Press release - 558(2008)
Italy: "Immigration policy must be based on human rights principles and not only on perceived security concerns", says Commissioner Hammarberg presenting a special report
Strasbourg, 29.07.2008 - "Concern about security cannot be the only basis for immigration policy. Measures now being taken in Italy lack human rights and humanitarian principles and may spur further xenopohobia,". With these words, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Thomas Hammarberg, published a report based on his special visit to Rome 19 and 20 June. The visit took place following a series of anti-Roma and anti-Sinti protests, which were occasionally very violent, and the rapid adoption or preparation of legislation, which notably aimed to introduce further controls of the freedom of movement of Roma and Sinti, the criminalisation of irregular immigration and additional restrictions on immigration.
The Commissioner voiced strong concern at the "security package" that appears to target Roma immigrants, and at the declaration of states of emergency in three Italian regions. "Roma and Sinti are in urgent need of effective protection of their human rights, including their social rights, such as the right to adequate housing and to education" he said. "Adopting the state of emergency and providing greater powers to the "Special Commissioners" and the police is not the right approach to deal with the needs of Roma and Sinti populations." In forwarding his Memorandum today, the Commissioner expressed his serious concern at the expected extension of the state of emergency to the whole territory.
Mr Hammarberg also criticised the decision to criminalise migrants' entry and irregular stay. He sees this as a worrying departure from established international law principles. "These measures may make it more difficult for refugees to ask for asylum and is likely to result in a further social stigmatisation and marginalisation of all migrants - including Roma," he said.
Commissioner Hammarberg also noted with grave concern that Italy had forcibly returned migrants to certain countries with proven records of torture. Referring in particular to the case of a Tunisian citizen expelled by order of the Minister of Interior, under the law on emergency measures to combat terrorism, Mr Hammarberg again opposed such decisions taken on the basis of diplomatic assurances. He also recalled that when individuals facing deportation have applied to the European Court of Human Rights, states must comply with any request by the Court to suspend deportation pending its examination of the case "The right of individual application is a cornerstone of the European system of human rights protection." he said.
Finally, the Commissioner urged the Italian authorities to proceed promptly to the establishment of an effective national human rights institution, in order to reinforce the system of protection in the country.
The report has been submitted in draft form to the Italian government which in turn responded with comments. The full reply from the government is appended to the final version of the Commissioner's report. It is available on the Commissioner's website.
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Fingerprinting of Gypsies legal and not racist, says Italian government
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
The Italian government, despite mounting “pressure”, on an international level, has declared that the fingerprinting of all Roma and Sinti in the various camps in Italy is not racist and the it is well within the law.
Whatever the world opinion may be, as far as Italy and the Berlusconi regime are concerned they do no wrong.
What we must consider here is that, in all honesty, under the Italian laws it appears to be not illegal, nor racist, now, to do his fingerprinting of all Gypsies, as Italy's highest court has, on Berlusconi's behest, declared that all Roma and Sinti to be criminal elements, regardless of age, and has nigh on declared them “outlaws”, much as the German term of “vogelfrei”.
The Berlusconi government invokes that court decision and refers to it and stands by it, no matter what.
The Italian Red Cross continues with its cooperation in this fingerprinting and data collection exercise. Much akin to the actions of the German Red Cross in the time of the Third Reich.
The entire affair smacks so much of what the Nazis did to the German Gypsies, and those in the occupied territories, that it is extremely worrying, in such a way in that I, as a Veshtike Rom of whose family many members have been murdered in Auschwitz and other extermination camps, for no other reason than that of Race, of being Gypsy, am very concerned as to our People in the EU.
Are we headed in the same direction, yet again, in today's Europe, especially the Europe under the European Union “control”? It would appear to be so and no one really is going to do anything about it – so, at least it would appear – and this simply, as far as I see it, because it is “just” Gypsies that are the victims here. Were it Jews or Moslems I am certain things would have been done a long time ago.
Alas, we know anyway, we are but dirty Gyppos and according to the Italians (and other countries in the EU?) we are nothing but criminal elements, including the children, in the same way as our People were regarded by the fascist Germany. Obviously nothing has changed.
It is time that the Romani People worldwide realized that the Gadje bodies, in the main, are going to do nothing whatsoever that will really benefit us, as individuals and especially as a People, as a Nation. All they do is what will benefit them in controlling us. Time, and I know I keep saying this, that we did things for ourselves. Ourselves Alone!
Ava! Ame Shai!
© M Smith (Veshengro)
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The Italian government, despite mounting “pressure”, on an international level, has declared that the fingerprinting of all Roma and Sinti in the various camps in Italy is not racist and the it is well within the law.
Whatever the world opinion may be, as far as Italy and the Berlusconi regime are concerned they do no wrong.
What we must consider here is that, in all honesty, under the Italian laws it appears to be not illegal, nor racist, now, to do his fingerprinting of all Gypsies, as Italy's highest court has, on Berlusconi's behest, declared that all Roma and Sinti to be criminal elements, regardless of age, and has nigh on declared them “outlaws”, much as the German term of “vogelfrei”.
The Berlusconi government invokes that court decision and refers to it and stands by it, no matter what.
The Italian Red Cross continues with its cooperation in this fingerprinting and data collection exercise. Much akin to the actions of the German Red Cross in the time of the Third Reich.
The entire affair smacks so much of what the Nazis did to the German Gypsies, and those in the occupied territories, that it is extremely worrying, in such a way in that I, as a Veshtike Rom of whose family many members have been murdered in Auschwitz and other extermination camps, for no other reason than that of Race, of being Gypsy, am very concerned as to our People in the EU.
Are we headed in the same direction, yet again, in today's Europe, especially the Europe under the European Union “control”? It would appear to be so and no one really is going to do anything about it – so, at least it would appear – and this simply, as far as I see it, because it is “just” Gypsies that are the victims here. Were it Jews or Moslems I am certain things would have been done a long time ago.
Alas, we know anyway, we are but dirty Gyppos and according to the Italians (and other countries in the EU?) we are nothing but criminal elements, including the children, in the same way as our People were regarded by the fascist Germany. Obviously nothing has changed.
It is time that the Romani People worldwide realized that the Gadje bodies, in the main, are going to do nothing whatsoever that will really benefit us, as individuals and especially as a People, as a Nation. All they do is what will benefit them in controlling us. Time, and I know I keep saying this, that we did things for ourselves. Ourselves Alone!
Ava! Ame Shai!
© M Smith (Veshengro)
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We have come out on behalf of the wrong side
When the forces of the United Nations and the European Union/NATO arrived in Kosovo as “peacekeepers” the leading officer, a Brit, remarked something like “Oh my God! We have come out on behalf of the wrong side”. He had realized that the world had been lied to by the Kosovo Albanians.
There was no ethnic cleansing perpetrated against Kosovo Albanians, against the Muslim population of Kosovo, from the side of the Serbs. On the contrary. The shoes, in fact, was on the other foot. It was the “ethnic” Albanians of Kosovo that were doing the ethnic cleansing against Gypsies and also against the Serbs. Their aims was – and still is – a Kosovo for Albanians and in due course the aim is to incorporate Kosovo into a “Greater” Albania. A dream for the Albanians in Kosovo as well as the Albanians of Albania, this “Greater” Albania.
The Kosovar Albanians' aim was to get all Gypsies and Serbs out of “their” Kosovo and then the Serbs were having none of it and retaliated, with arms, against the armed aggression, the Kosovar Albanians of the Muslim faith called “foul” and called onto the world for help, claiming to be the victims of ethnic cleansing.
Though nothing could have been further from the truth the world, at large, bought into that lie and sent out forces against the Serbs in Kosovo.
The ones that suffered most in this ethnic cleansing from the sides of the Albanian Kosovars are the ethnic Gypsy, whether Roma, Egyptians, or Ashkali. They were driven out from their Mahalas and are still in IDP camps.
Those camps, run by UNMIK, are contaminated with lead to such a degree that children and also adults are dying from the effects of lead poisoning or are becoming severely brain damaged. UNMIK is well aware of this bu will not resettle those Gypsies.
All UNMIK is prepared to do is to send the Gypsies back to their old Mahalas – that are still in the hands of the Albanians – and as soon as they return there they are beaten up and shot at again.
What is the United Nations' game as far as the Romani People of Kosovo are concerned? And I am talking here about the initial backing for the Kosovar Albanians as well as the treatment of the Gypsy People in the IDP camps inside Kosovo, as well as the fact that only due to UNMIK's insistence that Kosovo is not dangerous for the Gypsies that none of those have been accepted as official refugees with a right to remain in any of the countries they fled to; those that did not end up in the camps.
The commander of the peacekeepers at his very arrival in Kosovo realized that they had come out to support the wrong side but why is no one doing anything about it?
Why? Because those really only affected, aside from the Serbs, that everyone is trying to hit on the head as well, it would appear, ever since the incidents in Bosnia, are the Roma, Egyptians and Ashkali, that is to say, the “dirty Gyppos”.
The UN is, in fact, aiding and abetting ethnic cleansing of the Gypsy People from Kosovo and their own settlements within that country. What is the agenda?
Food for thought...
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
There was no ethnic cleansing perpetrated against Kosovo Albanians, against the Muslim population of Kosovo, from the side of the Serbs. On the contrary. The shoes, in fact, was on the other foot. It was the “ethnic” Albanians of Kosovo that were doing the ethnic cleansing against Gypsies and also against the Serbs. Their aims was – and still is – a Kosovo for Albanians and in due course the aim is to incorporate Kosovo into a “Greater” Albania. A dream for the Albanians in Kosovo as well as the Albanians of Albania, this “Greater” Albania.
The Kosovar Albanians' aim was to get all Gypsies and Serbs out of “their” Kosovo and then the Serbs were having none of it and retaliated, with arms, against the armed aggression, the Kosovar Albanians of the Muslim faith called “foul” and called onto the world for help, claiming to be the victims of ethnic cleansing.
Though nothing could have been further from the truth the world, at large, bought into that lie and sent out forces against the Serbs in Kosovo.
The ones that suffered most in this ethnic cleansing from the sides of the Albanian Kosovars are the ethnic Gypsy, whether Roma, Egyptians, or Ashkali. They were driven out from their Mahalas and are still in IDP camps.
Those camps, run by UNMIK, are contaminated with lead to such a degree that children and also adults are dying from the effects of lead poisoning or are becoming severely brain damaged. UNMIK is well aware of this bu will not resettle those Gypsies.
All UNMIK is prepared to do is to send the Gypsies back to their old Mahalas – that are still in the hands of the Albanians – and as soon as they return there they are beaten up and shot at again.
What is the United Nations' game as far as the Romani People of Kosovo are concerned? And I am talking here about the initial backing for the Kosovar Albanians as well as the treatment of the Gypsy People in the IDP camps inside Kosovo, as well as the fact that only due to UNMIK's insistence that Kosovo is not dangerous for the Gypsies that none of those have been accepted as official refugees with a right to remain in any of the countries they fled to; those that did not end up in the camps.
The commander of the peacekeepers at his very arrival in Kosovo realized that they had come out to support the wrong side but why is no one doing anything about it?
Why? Because those really only affected, aside from the Serbs, that everyone is trying to hit on the head as well, it would appear, ever since the incidents in Bosnia, are the Roma, Egyptians and Ashkali, that is to say, the “dirty Gyppos”.
The UN is, in fact, aiding and abetting ethnic cleansing of the Gypsy People from Kosovo and their own settlements within that country. What is the agenda?
Food for thought...
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
Gypsy Nation, Arise!
by Micheal Smith (Veshengro)
Arise from the low status where you are being kept by the Gadje but also by exploiters within our own ranks and by laziness, as in the case of some, and made-up laws, as is the case with other.
“Yes! We Can!” shall and must be our slogan and our watchword
“Ava! Ame Shai!” Let nothing prevent us from achieving full potential as a Nation, as a People, as families and as individuals.
Far too many, not to say the great majority, of Amare have the “No Can Do” attitude and sometimes it would seem as if it be actually a “Don't Want To Do” attitude.
Others seem to make it their life's work to work the welfare system wherever it can be done. If they would but expend that time, energy and skills on “proper” work they'd really be able to liberate themselves and would not need state assistance; crumbs, like an Uncle Tom, from the White slave master's table.
So many also work the system while doing their own “self-employed” work of whatever kind. They steal from others doing than and it is not only Gadje they steal from but also from those of the People that do work within the system and pay their way.
We must have a new approach to living in this world and while we may want to be apart – something that I completely am in agreement with – we also have to follow the laws of the countries that we live in and if that means paying taxes then so be it. No one likes paying taxes, neither the Rom nor the Gadje but... the accusation from the Gadje to the Rom is always that we, the Rom, steal from the system and that we do not pay taxes – even if we do. We must not give them more ammunition still.
Back to the attitude and to liberation.
Ava! Ame Shai! We can do it. We can help ourselves. We can have our own co-operatives and our own livelihood projects, our own schools and homeschool circles, to raise ourselves up.
