of prejudice and bullying has meant that many children and families are too scared to identify themselves, and without that knowledge schools are unable to apply for the extra support and funding that is available to help them.

The DCSF has produced a document, called The Inclusion of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Children and Young People, which aims to persuade schools and local authorities to stamp out prejudice and ensure that the children get the extra support they deserve.

What can governors do to boost this initiative? They need to support the head in identifying which families need help. The guide says: "Schools and local authorities cannot comply with their duties under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 unless they are aware of the ethnicity and cultural diversity of their school population."

It suggests schools try to recruit governors from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller backgrounds. Governors should devise strategies to encourage parents to volunteer, and not feel they lack the skills required.

The vulnerability of these pupils must be recognised in the school's behaviour and anti-bullying policies. According to the guide: "It is equally important for schools to have, within their anti-bullying policy, examples of racist terminology pertinent to Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities."

Heads should provide governors with information on racist incidents at least annually and ideally once a term. Governing bodies are required to inform their local education authority annually of incidents.

Adonis says: "Children from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities should feel safe and cherished in school, and therefore parents and pupils will be proud to identify themselves. Schools now have a duty to promote community cohesion, and this is a real issue for their attention."

The Inclusion of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Children and Young People can be downloaded from the online publications section of teachernet.gov.uk.
Education.governor@guardian.co.uk

How a malicious press and ailing welfare system make new demons

By Torcuil Crichton

SLOUGH IS famous for two things - a damning piece of poetry, "Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough, it isn't fit for humans now", and as the dystopian location for The Office.

Between John Betjeman and David Brent the place doesn't impinge much on the national consciousness but in the past week it has became the setting for a parable about modern Britain. There are only seven basic plot lines, so it's inevitable that this fable relied on an earlier work of fiction.

First the facts - at early dawn on Thursday, January 24, 400 police officers shoulder-charged their way into 17 addresses in Slough and discovered 68 Roma children sleeping within, 10 of whom they took into care.

The media were invited along (well, I wasn't) to record the officers as they carried the poor, pixillated children to apparent safety. The headlines had been written before the first door was smashed down. This was a raid, the police briefed, to rescue gypsy children, who were of Romanian nationality, who had been trafficked into the UK by unscrupulous adults for a life of juvenile crime.

These were, we were told on the front page of the London newspapers, the modern-day Artful Dodgers, trained to deprive you of your mobile phone and wallet quicker than it would take to ask for more gruel.

The story, from then on, was a rewrite of Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist with which, in its musical and televisual style, if not its original literary form, we are all familiar.

We have, incidentally, in these last three sentences slipped into fiction because it emerged later in the week that all but one of the nine children taken into custody has been returned to the Roma community in Slough and none of the 24 adults arrested at the scene has been charged with child-trafficking offences. Some were charged with minor immigration offences and three were charged with handling stolen mobile phones. One, 25-year-old Gheorge Mazarxhes, was jailed for eight weeks after he admitted handling a stolen phone. It looks, at the very least, that there might have been a misunderstanding.

The furious Roma adults in Slough, where there is a long-established Romanian community, insist that in extended gypsy families it is common for children not to live with their parents. It's bad enough, they say, to be stigmatised across Europe as thieves without being tarred as child traffickers too.

The Romanians are puzzled as to why they cannot get proper access to those arrested - 15 Britons detained in a suburb of Bucharest would have a UK counsel within 24 hours - and also why the police made such a hoo-ha about the operation. They suspect that the raid was not so much about disrupting a child trafficking ring in Britain and more about the irresistible lure of the newspaper headline.

It was a story that was deemed simply too good to miss, maybe because someone in the police too readily believed the negative propaganda these same newspapers spout each day about immigrants t