by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
The Italian Council of State has approved finger printing and special badges for Gypsy children
This is the worst most discriminative and blatantly barefaced racist decision taken by a Country in the EU since the reign of Hitler and Mussolini.
On August 28, an amazing decision was taken by Italy's Council of State, Consiglio di Stato.
In spite of all protests against finger printing of Romani-Gypsies in Italy, whether immigrants or not, the Council of State has approved this procedure.
But not only that.
The Consiglio di Stato also finds it admissible that the Roma must w special badges on their clothes when leaving their camps. Does anyone remember the Star of David, that Jews had to carry in Nazi times? Most reminiscent of the era of Hitler and Mussolini for sure.
It was not only the Jews, though, that had to wear a badge during the Nazi era. Nay! Gypsies too had to wear a badge identifying their ethnicity and that badge was a brown triangle; and the practice of particular minorities forced to wear badges depicting their ethnicity is one of the most poignant reminders of the Holocaust.
Who would have thought that now, more than sixty years after the end of the Nazi regime, such policies, that we thought and were told would never again be used against our fellow man, would be getting a new airing in Italy.
Every Government in the so-called “free Europe”, and indeed the so-called “free world”, should, nay must, if they have any real sense of the horror of what was the Holocaust, condemn Italy and call for it's immediate expulsion from the European Union – at least from all of its bodies, including the Council of Europe and the European Parliament – especially when, measures of this nature are about to be implemented against a particular minority.
But, seeing that Italy is one of the founders of the European Union this is not going to happen; that we can be sure about.
However, the world should sanction and boycott that country until such a time that they reverse the policies and apologize publicly to the Romani People as a whole.
The call must go out for every NGO and individual around the world to write to their government to ask them to condemn Italy, and if they do not give rise to its condemnation then, please ask your government how they will have the gall to hold one more Holocaust Memorial Remembrance Day while, happy to have an EU partner with such disgusting and dehumanizing policies in force against a particular minority in 2009.
Europe more and more, to me as a Gypsy at least, begins to look like Europe 70 years ago, namely 1939. The Anti-Gypsy policies alone are one thing and the surveillance of every individual in most countries another.
While Italy is presently the worst perpetrator as to officially sanctioned Anti-Gypsyism France is beginning to follow suit with an action recently where the police “branded” Roma during some checks as to identity and resident status in France with a stamp on the arm. This too being most reminiscent of the days of the Holocaust and of time before when Gypsies were branded on the arm or the face.
One really could be mistaken to think that one has gone back in time accidentally to the 1930s.
How can the leaders of the nations and especially the Romani leaders, for instance, remain so silent?
Maybe the People can come to their own conclusions here and maybe, just maybe, they come to understand that many of those leaders are not in fact interested in their affairs but in their pockets.
© 2009
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