But this will only ever work if our People change their attitude. The attitude of “the world owes us a living”, as well as that of “no can do”.
I see too many of ours, especially those in the former Irin Curtain countries, but not only there, where the men sit around all day drinking, smoking and playing cards, while the women and children are sent out begging or stealing or scavenging on the refuse tips. This cannot and must not continue.
Also, the settlements must be cleaned up and made respectable, this also applies to the railer sites in Britain and the USA, even to the official government operated ones in the UK, if we want to be able to advance ourselves. Always there is the talk about how great our laws are as to cleanliness, which they indeed are, but should they not also translate at least to some degree to our immediate surroundings outside out kenna or trailer. A little garden, even in containers, can go a long way, also on government sites.
But, then again, it would appear that the majority do not want to do anything else really – despite the stories the tell the media – and do not want to better themselves. All they seem to want is to be idle and have the welfare state take care of them. Some are so lazy – yes, lazy – that they have leaky roofs at the houses with water coming through everywhere but they cannot, possibly, get up onto that roof and fix it. They wait for some Charity to come along and fix their roofs, their guttering, their drainage, and everything else. Self reliance; what is that? That at least seems to be their attitude.
This attitude is not only found, I would hasten to add, amongst the Roma in the East. Nay, such laziness and dirtiness can also be found, and here I feel physically sick for I have seen some of it, amongst the Sinti and the Romanichals, the latter here in the UK as well as, and especially, in the USA.
We can do it. Honestly, we can. All we need to have is the will and the wish to do it. The wish, the desire and the will to help ourselves and the will to raise ourselves up, as individuals and also and especially as a People.
Dosta penauas!
Ava! Ame Shai!
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
Arise from the low status where you are being kept by the Gadje but also by exploiters within our own ranks and by laziness, as in the case of some, and made-up laws, as is the case with other.
“Yes! We Can!” shall and must be our slogan and our watchword
“Ava! Ame Shai!” Let nothing prevent us from achieving full potential as a Nation, as a People, as families and as individuals.
Far too many, not to say the great majority, of Amare have the “No Can Do” attitude and sometimes it would seem as if it be actually a “Don't Want To Do” attitude.
Others seem to make it their life's work to work the welfare system wherever it can be done. If they would but expend that time, energy and skills on “proper” work they'd really be able to liberate themselves and would not need state assistance; crumbs, like an Uncle Tom, from the White slave master's table.
So many also work the system while doing their own “self-employed” work of whatever kind. They steal from others doing than and it is not only Gadje they steal from but also from those of the People that do work within the system and pay their way.
We must have a new approach to living in this world and while we may want to be apart – something that I completely am in agreement with – we also have to follow the laws of the countries that we live in and if that means paying taxes then so be it. No one likes paying taxes, neither the Rom nor the Gadje but... the accusation from the Gadje to the Rom is always that we, the Rom, steal from the system and that we do not pay taxes – even if we do. We must not give them more ammunition still.
Back to the attitude and to liberation.
Ava! Ame Shai! We can do it. We can help ourselves. We can have our own co-operatives and our own livelihood projects, our own schools and homeschool circles, to raise ourselves up.
But this will only ever work if our People change their attitude. The attitude of “the world owes us a living”, as well as that of “no can do”.
I see too many of ours, especially those in the former Irin Curtain countries, but not only there, where the men sit around all day drinking, smoking and playing cards, while the women and children are sent out begging or stealing or scavenging on the refuse tips. This cannot and must not continue.
Also, the settlements must be cleaned up and made respectable, this also applies to the railer sites in Britain and the USA, even to the official government operated ones in the UK, if we want to be able to advance ourselves. Always there is the talk about how great our laws are as to cleanliness, which they indeed are, but should they not also translate at least to some degree to our immediate surroundings outside out kenna or trailer. A little garden, even in containers, can go a long way, also on government sites.
But, then again, it would appear that the majority do not want to do anything else really – despite the stories the tell the media – and do not want to better themselves. All they seem to want is to be idle and have the welfare state take care of them. Some are so lazy – yes, lazy – that they have leaky roofs at the houses with water coming through everywhere but they cannot, possibly, get up onto that roof and fix it. They wait for some Charity to come along and fix their roofs, their guttering, their drainage, and everything else. Self reliance; what is that? That at least seems to be their attitude.
This attitude is not only found, I would hasten to add, amongst the Roma in the East. Nay, such laziness and dirtiness can also be found, and here I feel physically sick for I have seen some of it, amongst the Sinti and the Romanichals, the latter here in the UK as well as, and especially, in the USA.
We can do it. Honestly, we can. All we need to have is the will and the wish to do it. The wish, the desire and the will to help ourselves and the will to raise ourselves up, as individuals and also and especially as a People.
Dosta penauas!
Ava! Ame Shai!
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
Current plight of the Gypsy in Italy has strong echoes of Mussolini and Hitler
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
The compulsory fingerprinting of Italy's Gypsy population is the latest example of the country's increasingly repressive attitude towards minorities, especially the Roma and Sinti, the Gypsy People and are an ominous reminder of the policies of the former Fascist dictator.
The Interior Minister, Roberto Maroni, a leader of the rabble-rousing Northern League – close allies of Silvio Berlusconi on the government benches – has explained his next step in his assault on the "emergenza di sicurezza", the "security emergency": fingerprinting all Gypsies.
It was the only way, he told a parliamentary committee, for Italy to guarantee "to those who have the right to remain here, the possibility of living in decent conditions."
For this purpose the Roma, all Gypsy – those with Italian nationality and those without, EU citizens and those from outside the Community – will all have their fingerprints taken.
And the rule will even apply to Gypsy children – for reasons that to many of Mr Maroni's supporters must have sounded obvious: "to avoid phenomena," as he put it, "such as begging". The new measures, he said, were indispensable "in order to expel those who do not have the right to stay in Italy".
For anybody not swept up in the wave of anti-Roma fury, the campaign has a strong whiff of Mussolini and Hitler about it.
The task of counting and identifying the residents of Italy, citizens or otherwise, who happen to belong the most despised minority in Europe is, in fact, already under way.
Giovanna Boursier, an Italian journalist, found one small camp where the count had already taken place on the furthest southern outskirts of Milan. "There is not even a bar where one could ask the way," she wrote in Il Manifesto, "but once you scramble up a hill you see the roofs of the huts. There are about 10 of them, along with the caravans, dotted around the outskirts, under flyovers and high-tension wires. Around 40 Roma lived here."
In one camp the police arrived at dawn, woke everybody up, surrounded the camp and flooded it with lights and then went from home to home, demanding identity documents and photographing them. All the residents were Italian citizens. It made no difference. "This wasn't a census," protested a Gypsy by the name of Giorgio. "This was an ethnic register."
According to information the police numbers in the big cities have been augmented by up to 3,000 troops for this “security emergency”. All I am seeing here, however, is what I predicted some years back; government operated anti-Gypsy pogroms with unofficial backing of the European Union while on the surface the lawmakers speek out against it.
The basic problem of Roma is widespread in Europe: housing, health, education, employment, political representation... But for a long time in Italy the Roma have been a symbol of something that is unwanted.
The Nazis and the Fascists used the same methods of singling them out in the 1930s. It's not surprising that they are frightened.
I also have to add to that that our People, I am sure, have all the right to be frightened with regards to this ethnic profiling and register that is going on in Italy, and by force. What next and where next is my question.
Some 1.6 million Gypsies died in Germany and elsewhere during the Holocaust, a proportionately greater genocide than that suffered by the Jews.
It is a fact that there were concentration camps for Gypsies in Italy during the Fascist period, and it is also a fact that thousands of Gypsies died in them of hunger, cold and over work. Now Italy is about to repeat the performance, it seems.
Camps have also bee proposed not so long ago for the Romani People of Italy. They were called “solidarity villages” and I am sure, seeing how they help with the fingerprinting and profiling, the Italian Red Cross would certainly help there too.
Time w edid a few things ourselves, methinks.
AVA! Ame Shai!
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
The compulsory fingerprinting of Italy's Gypsy population is the latest example of the country's increasingly repressive attitude towards minorities, especially the Roma and Sinti, the Gypsy People and are an ominous reminder of the policies of the former Fascist dictator.
The Interior Minister, Roberto Maroni, a leader of the rabble-rousing Northern League – close allies of Silvio Berlusconi on the government benches – has explained his next step in his assault on the "emergenza di sicurezza", the "security emergency": fingerprinting all Gypsies.
It was the only way, he told a parliamentary committee, for Italy to guarantee "to those who have the right to remain here, the possibility of living in decent conditions."
For this purpose the Roma, all Gypsy – those with Italian nationality and those without, EU citizens and those from outside the Community – will all have their fingerprints taken.
And the rule will even apply to Gypsy children – for reasons that to many of Mr Maroni's supporters must have sounded obvious: "to avoid phenomena," as he put it, "such as begging". The new measures, he said, were indispensable "in order to expel those who do not have the right to stay in Italy".
For anybody not swept up in the wave of anti-Roma fury, the campaign has a strong whiff of Mussolini and Hitler about it.
The task of counting and identifying the residents of Italy, citizens or otherwise, who happen to belong the most despised minority in Europe is, in fact, already under way.
Giovanna Boursier, an Italian journalist, found one small camp where the count had already taken place on the furthest southern outskirts of Milan. "There is not even a bar where one could ask the way," she wrote in Il Manifesto, "but once you scramble up a hill you see the roofs of the huts. There are about 10 of them, along with the caravans, dotted around the outskirts, under flyovers and high-tension wires. Around 40 Roma lived here."
In one camp the police arrived at dawn, woke everybody up, surrounded the camp and flooded it with lights and then went from home to home, demanding identity documents and photographing them. All the residents were Italian citizens. It made no difference. "This wasn't a census," protested a Gypsy by the name of Giorgio. "This was an ethnic register."
According to information the police numbers in the big cities have been augmented by up to 3,000 troops for this “security emergency”. All I am seeing here, however, is what I predicted some years back; government operated anti-Gypsy pogroms with unofficial backing of the European Union while on the surface the lawmakers speek out against it.
The basic problem of Roma is widespread in Europe: housing, health, education, employment, political representation... But for a long time in Italy the Roma have been a symbol of something that is unwanted.
The Nazis and the Fascists used the same methods of singling them out in the 1930s. It's not surprising that they are frightened.
I also have to add to that that our People, I am sure, have all the right to be frightened with regards to this ethnic profiling and register that is going on in Italy, and by force. What next and where next is my question.
Some 1.6 million Gypsies died in Germany and elsewhere during the Holocaust, a proportionately greater genocide than that suffered by the Jews.
It is a fact that there were concentration camps for Gypsies in Italy during the Fascist period, and it is also a fact that thousands of Gypsies died in them of hunger, cold and over work. Now Italy is about to repeat the performance, it seems.
Camps have also bee proposed not so long ago for the Romani People of Italy. They were called “solidarity villages” and I am sure, seeing how they help with the fingerprinting and profiling, the Italian Red Cross would certainly help there too.
Time w edid a few things ourselves, methinks.
AVA! Ame Shai!
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
European Parliamentarians give their fingerprints in protest of Italy's Anti-Gypsy crackdown
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
More than 100 members of the European Parliament - including party group leaders – added their own fingerprints to a petition protesting against Italy's policy against Gypsies.
While this may be a very nice gesture initiated by Italian Communist MEP Giusto Catania what does he and there others think to achieve with this. This is nothing, really, but a gimmick as most of those parliamentarians are not of the Romani People and it, therefore, is nothing but a publicity stunt to be seen to do something.
The European Parliament has adopted a resolution that asks the Italian government to halt its plans. Euro MPs say it is unacceptable "to violate fundamental rights of the Gypsy People and to criminalise them."
This resolution was, however, passed on such a small margin – with 52 to 48 votes, so we understand – that all it needs is some more EU states, and this surely is going to happen in the not too distant future, to swing to the right and the Romani are once again in real deep trouble.
While no one dares to speak against Jews anymore – and probably rightly so – the Gypsy is still free and fair game to the politicians of that persuasion and the general public at large, and not just in Italy.
Should, as I said, we get a swing of two or three more politicians in the European Parliament and – as that does not really count much – the parliament, I mean – more importantly in the European Commission, that unelected body which is the real power of the European Union and the Council of Europe, then things could really, once again, turn out nasty for the Romani-Gypsy of Europe.
We must prepare to stand against this as a Nation and to this end we must, properly, unite as a Nation, and the medium of the Internet and such can be out greatest asset here. And no, we do not need a standardized Romani Language for this.
Ava! Ame Shai! (Yes! We Can!)
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
More than 100 members of the European Parliament - including party group leaders – added their own fingerprints to a petition protesting against Italy's policy against Gypsies.
While this may be a very nice gesture initiated by Italian Communist MEP Giusto Catania what does he and there others think to achieve with this. This is nothing, really, but a gimmick as most of those parliamentarians are not of the Romani People and it, therefore, is nothing but a publicity stunt to be seen to do something.
The European Parliament has adopted a resolution that asks the Italian government to halt its plans. Euro MPs say it is unacceptable "to violate fundamental rights of the Gypsy People and to criminalise them."
This resolution was, however, passed on such a small margin – with 52 to 48 votes, so we understand – that all it needs is some more EU states, and this surely is going to happen in the not too distant future, to swing to the right and the Romani are once again in real deep trouble.
While no one dares to speak against Jews anymore – and probably rightly so – the Gypsy is still free and fair game to the politicians of that persuasion and the general public at large, and not just in Italy.
Should, as I said, we get a swing of two or three more politicians in the European Parliament and – as that does not really count much – the parliament, I mean – more importantly in the European Commission, that unelected body which is the real power of the European Union and the Council of Europe, then things could really, once again, turn out nasty for the Romani-Gypsy of Europe.
We must prepare to stand against this as a Nation and to this end we must, properly, unite as a Nation, and the medium of the Internet and such can be out greatest asset here. And no, we do not need a standardized Romani Language for this.
Ava! Ame Shai! (Yes! We Can!)
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
Italy Passes Law To Fingerprint All Gypsies
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Racism and anti-immigrant hysteria have been increasing in Italy in recent years. Hate crimes have been on the rise with reports of gangs of right-wing youth attacking Gypsies in Rome, Genoa, Turin, Milan and other cities, and with the Carabinieri and other police units standing idly by and watching if not actually aiding and abetting the perpetrators of those attacks and crimes.
Seventy years ago this month, nearly to the day, Italy's Fascist regime pf the day published a "Manifesto of Race", which paved the way for its notorious racial laws persecuting Jews and members of other supposedly "inferior" minorities, which were directly based on the “Nuremberg Laws” of Hitler's Germany. Now, the country's right-wing government has again stepped up special measures against an entire ethnic group.
In their election campaign earlier this year, Berlusconi and his allies had already made clear their intention of deporting tens of thousands of Roma back to Romania and former Yugoslavia. In mid-June a March decisions by Italy's highest appeal court was released stating that "it is acceptable to discriminate against Roma" because the court found that "they are thieves", in other words the courts ruled in one foul stroke that an entire Race could be discriminated against as they are all regarded as criminals, criminalizing an entire People. Following the release of the court ruling, Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, announced that a file is to be drawn up containing a DNA data base with digital fingerprints and photos of all Gypsies in Italy regardless of their citizenship. The target for the fingerprinting and such are here especially Gypsy children. Italy has now, so we understand, enacted a law that will require the taking of fingerprints and photos and other data of all Gypsies living in the country.
Unicef has protested that this is discriminatory and a violation of the UN's Declaration of the Rights of the Child but, on the other hand, works hand-in-glove with the Italian government as, as they say, it will be for the benefit of the children if they will be made to go to school and will get benefits. The Italian Red Cross, as we have reported already, also is deeply involved in this operation and all of it is very reminiscent of the 1930's. The Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana denounced the move as "an indecent and racist proposal" reminiscent of "when Jewish children were identified with a yellow star on their sleeves".
If the Church and his Holiness is so concerned maybe then He and his Church should issue a decree that would put any Catholic participating in this operation, whether police officer, soldier, or official, under the threat of excommunication. But we hear nothing of this sort being proposed even. Words and prayer do not help. They didn't in the Holocaust and they will not now either. Action is what is needed. When are priests going to be instructed to condemn this from their pulpits in their Sunday homilies? Shame we do not have the likes of the late Archbishop Romero in the leadership of the Holy See. The late Pope John II would not have been sitting idly by saying little.
Other churches are even quieter still than the Catholic Church as are the rest of Europe and the World.
The European Parliament voted July 10th to adopt a resolution calling on member states to "review and repeal laws and policies that discriminate against the Roma on the basis of race and ethnicity. The problem with this resolution though is that it is but a gimmick as it has no teeth whatsoever and is NOT binding in any way, shape or form, allowing the Berlusconi regime to give a two-finger salute to the European Parliament.
More and more it becomes evident that in this issue the European Union is either entirely powerless and a toothless paper tiger and Italy's fascists Il Duce II and his allies are thumbing their noses at the European lawmakers or, and this would appear to be more the case, what we are seeing here is, as I predicted several years ago, as I could see the writing on the wall, just the beginning of what the European Union is, in fact, planning for the Romani People of Europe.
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
Racism and anti-immigrant hysteria have been increasing in Italy in recent years. Hate crimes have been on the rise with reports of gangs of right-wing youth attacking Gypsies in Rome, Genoa, Turin, Milan and other cities, and with the Carabinieri and other police units standing idly by and watching if not actually aiding and abetting the perpetrators of those attacks and crimes.
Seventy years ago this month, nearly to the day, Italy's Fascist regime pf the day published a "Manifesto of Race", which paved the way for its notorious racial laws persecuting Jews and members of other supposedly "inferior" minorities, which were directly based on the “Nuremberg Laws” of Hitler's Germany. Now, the country's right-wing government has again stepped up special measures against an entire ethnic group.
In their election campaign earlier this year, Berlusconi and his allies had already made clear their intention of deporting tens of thousands of Roma back to Romania and former Yugoslavia. In mid-June a March decisions by Italy's highest appeal court was released stating that "it is acceptable to discriminate against Roma" because the court found that "they are thieves", in other words the courts ruled in one foul stroke that an entire Race could be discriminated against as they are all regarded as criminals, criminalizing an entire People. Following the release of the court ruling, Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, announced that a file is to be drawn up containing a DNA data base with digital fingerprints and photos of all Gypsies in Italy regardless of their citizenship. The target for the fingerprinting and such are here especially Gypsy children. Italy has now, so we understand, enacted a law that will require the taking of fingerprints and photos and other data of all Gypsies living in the country.
Unicef has protested that this is discriminatory and a violation of the UN's Declaration of the Rights of the Child but, on the other hand, works hand-in-glove with the Italian government as, as they say, it will be for the benefit of the children if they will be made to go to school and will get benefits. The Italian Red Cross, as we have reported already, also is deeply involved in this operation and all of it is very reminiscent of the 1930's. The Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana denounced the move as "an indecent and racist proposal" reminiscent of "when Jewish children were identified with a yellow star on their sleeves".
If the Church and his Holiness is so concerned maybe then He and his Church should issue a decree that would put any Catholic participating in this operation, whether police officer, soldier, or official, under the threat of excommunication. But we hear nothing of this sort being proposed even. Words and prayer do not help. They didn't in the Holocaust and they will not now either. Action is what is needed. When are priests going to be instructed to condemn this from their pulpits in their Sunday homilies? Shame we do not have the likes of the late Archbishop Romero in the leadership of the Holy See. The late Pope John II would not have been sitting idly by saying little.
Other churches are even quieter still than the Catholic Church as are the rest of Europe and the World.
The European Parliament voted July 10th to adopt a resolution calling on member states to "review and repeal laws and policies that discriminate against the Roma on the basis of race and ethnicity. The problem with this resolution though is that it is but a gimmick as it has no teeth whatsoever and is NOT binding in any way, shape or form, allowing the Berlusconi regime to give a two-finger salute to the European Parliament.
More and more it becomes evident that in this issue the European Union is either entirely powerless and a toothless paper tiger and Italy's fascists Il Duce II and his allies are thumbing their noses at the European lawmakers or, and this would appear to be more the case, what we are seeing here is, as I predicted several years ago, as I could see the writing on the wall, just the beginning of what the European Union is, in fact, planning for the Romani People of Europe.
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
Italian Red Cross collaborates in ethnic profiling of Roma in Italy
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
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."
Who is he trying to kid. The Red Cross, now why should we not be surprised, helping yet another fascist regime.
Europe should but condemn in the strongest possible terms the involvement of the Italian Red Cross in assisting the Italian Government in the ethnic registration and profiling of Roma in Italy, as I do here and I am sure as will many of our readers. However, it is not going to make one iota of a difference to this. All I am seeing, I am afraid to say, is that my predictions and fears are becoming reality.
But then, as I indicated above, why precisely should that surprise us; the involvement of the Red Cross in this. Were they not culpable enough in the Third Reich. They indeed were.
Members of European Civil Society should condemn this action of the Italian Red Cross in the strongest possible terms and apply pressure on the ICRC, the International Committee of the Red Cross to demand that their Italian division withdraw from this involvement.
Not that this is going to happen but.. the inaction shows where they all really stand. As far as we, the Romani, the Gypsy, of Europe, and the world, are concerned, civil society and all its bodies always will stand against us.
The registration of minorities is contrary to European Data and Minority Protection legislation in Italy, and yesterday, the European Parliament itself passed a Resolution against the fingerprinting of Roma in Italy. The only problem with this resolution is that it is about as binding as a raft tied together with rotten ropes which will dissolve in the water.
The announcement that the Red Cross will assist the Italian police in the registration and fingerprinting of Roma in Rome, Naples and Milan was made by Massimo Barra, Head of the Italian Red Cross, in an interview published in The Times on July 5. This was confirmed in a statement by the Italian Minister of the Interior, Mr. Roberto Maroni, published in the Südtiroler Zeitung on July 10, that the government of Silvio Berlusconi is proud of the participation of the Red Cross in the ethnic registration and fingerprinting of Roma.
The fact of the Italian Red Cross assisting a neo-fascistic government in singling out the Romani-Gypsy, for it will not just remain with the Roma – the Sinti of Italy, I am sure, will be the next targets – for registration and profiling is chillingly reminiscent of Red Cross collaboration with the Hitler's Black Legions during WWII in the registration, deportations and destruction of Gypsy life.
The most chilling factor of this, undoubtedly, is that today these actions are being validated by the self-same arguments as those of Nazi Germany, namely that Sinti and Roma, that Romani-Gypsy People, need to be controlled as a measure of “crime-prevention”.
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
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."
Who is he trying to kid. The Red Cross, now why should we not be surprised, helping yet another fascist regime.
Europe should but condemn in the strongest possible terms the involvement of the Italian Red Cross in assisting the Italian Government in the ethnic registration and profiling of Roma in Italy, as I do here and I am sure as will many of our readers. However, it is not going to make one iota of a difference to this. All I am seeing, I am afraid to say, is that my predictions and fears are becoming reality.
But then, as I indicated above, why precisely should that surprise us; the involvement of the Red Cross in this. Were they not culpable enough in the Third Reich. They indeed were.
Members of European Civil Society should condemn this action of the Italian Red Cross in the strongest possible terms and apply pressure on the ICRC, the International Committee of the Red Cross to demand that their Italian division withdraw from this involvement.
Not that this is going to happen but.. the inaction shows where they all really stand. As far as we, the Romani, the Gypsy, of Europe, and the world, are concerned, civil society and all its bodies always will stand against us.
The registration of minorities is contrary to European Data and Minority Protection legislation in Italy, and yesterday, the European Parliament itself passed a Resolution against the fingerprinting of Roma in Italy. The only problem with this resolution is that it is about as binding as a raft tied together with rotten ropes which will dissolve in the water.
The announcement that the Red Cross will assist the Italian police in the registration and fingerprinting of Roma in Rome, Naples and Milan was made by Massimo Barra, Head of the Italian Red Cross, in an interview published in The Times on July 5. This was confirmed in a statement by the Italian Minister of the Interior, Mr. Roberto Maroni, published in the Südtiroler Zeitung on July 10, that the government of Silvio Berlusconi is proud of the participation of the Red Cross in the ethnic registration and fingerprinting of Roma.
The fact of the Italian Red Cross assisting a neo-fascistic government in singling out the Romani-Gypsy, for it will not just remain with the Roma – the Sinti of Italy, I am sure, will be the next targets – for registration and profiling is chillingly reminiscent of Red Cross collaboration with the Hitler's Black Legions during WWII in the registration, deportations and destruction of Gypsy life.
The most chilling factor of this, undoubtedly, is that today these actions are being validated by the self-same arguments as those of Nazi Germany, namely that Sinti and Roma, that Romani-Gypsy People, need to be controlled as a measure of “crime-prevention”.
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
Gypsies in Italy forced to give fingerprints
Gypsy children dragged kicking and screaming to have their fingerprints (and other biometric data) taken.
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
While the European Parliament has, very narrowly, adopted a resolution calling on Italy to halt its anti-Gypsy actions, the regime of Il Duce II, of PM Berlusconi, goes full steam ahead with the ethnic database on all Gypsies living in camps (I guess any that are known and live in houses will soon be dragged in as well).
While the European Parliament in its resolution called the actions of the Berlusconi regime racist it would appear that no one really intends to do anything about it. Not that I, as a Gypsy, am surprised by this.
While the European parliamentarians in word condemned the actions – as said, with a very narrow margin – of Berluscon's Italy and stated that those acts are against the European Convention on Human Rights it would appear that the Italian authorities are sticking up two fingers towards Brussels (Strasbourg) (always depending where the parliament was sitting at the time) and press on with what they have planned to do.
The database will include, so it is said, the racial/ethnic origin, e.g. which Gypsy group, the religious affiliation and beliefs, and also which school visited and which results reached on leaving school.
If this does not smack entirely of the same kind of registrations that were the precursor to the persecution of the Romani People under Hitler than I do not know.
While the parliamentarians of the European Parliament may make all those noises and pass those resolutions the European Commission and the Council of Europe, the real powers – unelected – behind the European Union, are not going to do anything at all, it would appear. And then again, why should they? Is it not, at least so it would appear to any that are not blind, the full intention of the European Union to act against the “Gypsy problem”, for it is not only in Italy where official anti-Gypsy pogroms and other such actions are taking place. The ghettoisation – forced – in the former Czechoslovakia is but another example, as are the actions, planned and already enacted, of the French government appertaining to the Gypsies in its country and those coming into the country especially.
It would appear to anyone not familiar with the current caleandar and its dates that we are in the Europe of 1938 rather than 2008. History is repeating itself and, because it is just Gypsies that are being rounded up, no one is actually going to do anything.
The problem is also that the resolution of the European Parliament, which calls for Italy to stop its anti-Gypsy actions, is not binding on the government of Italy. In other words, it is but rhetoric and words and the parliamentarians know and knew that full well when they went for this and the gimmick of giving their own fingerprints.
The Italian foreign minister and former EU justice minister, Franco Frattini,called the reactions of the EU as politically motivated.
There are currently some 700 Gypsy camps in Italy, the majority near Rome, Naples, or Milan and in those reside thousands of Sinti and Rom, and all of them will be the target for those anti-Gypsy measures of the regime of Berlusconi. Il Duce would be proud of him and Adolf Hitler even more so. I am sure Heinrich Himmler would have elevated him to a general in the SS.
If the Sinti of Italy think that they are safe and that this is only going to affect the Roma then they better think again. And if the rest of the Romani, in the EU and elsewhere, think that it may not happen to where they are, a rethink, I would advise, to be necessary too.
We are alone in this world as a People, and we ourselves alone can only do something. It is time that we did.
AVA! Ame Shai!
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
While the European Parliament has, very narrowly, adopted a resolution calling on Italy to halt its anti-Gypsy actions, the regime of Il Duce II, of PM Berlusconi, goes full steam ahead with the ethnic database on all Gypsies living in camps (I guess any that are known and live in houses will soon be dragged in as well).
While the European Parliament in its resolution called the actions of the Berlusconi regime racist it would appear that no one really intends to do anything about it. Not that I, as a Gypsy, am surprised by this.
While the European parliamentarians in word condemned the actions – as said, with a very narrow margin – of Berluscon's Italy and stated that those acts are against the European Convention on Human Rights it would appear that the Italian authorities are sticking up two fingers towards Brussels (Strasbourg) (always depending where the parliament was sitting at the time) and press on with what they have planned to do.
The database will include, so it is said, the racial/ethnic origin, e.g. which Gypsy group, the religious affiliation and beliefs, and also which school visited and which results reached on leaving school.
If this does not smack entirely of the same kind of registrations that were the precursor to the persecution of the Romani People under Hitler than I do not know.
While the parliamentarians of the European Parliament may make all those noises and pass those resolutions the European Commission and the Council of Europe, the real powers – unelected – behind the European Union, are not going to do anything at all, it would appear. And then again, why should they? Is it not, at least so it would appear to any that are not blind, the full intention of the European Union to act against the “Gypsy problem”, for it is not only in Italy where official anti-Gypsy pogroms and other such actions are taking place. The ghettoisation – forced – in the former Czechoslovakia is but another example, as are the actions, planned and already enacted, of the French government appertaining to the Gypsies in its country and those coming into the country especially.
It would appear to anyone not familiar with the current caleandar and its dates that we are in the Europe of 1938 rather than 2008. History is repeating itself and, because it is just Gypsies that are being rounded up, no one is actually going to do anything.
The problem is also that the resolution of the European Parliament, which calls for Italy to stop its anti-Gypsy actions, is not binding on the government of Italy. In other words, it is but rhetoric and words and the parliamentarians know and knew that full well when they went for this and the gimmick of giving their own fingerprints.
The Italian foreign minister and former EU justice minister, Franco Frattini,called the reactions of the EU as politically motivated.
There are currently some 700 Gypsy camps in Italy, the majority near Rome, Naples, or Milan and in those reside thousands of Sinti and Rom, and all of them will be the target for those anti-Gypsy measures of the regime of Berlusconi. Il Duce would be proud of him and Adolf Hitler even more so. I am sure Heinrich Himmler would have elevated him to a general in the SS.
If the Sinti of Italy think that they are safe and that this is only going to affect the Roma then they better think again. And if the rest of the Romani, in the EU and elsewhere, think that it may not happen to where they are, a rethink, I would advise, to be necessary too.
We are alone in this world as a People, and we ourselves alone can only do something. It is time that we did.
AVA! Ame Shai!
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
European Union adopts resolution to call on Italy to stop Gypsy crackdown
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Italian interior minister Roberto Maroni argues that the measure is designed to 'prevent phenomena such as begging'.
But critics believe, rightly so, one can only add, that the Gypsy minority is being unfairly targeted by the new, right-wing government led by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
On the other hand, as a Romani myself, I have to agree though that there is a problem with a number of Roma groups (and no, I am not having a go at the Roma again – only at laziness and such), in that the men idle doing nothing while the force the women and children to go out to beg and, also, dare I say, pickpocket, shoplift, etc. Though being Gypsy I cannot and will not ever condone such kind of behavior. I would only ever condone “theft” if it was for survival, and that then with reservations.
The European Commission has called for an investigation into the measures of the Italian government. So, I assume we shall hear from them in about four years time or so after millions of Euro have been wasted on such a study and report.
Meanwhile, the European Parliament has just adopted a resolution that asks the Italian government to halt its plans. Euro MPs say it is unacceptable "to violate Gypsies' fundamental rights and to criminalise them."
The Italian MEP Monica Frassoni of the Green Party believes the authorities have already begun creating files on Gypsies living in camps around major cities. She warns that this violates EU laws.
We all know, Miss Frassoni, that this violated EU law. What the Romani People would like to know is what actual steps of intervention – not just rhetoric – the European Union and its Commission and Parliament are actually going to take to stop this NOW.
"The point is that the Italian government has issued a decree obliging all people living in camps - so normally gypsies - to be filed and to say where they come from and what ethnic origin they have. Even which religion they have, which is absolutely forbidden normally by our laws.
It actually means you are creating a database based on ethnic origins. This is why we are putting so much focus on this: because there is a direct contradiction with European legislation."
How nice... we know that.
European Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot stresses that Italy has promised to send a detailed report on its plans by the end of July.
"It's important for me that there is an extremely precise and clear investigation," he says. But the Commissioner also says he's been given assurances by minister Maroni that the United Nations children's agency, UNICEF, backs the controversial plan.
That's because fingerprinting should help to make sure that Roma children go to school and receive social welfare.
If this is true, that is to say that UNICEF, a United Nations body, backing this action then we, the Rom, must come to realize that the UN nor the EU will ever be on the side of the Romani and that, as I have predicted already a number of years ago, we, the Gypsy People, the Romani, are again the target of actions against us by government decree, and in this case from on very high (no, o Devel has nothing to do with that).
Senior Juan de Dios Ramírez-Heredia, president of the Romani Union of neighbouring Spain and first ever Romani who served as a Member of the European Parliament, however, says the measures are first and foremost linked to promises to crack down on crime.
Those promises were a key element, he said, of the campaign that swept Mr Berlusconi back into power earlier this year. The Prime Minister even made an explicit connection between rising crime rates and the large number of Roma living in Italy.
"He won by exploiting public fears about the growing insecurity in Italy. This fear was channelled towards Gypsies, because we are an invisible minority."
Mr Heredia added that society's weakest always "end up paying the price of an extreme anti-immigration policy."
Ms Frassoni says that it is now the EU's duty to act.
"I am not even sure that will be enough, but the EU is a community of rights and values and we must do this or be shown to be totally useless."
Dear Miss Frassoni, what are you proposing the EU is going to do for they will do nothing. And we, the Romani, must have come to realize this by now.
In fact, the way it would appear, the EU will not act against Italy (except with a few little words to show the rest of the world) because the EU has plans for the Gypsy. Plans similar, it would appear, to those that Germany under Hitler and even before already had for the Romani. I leave the reader to come to his or her own conclusions from the historical data available.
Time, amare Rom, to do our own thing. Time to come to realize that none of the “white” man's organizations will do anything for us. Time to stand up and be counted (no, not by the Carabinieri) and stand against this as a Nation, as a People.
A People United Can Never Be Defeated!
AVA! Ame Shai!
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
Italian interior minister Roberto Maroni argues that the measure is designed to 'prevent phenomena such as begging'.
But critics believe, rightly so, one can only add, that the Gypsy minority is being unfairly targeted by the new, right-wing government led by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
On the other hand, as a Romani myself, I have to agree though that there is a problem with a number of Roma groups (and no, I am not having a go at the Roma again – only at laziness and such), in that the men idle doing nothing while the force the women and children to go out to beg and, also, dare I say, pickpocket, shoplift, etc. Though being Gypsy I cannot and will not ever condone such kind of behavior. I would only ever condone “theft” if it was for survival, and that then with reservations.
The European Commission has called for an investigation into the measures of the Italian government. So, I assume we shall hear from them in about four years time or so after millions of Euro have been wasted on such a study and report.
Meanwhile, the European Parliament has just adopted a resolution that asks the Italian government to halt its plans. Euro MPs say it is unacceptable "to violate Gypsies' fundamental rights and to criminalise them."
The Italian MEP Monica Frassoni of the Green Party believes the authorities have already begun creating files on Gypsies living in camps around major cities. She warns that this violates EU laws.
We all know, Miss Frassoni, that this violated EU law. What the Romani People would like to know is what actual steps of intervention – not just rhetoric – the European Union and its Commission and Parliament are actually going to take to stop this NOW.
"The point is that the Italian government has issued a decree obliging all people living in camps - so normally gypsies - to be filed and to say where they come from and what ethnic origin they have. Even which religion they have, which is absolutely forbidden normally by our laws.
It actually means you are creating a database based on ethnic origins. This is why we are putting so much focus on this: because there is a direct contradiction with European legislation."
How nice... we know that.
European Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot stresses that Italy has promised to send a detailed report on its plans by the end of July.
"It's important for me that there is an extremely precise and clear investigation," he says. But the Commissioner also says he's been given assurances by minister Maroni that the United Nations children's agency, UNICEF, backs the controversial plan.
That's because fingerprinting should help to make sure that Roma children go to school and receive social welfare.
If this is true, that is to say that UNICEF, a United Nations body, backing this action then we, the Rom, must come to realize that the UN nor the EU will ever be on the side of the Romani and that, as I have predicted already a number of years ago, we, the Gypsy People, the Romani, are again the target of actions against us by government decree, and in this case from on very high (no, o Devel has nothing to do with that).
Senior Juan de Dios Ramírez-Heredia, president of the Romani Union of neighbouring Spain and first ever Romani who served as a Member of the European Parliament, however, says the measures are first and foremost linked to promises to crack down on crime.
Those promises were a key element, he said, of the campaign that swept Mr Berlusconi back into power earlier this year. The Prime Minister even made an explicit connection between rising crime rates and the large number of Roma living in Italy.
"He won by exploiting public fears about the growing insecurity in Italy. This fear was channelled towards Gypsies, because we are an invisible minority."
Mr Heredia added that society's weakest always "end up paying the price of an extreme anti-immigration policy."
Ms Frassoni says that it is now the EU's duty to act.
"I am not even sure that will be enough, but the EU is a community of rights and values and we must do this or be shown to be totally useless."
Dear Miss Frassoni, what are you proposing the EU is going to do for they will do nothing. And we, the Romani, must have come to realize this by now.
In fact, the way it would appear, the EU will not act against Italy (except with a few little words to show the rest of the world) because the EU has plans for the Gypsy. Plans similar, it would appear, to those that Germany under Hitler and even before already had for the Romani. I leave the reader to come to his or her own conclusions from the historical data available.
Time, amare Rom, to do our own thing. Time to come to realize that none of the “white” man's organizations will do anything for us. Time to stand up and be counted (no, not by the Carabinieri) and stand against this as a Nation, as a People.
A People United Can Never Be Defeated!
AVA! Ame Shai!
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
ERIO welcomes launch of new Social Agenda by European Commission
NEWS RELEASE
Brussels, July 2nd, 2008: European Roma Information Office (ERIO) welcomes the launch of the new Social Agenda by the European Commission.
This document includes a report on the inclusion of Roma in the European society that could be seen as a first step in the direction of a substantial and consistent European Strategy for Roma.
The report could also offer a good basis of discussion to prepare for the European Roma Summit that will take place in Brussels on September 18th, 2008.
Awareness raising is fundamental to tackle the growing prejudice against Roma in Europe. Ivan Ivanov, ERIO Executive Director, commenting on the Social Agenda stated that: “As the recent Eurobarometer survey on discrimination shows, once again Roma are the most discriminated minority in Europe. Alarming levels of prejudices among Italians and Czech can easily be explained by the racist attitude of its politicians. Therefore we need urgent action and we hope that the Member States will cope with their resposibilities and use all the instruments at their disposal to improve the level of protection and integration of Roma in their societies”.
ERIO also welcomes the Commission proposal for a horizontal directive that will complete the anti-discrimination protection beyond the workplace: this directive would include age, sexual orientation, disability and faith. Gender and ethnic origin are already covered (although not always in an effective way, as the last Fundamental Rights Agency report showed) by another directive. This new directive would ensure equal treatment in the areas of social protection, including social security and health care, education and access to and supply of goods and services which are commercially available to the public, including housing.
Brussels, July 2nd, 2008: European Roma Information Office (ERIO) welcomes the launch of the new Social Agenda by the European Commission.
This document includes a report on the inclusion of Roma in the European society that could be seen as a first step in the direction of a substantial and consistent European Strategy for Roma.
The report could also offer a good basis of discussion to prepare for the European Roma Summit that will take place in Brussels on September 18th, 2008.
Awareness raising is fundamental to tackle the growing prejudice against Roma in Europe. Ivan Ivanov, ERIO Executive Director, commenting on the Social Agenda stated that: “As the recent Eurobarometer survey on discrimination shows, once again Roma are the most discriminated minority in Europe. Alarming levels of prejudices among Italians and Czech can easily be explained by the racist attitude of its politicians. Therefore we need urgent action and we hope that the Member States will cope with their resposibilities and use all the instruments at their disposal to improve the level of protection and integration of Roma in their societies”.
ERIO also welcomes the Commission proposal for a horizontal directive that will complete the anti-discrimination protection beyond the workplace: this directive would include age, sexual orientation, disability and faith. Gender and ethnic origin are already covered (although not always in an effective way, as the last Fundamental Rights Agency report showed) by another directive. This new directive would ensure equal treatment in the areas of social protection, including social security and health care, education and access to and supply of goods and services which are commercially available to the public, including housing.
Birthday party snub sparks debate
Another good reason for, where it is permitted, to homeschool.
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
An eight-year-old boy has sparked an unlikely outcry in Sweden after failing to invite two of his classmates to his birthday party.
The boy's school says he has violated the children's rights and has complained to the Swedish Parliament.
The school, in Lund, southern Sweden, argues that if invitations are handed out on school premises then it must ensure there is no discrimination.
The boy's father has lodged a complaint with the parliamentary ombudsman.
He says the two children were left out because one did not invite his son to his own party and he had fallen out with the other one.
The boy handed out his birthday invitations during class-time and when the teacher spotted that two children had not received one the invitations were confiscated.
"My son has taken it pretty hard," the boy's father told the newspaper Sydsvenskan.
"No one has the right to confiscate someone's property in this way, it's like taking someone's post," he added.
A verdict on the matter is likely to be reached in September, in time for the next school year.
Sweden has, as we all know, a very strange set of laws in this department and tries to be so advanced that it is in fact making a mockery of itself.
While this country throws an tantrum when a child snubs his classmates as regards to invites to a birthday party it does not have such an exemplary record, for instance, when it comes to the Romani where, in fact, the race relations are rather strained despite their great mantle of openness and, while it is true that they have taken in a fair number of Romani refugees and such, the general relations from state and public towards Romani People is no better than in other countries where such strange laws do not exist.
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
An eight-year-old boy has sparked an unlikely outcry in Sweden after failing to invite two of his classmates to his birthday party.
The boy's school says he has violated the children's rights and has complained to the Swedish Parliament.
The school, in Lund, southern Sweden, argues that if invitations are handed out on school premises then it must ensure there is no discrimination.
The boy's father has lodged a complaint with the parliamentary ombudsman.
He says the two children were left out because one did not invite his son to his own party and he had fallen out with the other one.
The boy handed out his birthday invitations during class-time and when the teacher spotted that two children had not received one the invitations were confiscated.
"My son has taken it pretty hard," the boy's father told the newspaper Sydsvenskan.
"No one has the right to confiscate someone's property in this way, it's like taking someone's post," he added.
A verdict on the matter is likely to be reached in September, in time for the next school year.
Sweden has, as we all know, a very strange set of laws in this department and tries to be so advanced that it is in fact making a mockery of itself.
While this country throws an tantrum when a child snubs his classmates as regards to invites to a birthday party it does not have such an exemplary record, for instance, when it comes to the Romani where, in fact, the race relations are rather strained despite their great mantle of openness and, while it is true that they have taken in a fair number of Romani refugees and such, the general relations from state and public towards Romani People is no better than in other countries where such strange laws do not exist.
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
Gypsy Day at Bourne Hall
Epsom, 28 June 2008: A Gypsy Day was held on Saturday, June 28, 2008, at Bourne Hall Museum, Bourne Hall, Spring Street, Ewell, KT17 1UP from 09.30 – 17.30pm, which was Epsom and Ewell's effort of honoring the national Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month.
“Find out the fascinating history, culture, food and music of these people,” said the advert on the EEBC website. “Traditional wagons will be parked on the lawn at Bourne Hall Park, where you will be able to sit around the camp fire and hear stories of the old days while you watch demonstrations of cooking and crafts like peg and flower making, or try your hand at setting up a bender tent.
There will be an exhibition on the national and local history of the Gypsies, who have so many connections with Epsom.
The Romany and Traveller Family History Society will also be present along with other researchers to help people trace their Gypsy roots.”
Well, so much for the advertisement by the Council. The reality was rather a little different, to say the least, although I got there only at about 3.30pm, and many people may have been there much earlier.
There was one small vardo parked on the green in front of Bourne Hall in the Park and an even small flatbed trailer (for a Shetland pony) next to it. Those exhibits were from the South East Romany Museum in Marden, Kent, and brought there by the Brazil Brothers.
There was no campfire proper and had not been one, it would appear but then again, fires in a public park are not a good idea. I saw nothing of a bender tent though there was a bell tent that had been set up not far from the vardo. The Brazil Brothers were not very talkative so as to stories of the old day... well, I don't know. And there was not a sign of peg making or the making of wooden flowers.
I must say that there is one thing that I object to, when I am talking to Gypsy People and I have introduced myself and identified myself as a Gypsy and that is being talked to like as if I was a Gohja, and the attempt being made to bullshit me. Tatchipen was the rule as regards Rom to Rom but, alas, that is something that seems to have gone out of the windows with the Romani in England nowadays, and some of them are about my age who talk like that.
I also wonder why some of ours believe that they have to live the image of the Gyppo; namely wear stained shirts and such to such an event, and really make every effort to look the part, the very sterotype that we should try to get rid off.
In addition to that, if someone want to proselytize people kindly do that at church or at a tent mission; do not try to do that to other Rom, and continue doing so when told that the person talked to follows a different belief, in fact the old belief of our People. Some people do object to being preached at and especially as a Rom being preached at by a Romni several decades younger than oneself.
All in all I have to say that there was more to see of real interest in the small museum in the Canon at Mitcham than there was here at this event in Ewell. While the Canons has a very small museum in the basement of the building there was, in my opinion, more to be seen there than, I am afraid to say, at this event here at Ewell.
I assume Jeremy Harte of Bourne Hall tried to do his very best but, once again, this proves that some proper Gypsy organization, and especially local Romani-Gypsy need to be involved in the organization of such an event.
All we basically had here was an exhibition by the Romany and Traveller Family History Society who, so it would appear, brought in people that they have on their open day events elsewhere.
What was missing altogether was an involvement of the Gypsies resident on sites and in houses in the Epsom and Ewell area. There are two official Gypsy Caravan Sites in the borough of Epsom & Ewell and, as far as I saw, not a single member of those sites, or those Romani that are living in houses in and around the borough were anywhere to be seen. Where were the Sparrowhawks – the scrap yard people? Where were those of that family and others who own, breed and train horses on the Downs? Entirely absent. Where were the young Romani boxers and footballers? Also nowhere to be seen.
Maybe the Epsom & Ewell Council, as well as others, such as Merton, would like to get in touch with this publication and the Gypsy Union for some suggestions as to how we can make this a real event that will really inform outsides, as much as the Gypsy themselves will permit to inform outsiders, of what a Gypsy is. For one, we, the Romani, the Gypsy, are a Race and not JUST an ethnic group and secondly one cannot become a Gypsy by wanting to live the life. Also, I have to say, talking about that one would rather live in a wooden wagon than in a house, etc., while being Romani does not make much in as far as projecting the truth over to people. We must stop pandering to the non-Romani's beliefs of how a Gypsy should look, act, and so on.
© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008
5 July - Romani coercive sterilization survivors speak in Madrid
NEWS RELEASE
Roma Health Project awarded a grant to ERRC to support organizing a panel discussion on the issue of coerced sterilization of Romani women in Europe, as part of the 2008 Women's World Congress taking place in Madrid on July 3-9, 2008.
The panel will be led by Romani women who survived this racial and gender violence, and their advocates. The panelists will also produce and distribute a publication on the coerced sterilization of Romani women in Europe to raise awareness within the international women's movement of the extreme violence and harm to personal integrity experienced by Romani women forcibly sterilized, and to garner support for their continuing struggle for justice.
DATE: Saturday 5 July 2008
Who: Romani women survivors of coercive sterilisations in Central Europe and their advocates
What: Presentation on the efforts to seek redress for these human rights violations at the 10th annual Women's Worlds 2008 conference (http://www.mmww08.org)
When: Saturday 5 July 2008 at 16:30
Where: Universidad Complente de Madrid, Room 8 M25, Edificio Multiusos I, Ciudad Universitaria, 28040 – Madrid.
Why: Romani women survivors of coercive sterilisations in Central Europe and their advocates will give a presentation on their efforts to seek redress for these human rights violations at the Women's Worlds 2008 conference. The survivors are reaching out to the larger women's rights movement for solidarity and assistance in their efforts to pressure the Czech, Hungarian and Slovak governments to apologise to these victims and compensate them for these harms.
In view of the upcoming Czech Presidency of the European Union; the repeated calls for remedy from these countries by the UN Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, which will review Slovakia at the same time the congress takes place (http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cedaw/cedaws41.htm); and calls by the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the Human Rights Committee for these violations to be addressed, it is imperative that Czech, Slovak and Hungarian officials address these unresolved human rights violations and take all the necessary steps to prevent similar infringements in the future.
The presenters are available for interview as follows:
Elena Gorolová (Czech, Romanes) – Ms Gorolová is the spokesperson of the Ostrava-based Group of Women Harmed by Sterilisation and is a civil society member of the Council for Roma Community Affairs, an advisory body to the Czech government. Contact: +420 603 921 255 or elena.gorolova@seznam.cz.
Anita Danka (Hungarian, English) – Ms. Danka is a Staff Attorney at the European Roma Rights Centre (www.errc.org) and has represented Ms. A.S. before the UN CEDAW Committee on behalf of ERRC in her complaint concerning her coercive sterilisation in Hungary. Contact: +36-30-303-6140 or +36-20-398-8303 (July3-10), anita.danka@errc.org
Gwendolyn Albert (Czech, English) – Ms. Albert is the Director of the Women's Initiatives Network of the Peacework Development Fund (http://www.peacework.org/) and has been assisting the Group with its advocacy efforts both inside the Czech Republic and internationally. Contact: +420 774 895 444, gwendolyn.albert@gmail.com, gwen@peacework.org
Ostalinda Maya Ovalles (Spanish, English) – Ms. Maya is the European Roma Rights Centre's Women's Rights Consultant and has been working for the advancement of the rights of Romani women. Contact: ostalinda@gmail.com or (from 23 June) +34 627212118
For press accreditation to this event, please complete the form at: http://www.mmww08.org/index.cfm?nav_id=62
Roma Health Project awarded a grant to ERRC to support organizing a panel discussion on the issue of coerced sterilization of Romani women in Europe, as part of the 2008 Women's World Congress taking place in Madrid on July 3-9, 2008.
The panel will be led by Romani women who survived this racial and gender violence, and their advocates. The panelists will also produce and distribute a publication on the coerced sterilization of Romani women in Europe to raise awareness within the international women's movement of the extreme violence and harm to personal integrity experienced by Romani women forcibly sterilized, and to garner support for their continuing struggle for justice.
DATE: Saturday 5 July 2008
Who: Romani women survivors of coercive sterilisations in Central Europe and their advocates
What: Presentation on the efforts to seek redress for these human rights violations at the 10th annual Women's Worlds 2008 conference (http://www.mmww08.org)
When: Saturday 5 July 2008 at 16:30
Where: Universidad Complente de Madrid, Room 8 M25, Edificio Multiusos I, Ciudad Universitaria, 28040 – Madrid.
Why: Romani women survivors of coercive sterilisations in Central Europe and their advocates will give a presentation on their efforts to seek redress for these human rights violations at the Women's Worlds 2008 conference. The survivors are reaching out to the larger women's rights movement for solidarity and assistance in their efforts to pressure the Czech, Hungarian and Slovak governments to apologise to these victims and compensate them for these harms.
In view of the upcoming Czech Presidency of the European Union; the repeated calls for remedy from these countries by the UN Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, which will review Slovakia at the same time the congress takes place (http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cedaw/cedaws41.htm); and calls by the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the Human Rights Committee for these violations to be addressed, it is imperative that Czech, Slovak and Hungarian officials address these unresolved human rights violations and take all the necessary steps to prevent similar infringements in the future.
The presenters are available for interview as follows:
Elena Gorolová (Czech, Romanes) – Ms Gorolová is the spokesperson of the Ostrava-based Group of Women Harmed by Sterilisation and is a civil society member of the Council for Roma Community Affairs, an advisory body to the Czech government. Contact: +420 603 921 255 or elena.gorolova@seznam.cz.
Anita Danka (Hungarian, English) – Ms. Danka is a Staff Attorney at the European Roma Rights Centre (www.errc.org) and has represented Ms. A.S. before the UN CEDAW Committee on behalf of ERRC in her complaint concerning her coercive sterilisation in Hungary. Contact: +36-30-303-6140 or +36-20-398-8303 (July3-10), anita.danka@errc.org
Gwendolyn Albert (Czech, English) – Ms. Albert is the Director of the Women's Initiatives Network of the Peacework Development Fund (http://www.peacework.org/) and has been assisting the Group with its advocacy efforts both inside the Czech Republic and internationally. Contact: +420 774 895 444, gwendolyn.albert@gmail.com, gwen@peacework.org
Ostalinda Maya Ovalles (Spanish, English) – Ms. Maya is the European Roma Rights Centre's Women's Rights Consultant and has been working for the advancement of the rights of Romani women. Contact: ostalinda@gmail.com or (from 23 June) +34 627212118
For press accreditation to this event, please complete the form at: http://www.mmww08.org/index.cfm?nav_id=62
Prosperity and health of Roma women – path towards challenges
NEWS RELEASE
Kumanovo, Macedonia, 19 June 2008 – The National Roma Centrum from 1 August 2007 began with implementation of the project “Prosperity and health of Roma women – path towards challenges” with support of the Roma Health Program – Budapest.
The subject of the project and the research is examination of the current condition and priority needs and problems of Roma women in their access to health protection.
Within the framework of the activities filing out questioners by Roma women was conducted. The research was realized in 4 cities in R. M.: Kumanovo, Kriva Palanka, Prilep and Bitola, in order to gain a real image about the level of inclusion of the Roma women as the most marginalized entity in this society in the public health’s agenda.
The methodology of the research was through direct communication (talks) and informing of the surveyed women about the importance of going to a doctor, free PAP tests, obligatory vaccination of children, the risk of hepatitis, asthma and other diseases in order to take appropriate measures for protection of their own health.
Part of the activities of the NRC’s informative center were connected to educating of the female Roma population in these cities, lectures were organized twice a month by expert medical persons for groups composed of 15-20 women. The women had the opportunity to get free legal advice mostly for securing their civil status, services for health protection, health insurance, managing family relations.
Health is a condition of complete physical, mental and social welfare and not just absence of illness or weakness. With raising this issue in public for health protection and condition of the women, with exposing the problems in public, further strategic actions can contribute for towards: 1. understanding and acceptance of this issue by the public and 2. promoting of the access of Roma women to public health services.
The National Roma Centrum calls on all relevant institutions and facilities to support the implementation of the following activities:
Decreasing of differences in order to provide quality health protection of various socio-economic groups. In order to provide a sustainable mechanism for quality health protection for socially endangered families on the principles of equal approach and social solidarity.
The health system and the local self government to stimulate securing of availability of public health institutions in enviorments where Roma population is dominative and have difficulties towards accessing health facilities, with which equal approach will be provided to health protection. To improve or build infrastructure in the Roma settlements.
Revidentation of a positive list of essential medication and medical aids included in the elementary package of health services, especially medication which are being used for treatment of asthma
To implement a multi sector approach: education of the Roma female population and preventive protection.
Social mobilization of the local community in promoting of reproductive health of Roma women and support from the Government for financing of preventive programs. To provide means for continuing of the Program for early detection of malignant neoplasms of the women’s reproductive organs, to provide free examinations for all women at the ages from 19-65, including the Roma female population who are under a social risk to make a PAP test for early discovering of a malignant neoplasm of the uterus of the womb.
Strenghtening of the cooperation and communication, on a local and national levels, between the health sector and Roma civil organizations in promoting and conducting of educational health preventive programs through providing of easily accessible, understandable and precise information about preventive protection through direct work for the Roma female population.
Data have been provided to all present medias and also to those who showed interest for the analyze.
National Roma Centrum
Address:”Done Bozinov 11/5,1300 Kumanovo, Macedonia
Phone/fax:+389 31 427 558
WEB: http://www.nationalromacentrum.org
email: info[at]nationalromacentrum[dot]org
<>
Kumanovo, Macedonia, 19 June 2008 – The National Roma Centrum from 1 August 2007 began with implementation of the project “Prosperity and health of Roma women – path towards challenges” with support of the Roma Health Program – Budapest.
The subject of the project and the research is examination of the current condition and priority needs and problems of Roma women in their access to health protection.
Within the framework of the activities filing out questioners by Roma women was conducted. The research was realized in 4 cities in R. M.: Kumanovo, Kriva Palanka, Prilep and Bitola, in order to gain a real image about the level of inclusion of the Roma women as the most marginalized entity in this society in the public health’s agenda.
The methodology of the research was through direct communication (talks) and informing of the surveyed women about the importance of going to a doctor, free PAP tests, obligatory vaccination of children, the risk of hepatitis, asthma and other diseases in order to take appropriate measures for protection of their own health.
Part of the activities of the NRC’s informative center were connected to educating of the female Roma population in these cities, lectures were organized twice a month by expert medical persons for groups composed of 15-20 women. The women had the opportunity to get free legal advice mostly for securing their civil status, services for health protection, health insurance, managing family relations.
Health is a condition of complete physical, mental and social welfare and not just absence of illness or weakness. With raising this issue in public for health protection and condition of the women, with exposing the problems in public, further strategic actions can contribute for towards: 1. understanding and acceptance of this issue by the public and 2. promoting of the access of Roma women to public health services.
The National Roma Centrum calls on all relevant institutions and facilities to support the implementation of the following activities:
Decreasing of differences in order to provide quality health protection of various socio-economic groups. In order to provide a sustainable mechanism for quality health protection for socially endangered families on the principles of equal approach and social solidarity.
The health system and the local self government to stimulate securing of availability of public health institutions in enviorments where Roma population is dominative and have difficulties towards accessing health facilities, with which equal approach will be provided to health protection. To improve or build infrastructure in the Roma settlements.
Revidentation of a positive list of essential medication and medical aids included in the elementary package of health services, especially medication which are being used for treatment of asthma
To implement a multi sector approach: education of the Roma female population and preventive protection.
Social mobilization of the local community in promoting of reproductive health of Roma women and support from the Government for financing of preventive programs. To provide means for continuing of the Program for early detection of malignant neoplasms of the women’s reproductive organs, to provide free examinations for all women at the ages from 19-65, including the Roma female population who are under a social risk to make a PAP test for early discovering of a malignant neoplasm of the uterus of the womb.
Strenghtening of the cooperation and communication, on a local and national levels, between the health sector and Roma civil organizations in promoting and conducting of educational health preventive programs through providing of easily accessible, understandable and precise information about preventive protection through direct work for the Roma female population.
Data have been provided to all present medias and also to those who showed interest for the analyze.
National Roma Centrum
Address:”Done Bozinov 11/5,1300 Kumanovo, Macedonia
Phone/fax:+389 31 427 558
WEB: http://www.nationalromacentrum.org
email: info[at]nationalromacentrum[dot]org
<>
It has begun! Compulsory fingerprinting of ALL Gypsy children In Italy!
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
While, officially, this is to include all Gypsies living in the camps, whether they are “illegal” immigrants (how pray can they be illegal immigrant when both Romani and Bulgaria are in the EU?) or Roma and Sinti with Italian nationality and citizenship, the primary aim is to fingerprint all Romani children.
While the Italian government proposal to fingerprint all the country's Gypsies, including children, has drawn stern criticism from members of the Catholic Church and from the opposition, this, like always, is nothing but rhetoric.
Gypsy children whose parents keep them out of school and send them to beg on the streets would be taken into care, under plans announced by the Interior Minister Roberto Maroni.
Here we can see the aim of this fingerprinting – and I assume we also will have their photos taken, much like in Nazi Germany in the 1930's – and that is so the children can be manipulated. This means either send you children to government schools or lose them. In the same way as the voluntary integration (for integration read assimilation please) scheme in France which is so voluntary that Gypsy families who do not wish to take part will have their children taken into “care” by the state. And all this in the European Union which claims to be so great for the minorities like the Romani People, the Gypsy, my People.
Maroni said the planned 'census' of Gypsies is not 'ethnic profiling' but aimed ensuring decent living conditions for all individuals who have the right to residency in Italy and expelling those who are here illegally and he added, while addressing the lower house of Parliament's constitutional affairs committee, “does living among rats as Gypsy children do in their camps respect their rights? As Italian citizens , we should be ashamed about this situation, which should not be allowed to continue.”
Therefore we must take those children into state care so that the families conform and go and live in those flats in those high-rise blocks that we will allocated to them. The latter is my sarcastic addition, as you may have noticed, but, methinks, this is the pattern of thought that is in the minds of those fascist politicians in the Italian parliament.
Under Maroni's plans, the fingerprinting of Gypsies would be overseen by special Gypsy commissioners appointed in Italy's major cities since the conservative government took office last month.
Now what a surprise; he has even organized Gypsy capos already. Are those drawn from the Gypsy community; if so then shame on them and outcast they shall be. If they are Gadje, well, then, I am sure, many will know what to do with them as well.
When is Italy going to institute the compulsory wearing of the Brown Triangle for the Romani in that country (again) so as to ensure that everyone knows that that person is a Gypsy and therefore, maybe, should be avoided. Maybe just schools for Gypsy children need to be set up as well, and everything else segregated. Park benches with “Only for Gypsies” or “Not for Gypsies” must also be instituted.
I am sure there are a couple of architects of the South African Apartheid still alive that could assist Berlusconi and his ilk his jackbooted Carabineri thugs.
Of the 150,000 Roma Gypsies who live in Italy, about 70,000 have Italian citizenship. Many Roma Gypsies come from Romania and those are citizen of another EU member state and therefore also have the right to be in the country, theoretically. It would appear, however, as if Duce II is just changing the goal post and may be even prepared to remove citizenship from those Italian Gypsy that currently have it.
Welcome to Italy 2008, a rerun of the 1930's, only with modern methods.
While presently this is confined, to some degree, to Italy though with some refugee Gypsy arriving in Austria already, I doubt that it will remain contained there. In fact I am rather concerned that this is just the beginning of a repeat of the 1930's and the wholesale persecution of the Gypsy People in the European Union by government decree.
One is rather overcome by a sense of deja vu on hearing such happenings, and the EU and its commissioners are full of rhetorics and that is all. A country of the European Union, a founding member of it, in fact, when it began as the European Economic Community, is repeating the 1930's and the rest of Europe and the world remain silent; far more concerned with the happening in Rhodesia than in the EU.
Oh, did I say, Rhodesia? I guess I must have...
Time we, the Romani, woke up to the fact that no one is going to do anything beneficial for the Gypsy. We will have to do it for ourselves, and so we should. First and foremost we must wake up and we must be prepared to stand up to this and fight it.
© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008
<>
While, officially, this is to include all Gypsies living in the camps, whether they are “illegal” immigrants (how pray can they be illegal immigrant when both Romani and Bulgaria are in the EU?) or Roma and Sinti with Italian nationality and citizenship, the primary aim is to fingerprint all Romani children.
While the Italian government proposal to fingerprint all the country's Gypsies, including children, has drawn stern criticism from members of the Catholic Church and from the opposition, this, like always, is nothing but rhetoric.
Gypsy children whose parents keep them out of school and send them to beg on the streets would be taken into care, under plans announced by the Interior Minister Roberto Maroni.
Here we can see the aim of this fingerprinting – and I assume we also will have their photos taken, much like in Nazi Germany in the 1930's – and that is so the children can be manipulated. This means either send you children to government schools or lose them. In the same way as the voluntary integration (for integration read assimilation please) scheme in France which is so voluntary that Gypsy families who do not wish to take part will have their children taken into “care” by the state. And all this in the European Union which claims to be so great for the minorities like the Romani People, the Gypsy, my People.
Maroni said the planned 'census' of Gypsies is not 'ethnic profiling' but aimed ensuring decent living conditions for all individuals who have the right to residency in Italy and expelling those who are here illegally and he added, while addressing the lower house of Parliament's constitutional affairs committee, “does living among rats as Gypsy children do in their camps respect their rights? As Italian citizens , we should be ashamed about this situation, which should not be allowed to continue.”
Therefore we must take those children into state care so that the families conform and go and live in those flats in those high-rise blocks that we will allocated to them. The latter is my sarcastic addition, as you may have noticed, but, methinks, this is the pattern of thought that is in the minds of those fascist politicians in the Italian parliament.
Under Maroni's plans, the fingerprinting of Gypsies would be overseen by special Gypsy commissioners appointed in Italy's major cities since the conservative government took office last month.
Now what a surprise; he has even organized Gypsy capos already. Are those drawn from the Gypsy community; if so then shame on them and outcast they shall be. If they are Gadje, well, then, I am sure, many will know what to do with them as well.
When is Italy going to institute the compulsory wearing of the Brown Triangle for the Romani in that country (again) so as to ensure that everyone knows that that person is a Gypsy and therefore, maybe, should be avoided. Maybe just schools for Gypsy children need to be set up as well, and everything else segregated. Park benches with “Only for Gypsies” or “Not for Gypsies” must also be instituted.
I am sure there are a couple of architects of the South African Apartheid still alive that could assist Berlusconi and his ilk his jackbooted Carabineri thugs.
Of the 150,000 Roma Gypsies who live in Italy, about 70,000 have Italian citizenship. Many Roma Gypsies come from Romania and those are citizen of another EU member state and therefore also have the right to be in the country, theoretically. It would appear, however, as if Duce II is just changing the goal post and may be even prepared to remove citizenship from those Italian Gypsy that currently have it.
Welcome to Italy 2008, a rerun of the 1930's, only with modern methods.
While presently this is confined, to some degree, to Italy though with some refugee Gypsy arriving in Austria already, I doubt that it will remain contained there. In fact I am rather concerned that this is just the beginning of a repeat of the 1930's and the wholesale persecution of the Gypsy People in the European Union by government decree.
One is rather overcome by a sense of deja vu on hearing such happenings, and the EU and its commissioners are full of rhetorics and that is all. A country of the European Union, a founding member of it, in fact, when it began as the European Economic Community, is repeating the 1930's and the rest of Europe and the world remain silent; far more concerned with the happening in Rhodesia than in the EU.
Oh, did I say, Rhodesia? I guess I must have...
Time we, the Romani, woke up to the fact that no one is going to do anything beneficial for the Gypsy. We will have to do it for ourselves, and so we should. First and foremost we must wake up and we must be prepared to stand up to this and fight it.
© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008
<>
Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month at the Canons
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
The Merton Heritage Center in the Canons at Mitcham Green has been running an exhibition entitles “Celebrating Gypsy Traveller Culture and Traditions” from the 4th to the 28th of June 2008, and unfortunately it was only on June 25 that I was actually able to get there.
Was the trip worth it? The answer to this must be a yes and a no. The no simply because the museum is way too tiny to do justice to an exhibition about the Romani in the Mitcham area of London, let alone of much further afield. Obviously there was a yes in my answer and from that point, considering that it is such a tiny venue the exhibition is well laid out and tries to present a lot of things to the visitor. What it could have done with though is a booklet with some pictures and a good deal of information for visitors to take away with them. Maybe for the next time the Gypsy Union and Tatchipen Media could be asked to get involved and we could indeed produce a small booklet that could go, free, or against a donation, to visitors. In addition to that it would also be nice to be able to let visitors take home say a small clothes peg as used to be made and the making of which was also shown in one of the exhibits. The problem is with the peg that was on show: my grandfather would have killed us had we produced something like that. It looked like basically two “boards” having been clamped together in the tin sleeve and then the “beak” carved out.
Having said that, the exhibition, as I indicated, was interesting and was dealing, as it should, basically and primarily with the Romani-Gypsy only, as Mitcham Common was an old stopping place for the Romani in England.
A great number of the photos on display were taken by Simon Evans many years who, due to his attitude, was always welcome amongst the Romani, which presented a great insight into Romani life in England.
What must be done though, maybe in the years to come for this month of Gypsy History is – one – for bona-fide Romani organizations to do it, and I mean bona-fide Romani ones, and – two – for the months to be exclusively for the Romani-Gypsy People only, even if that would mean that it is, as it has always been advocated, for years now already by this writer, organized and funded and operated by us, the Romani only. When this is done we must also and especially include information, including pictures, stories, etc., on the Rom in this country who now live settled, which is the great majority, whether they live on permanent sites in trailers or chalets or in bricks and mortar houses.
Also included must be the jobs that are done today, including the “ordinary” jobs in “mainstream” employment, whether those that are Gypsy Liaison Officers, those that are cops, or whatever. The majority of Romani in this country are no longer travelling and many their neighbors would not even know that they are Romani.
Others, while still known to be Romani by others, and especially those that know the names, have build up great businesses for themselves, like the Sparrowhawk family in Surrey, which must the greatest number of scrap metal yards and are deeply in the recycling business.
There are also those that have the great fruit and vegetable empires, so to speak, on the various South London markets, such as the Kent and the Barnes families.
It is a great shame to see that other local authorities whose areas have a long standing connection with the Gypsy People, such as the area of Epsom and Surrey County as a whole, could not be bothered to do anything at all as regards this month.
As far as I am concerned we must do things for ourselves also in this respect. Ourselves Alone!
© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008
The Merton Heritage Center in the Canons at Mitcham Green has been running an exhibition entitles “Celebrating Gypsy Traveller Culture and Traditions” from the 4th to the 28th of June 2008, and unfortunately it was only on June 25 that I was actually able to get there.
Was the trip worth it? The answer to this must be a yes and a no. The no simply because the museum is way too tiny to do justice to an exhibition about the Romani in the Mitcham area of London, let alone of much further afield. Obviously there was a yes in my answer and from that point, considering that it is such a tiny venue the exhibition is well laid out and tries to present a lot of things to the visitor. What it could have done with though is a booklet with some pictures and a good deal of information for visitors to take away with them. Maybe for the next time the Gypsy Union and Tatchipen Media could be asked to get involved and we could indeed produce a small booklet that could go, free, or against a donation, to visitors. In addition to that it would also be nice to be able to let visitors take home say a small clothes peg as used to be made and the making of which was also shown in one of the exhibits. The problem is with the peg that was on show: my grandfather would have killed us had we produced something like that. It looked like basically two “boards” having been clamped together in the tin sleeve and then the “beak” carved out.
Having said that, the exhibition, as I indicated, was interesting and was dealing, as it should, basically and primarily with the Romani-Gypsy only, as Mitcham Common was an old stopping place for the Romani in England.
A great number of the photos on display were taken by Simon Evans many years who, due to his attitude, was always welcome amongst the Romani, which presented a great insight into Romani life in England.
What must be done though, maybe in the years to come for this month of Gypsy History is – one – for bona-fide Romani organizations to do it, and I mean bona-fide Romani ones, and – two – for the months to be exclusively for the Romani-Gypsy People only, even if that would mean that it is, as it has always been advocated, for years now already by this writer, organized and funded and operated by us, the Romani only. When this is done we must also and especially include information, including pictures, stories, etc., on the Rom in this country who now live settled, which is the great majority, whether they live on permanent sites in trailers or chalets or in bricks and mortar houses.
Also included must be the jobs that are done today, including the “ordinary” jobs in “mainstream” employment, whether those that are Gypsy Liaison Officers, those that are cops, or whatever. The majority of Romani in this country are no longer travelling and many their neighbors would not even know that they are Romani.
Others, while still known to be Romani by others, and especially those that know the names, have build up great businesses for themselves, like the Sparrowhawk family in Surrey, which must the greatest number of scrap metal yards and are deeply in the recycling business.
There are also those that have the great fruit and vegetable empires, so to speak, on the various South London markets, such as the Kent and the Barnes families.
It is a great shame to see that other local authorities whose areas have a long standing connection with the Gypsy People, such as the area of Epsom and Surrey County as a whole, could not be bothered to do anything at all as regards this month.
As far as I am concerned we must do things for ourselves also in this respect. Ourselves Alone!
© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008
'Gypsy' show by Vivienne Westwood severely criticised
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
The British designer Vivienne Westwood has has come under fire and caused lots of controversy by using Roma Gypsies as catwalk models, complete with gold teeth and enormous medallions.
A member of the Milan council criticised the show, saying that she has a "romantic" image of the Roma that "no longer corresponds to reality".
The truth must be said that this “romantic” image never corresponded to reality, whether now or centuries ago. There never was anything romantic in being hounded from village to village and town to town just for being Gypsy.
The models, dressed as "rough, stylish and hardened" Roma, were part of Ms Westwood's show's theme of "tolerance".
Here Ms Westwood must have had a rather bad dream. One cannot but condemn her stupidity in this stunt staging such an event in a misguided attempt to better the image of the Roma in Italy.
The ones that also must be condemned, under Romani Rules, are those Roma that paraded about the catwalk in boxer shorts, that is to say, in underwear, in a way that goes against all true Romanipen.
Council member Tiziano Maiolo said "I think the designer has a romantic notion about Gypsies that is one hundred years out of date.
"If she wants, I will take her on a tour of the nomad camps.
"These people do not want to work, they live by thieving and they have no respect for the law.
"I worked in the gypsy camps around Milan and believe there is no chance for integration while the men play cards and the women and children steal and beg.
It is sad to say that this person is, unfortunately, correct in what he says. The E. European Roma are exactly like that, regardless where they are – whether in Romania or Bulgaria, or such, or in the West. The men sit and drink and play cards while the women and children are out begging or stealing or scavenging.
I have seen this many times myself in regards to the (Eastern European) Roma. All the men do is play cards and drink and smoke while the women and children are sent to beg and to steal and/or scavenge on the rubbish tips.
The behavior of those Roma men, those Rom, that allowed themselves to be used by the designer Vivienne Westwood and were parading about in the kind of attire that they were wearing, shows also, if any more proof would be needed, the difference between the Sinti and others of that group, and the Roma. No one of the Sinti Nations would dare to parade about, in public and in front of women, as those Roma men have done. The picture, I think, speaks for itself.
Over the last couple of weeks Italians have launched a series of xenophobic attacks against immigrants in recent months, who they blame for much of the crime in the country, and a class of Naples primary school children shocked Europe recently by submitting homework backing the burning of gypsy camps.
One child wrote that "the gypsies steal children to transplant their organs," while another stated that "We are not racist, but if they want to stay they have to stop stealing" and yet others entirely agreed with them having had their camps burned down and being driven out of the country. Some primary school children even stated that it did not matter if they would be killed as they are only “parasites”.
If we hear this, yet again, from children, we must get very concerned indeed as to what is going on in Italy, and, for that matter, elsewhere in the European Union.
Considering that no one as much as is willing to lift a finger against the goings on in Italy we, as Romani-Gypsy, can but wonder as to what is being put together there. This all reminds me of Hitler's Germany but then again, we must not forget that Fascism was born in Italy.
Can you not all see the writing on the wall. I have been able to see it for a long time already. The EU is not the next best thing to sliced bread to the Rom; the opposite is the truth rather, it is a danger to us.
Where are the EU based Roma(ni) organizations, such as the ERTF? Their silence, once again, speaks volumes and is rather deafening.
© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008
The British designer Vivienne Westwood has has come under fire and caused lots of controversy by using Roma Gypsies as catwalk models, complete with gold teeth and enormous medallions.
A member of the Milan council criticised the show, saying that she has a "romantic" image of the Roma that "no longer corresponds to reality".
The truth must be said that this “romantic” image never corresponded to reality, whether now or centuries ago. There never was anything romantic in being hounded from village to village and town to town just for being Gypsy.
The models, dressed as "rough, stylish and hardened" Roma, were part of Ms Westwood's show's theme of "tolerance".
Here Ms Westwood must have had a rather bad dream. One cannot but condemn her stupidity in this stunt staging such an event in a misguided attempt to better the image of the Roma in Italy.
The ones that also must be condemned, under Romani Rules, are those Roma that paraded about the catwalk in boxer shorts, that is to say, in underwear, in a way that goes against all true Romanipen.
Council member Tiziano Maiolo said "I think the designer has a romantic notion about Gypsies that is one hundred years out of date.
"If she wants, I will take her on a tour of the nomad camps.
"These people do not want to work, they live by thieving and they have no respect for the law.
"I worked in the gypsy camps around Milan and believe there is no chance for integration while the men play cards and the women and children steal and beg.
It is sad to say that this person is, unfortunately, correct in what he says. The E. European Roma are exactly like that, regardless where they are – whether in Romania or Bulgaria, or such, or in the West. The men sit and drink and play cards while the women and children are out begging or stealing or scavenging.
I have seen this many times myself in regards to the (Eastern European) Roma. All the men do is play cards and drink and smoke while the women and children are sent to beg and to steal and/or scavenge on the rubbish tips.
The behavior of those Roma men, those Rom, that allowed themselves to be used by the designer Vivienne Westwood and were parading about in the kind of attire that they were wearing, shows also, if any more proof would be needed, the difference between the Sinti and others of that group, and the Roma. No one of the Sinti Nations would dare to parade about, in public and in front of women, as those Roma men have done. The picture, I think, speaks for itself.
Over the last couple of weeks Italians have launched a series of xenophobic attacks against immigrants in recent months, who they blame for much of the crime in the country, and a class of Naples primary school children shocked Europe recently by submitting homework backing the burning of gypsy camps.
One child wrote that "the gypsies steal children to transplant their organs," while another stated that "We are not racist, but if they want to stay they have to stop stealing" and yet others entirely agreed with them having had their camps burned down and being driven out of the country. Some primary school children even stated that it did not matter if they would be killed as they are only “parasites”.
If we hear this, yet again, from children, we must get very concerned indeed as to what is going on in Italy, and, for that matter, elsewhere in the European Union.
Considering that no one as much as is willing to lift a finger against the goings on in Italy we, as Romani-Gypsy, can but wonder as to what is being put together there. This all reminds me of Hitler's Germany but then again, we must not forget that Fascism was born in Italy.
Can you not all see the writing on the wall. I have been able to see it for a long time already. The EU is not the next best thing to sliced bread to the Rom; the opposite is the truth rather, it is a danger to us.
Where are the EU based Roma(ni) organizations, such as the ERTF? Their silence, once again, speaks volumes and is rather deafening.
© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008
More travellers sites on the cards
OFFICIAL small scale sites for travellers could be set up in the Suffolk Coastal area.
There have been travellers occupying mainly forestry land for nearly 20 years in the Woodbridge area and now they could be given their own camps.
However, Suffolk Coastal District Council stressed that the provision of sites was not the most urgent requirement of its homelessness strategy and officers have not met with travellers to discuss their needs.
Under the Housing Act 2004 the council has to include gypsies and travellers when assessing housing provision.
The council says there has never been a significant traditional gypsy population, either migratory or fixed. But New Age Travellers have become established since the late 1980s.
They often occupy sites at Hollesley and near the Woodbridge airfield. They are usually hidden away among trees but recently there have been illegal camps set up on Suffolk Coastal land at Sutton Heath, adjacent to popular footpaths, which angered the public.
Suffolk Coastal's cabinet meets on June 17 and will discuss the issue.
Chris Slemmings, cabinet member for housing, said the Government insisted that the homelessness strategy had to address the needs of gypsies and travellers and the council planned to meet three different groups of travellers in the area.
Cllr Slemmings said: ''However, those talks have not yet occurred, nor have we yet looked at possible locations for official camps as it is not a top priority of the homelessness strategy.''
He added the council's main efforts were focused upon the prevention of homelessness.
The population is forecast to rise in Suffolk Coastal by 17.5% in 20 years and the district currently has an above average number of people aged over 45.
More than 75% of the housing stock is owner occupied. The highest percentage of rented homes is in the Felixstowe area.
The rate of unemployment has dropped in 10 years from 5.5% to 1.3% but there has been a trend of people aged 16 to 24 moving away from the area for higher education and to find better paid jobs.
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There have been travellers occupying mainly forestry land for nearly 20 years in the Woodbridge area and now they could be given their own camps.
However, Suffolk Coastal District Council stressed that the provision of sites was not the most urgent requirement of its homelessness strategy and officers have not met with travellers to discuss their needs.
Under the Housing Act 2004 the council has to include gypsies and travellers when assessing housing provision.
The council says there has never been a significant traditional gypsy population, either migratory or fixed. But New Age Travellers have become established since the late 1980s.
They often occupy sites at Hollesley and near the Woodbridge airfield. They are usually hidden away among trees but recently there have been illegal camps set up on Suffolk Coastal land at Sutton Heath, adjacent to popular footpaths, which angered the public.
Suffolk Coastal's cabinet meets on June 17 and will discuss the issue.
Chris Slemmings, cabinet member for housing, said the Government insisted that the homelessness strategy had to address the needs of gypsies and travellers and the council planned to meet three different groups of travellers in the area.
Cllr Slemmings said: ''However, those talks have not yet occurred, nor have we yet looked at possible locations for official camps as it is not a top priority of the homelessness strategy.''
He added the council's main efforts were focused upon the prevention of homelessness.
The population is forecast to rise in Suffolk Coastal by 17.5% in 20 years and the district currently has an above average number of people aged over 45.
More than 75% of the housing stock is owner occupied. The highest percentage of rented homes is in the Felixstowe area.
The rate of unemployment has dropped in 10 years from 5.5% to 1.3% but there has been a trend of people aged 16 to 24 moving away from the area for higher education and to find better paid jobs.
<>
Dale Farm – UK's largest Gypsy Township?
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
If you tell a lie often enough people may believe it seems to be the attitude of various people who insist on calling Dale Farm, in Basildon, Essex (UK), the UK's largest Gypsy township. However, thousands of times over saying it will not make this illegal camp of Irish Travellers into a Gypsy settlement or even township.
Irish Travellers are not Romani and therefore are not Gypsy, as it is or at least was understood in the ruling of the Law Lords. That is the reason why the “Caravan Sites Act” referred to “Gypsies and other Travellers” and was not calling all Gypsies. The Irish Travellers are Travellers but not Gypsy, as they are not Romani, and they cannot be made into Ro mani how ever hard some people may like to try. Even the fact that the Roma(ni) Union basically made them sign themselves into the IRU as “RoMA2 still does not make them Romani or Roma. I do assume, however, that this is rather difficult to understand by some people.
Why the Gypsy Council wants all Gypsies of the UK to unite and then cities to start with this trash about the Dale Farm illegal Irish Traveller camp can only be a mystery.
Gypsy, according to the real and true understanding, are, also according to the old Oxford dictionary, the Romany, of a travelling Race, originally from (Northern) India. It makes no mention of Irish Travellers and especially not of the kind that is illegally encamped in on that location in the Basildon area of Essex.
Those are but pretenders even as far as Irish Travellers are concerned as they are not thos that are of the real Travellers of Ireland but the offspring of those that came to the UK to make use of the welfare state just after WWII. When are the likes of those that are championing their cause are going to understand and admit that. What political mileage are they getting out of this and what financial mileage?
Some of them were jailed in Eire because of their political work for the Irish travellers and they came over into the UK in pursuance of the continuation of this “work” and also, for that reason, never having any real concern for the “real” Gypsy, set up organizations in Britain supposedly for Gypsies but in truth all that was for was for the Irish that cause the Romani, the Gypsy, so much problems. Were it not for the behavior of the Irish Travellers, of the hinditi-meskere, the Romani in the UK would not have been faced with the problems and hostility that we have been faced with ever since around the 1950's.
We want somewhere to live and settle, say the residents at that illegal Irish Traveller camp called “Dale Farm”. So, no problem with that. Get a house or an apartment, rent or buy, you choice. They have been house dwellers before anyway, the great majority of them. Now they, probably, claim “Gypsy Culture” and such like and therefore they could not go and live in a house. The truth is that all they know is scam jobs blacktopping an such and you are not very welcome in a housing estate with tarmac trucks and such.
When it comes to the problems caused by the Irish Travellers to the Gypsy, the Romani, those are now go even beyond the borders of the UK and have reached the European mainland and their behavior is now making it nigh impossible for Sinti and Manouche to go “ap i reisa” in Germany, France, etc. and even the Romani in Norway and Sweden are having problems because of the way Irish Travellers have behaved in those countries.
I shall keep on pointing out the fact that I am pointing out here whether or not some people would like to threaten me and this publication.
We also know why some people kept attacking the background and former affiliations of the late Tom Odley (of blessed memory); it was because he knew of the background of some people that make themselves so big and important in the Gypsy Industry in the UK and elsewhere.
Obviously, some people do not like the truth and Tatchipen is something that they are more afraid of than anything else, it would seem. One can but wonder why. They then to use character assassination in order to make other people look bad, those people that know who and what they really are.
Dosta penauas me djinau.
Remember! Gypsy equals Romani and not simple “people of a travelling lifestyle”. The Gypsy People are a Race, a Race apart. Our People best remember that too.
© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008
If you tell a lie often enough people may believe it seems to be the attitude of various people who insist on calling Dale Farm, in Basildon, Essex (UK), the UK's largest Gypsy township. However, thousands of times over saying it will not make this illegal camp of Irish Travellers into a Gypsy settlement or even township.
Irish Travellers are not Romani and therefore are not Gypsy, as it is or at least was understood in the ruling of the Law Lords. That is the reason why the “Caravan Sites Act” referred to “Gypsies and other Travellers” and was not calling all Gypsies. The Irish Travellers are Travellers but not Gypsy, as they are not Romani, and they cannot be made into Ro mani how ever hard some people may like to try. Even the fact that the Roma(ni) Union basically made them sign themselves into the IRU as “RoMA2 still does not make them Romani or Roma. I do assume, however, that this is rather difficult to understand by some people.
Why the Gypsy Council wants all Gypsies of the UK to unite and then cities to start with this trash about the Dale Farm illegal Irish Traveller camp can only be a mystery.
Gypsy, according to the real and true understanding, are, also according to the old Oxford dictionary, the Romany, of a travelling Race, originally from (Northern) India. It makes no mention of Irish Travellers and especially not of the kind that is illegally encamped in on that location in the Basildon area of Essex.
Those are but pretenders even as far as Irish Travellers are concerned as they are not thos that are of the real Travellers of Ireland but the offspring of those that came to the UK to make use of the welfare state just after WWII. When are the likes of those that are championing their cause are going to understand and admit that. What political mileage are they getting out of this and what financial mileage?
Some of them were jailed in Eire because of their political work for the Irish travellers and they came over into the UK in pursuance of the continuation of this “work” and also, for that reason, never having any real concern for the “real” Gypsy, set up organizations in Britain supposedly for Gypsies but in truth all that was for was for the Irish that cause the Romani, the Gypsy, so much problems. Were it not for the behavior of the Irish Travellers, of the hinditi-meskere, the Romani in the UK would not have been faced with the problems and hostility that we have been faced with ever since around the 1950's.
We want somewhere to live and settle, say the residents at that illegal Irish Traveller camp called “Dale Farm”. So, no problem with that. Get a house or an apartment, rent or buy, you choice. They have been house dwellers before anyway, the great majority of them. Now they, probably, claim “Gypsy Culture” and such like and therefore they could not go and live in a house. The truth is that all they know is scam jobs blacktopping an such and you are not very welcome in a housing estate with tarmac trucks and such.
When it comes to the problems caused by the Irish Travellers to the Gypsy, the Romani, those are now go even beyond the borders of the UK and have reached the European mainland and their behavior is now making it nigh impossible for Sinti and Manouche to go “ap i reisa” in Germany, France, etc. and even the Romani in Norway and Sweden are having problems because of the way Irish Travellers have behaved in those countries.
I shall keep on pointing out the fact that I am pointing out here whether or not some people would like to threaten me and this publication.
We also know why some people kept attacking the background and former affiliations of the late Tom Odley (of blessed memory); it was because he knew of the background of some people that make themselves so big and important in the Gypsy Industry in the UK and elsewhere.
Obviously, some people do not like the truth and Tatchipen is something that they are more afraid of than anything else, it would seem. One can but wonder why. They then to use character assassination in order to make other people look bad, those people that know who and what they really are.
Dosta penauas me djinau.
Remember! Gypsy equals Romani and not simple “people of a travelling lifestyle”. The Gypsy People are a Race, a Race apart. Our People best remember that too.
© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008
Roma Exodus from Italy
Italian Kalderash Roma crossing border into Austria fleeing pogroms
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Reports from Austria, such as from Tirol, suggest that large numbers of Kalderah Roma of Italian nationality are fleeing into Austria. They are being driving from the country of their birth by fascist thugs and by government degree nearly.
The Italian government, so reports suggest, has placed the Roma camps around Naples and Rome (and elsewhere?) under a State of Emergency, giving the security services and the governments, municipal and local complete control over the areas and sweeping powers.
Is this the Europe 2008 and of freedom and democracy or are have we, accidentally, entered a time warp and have ended up in the fascist 1938?
While it is indeed the year 2008 one could well believe that one be back in the times of Hitler and Mussolini. The European Union stands idly by while one of its member states expels citizens from another EU member state wholesale for no other reason than their ethnicity. In Bosnia and Kosovo they called that ethnic cleansing when it was, supposedly, done to the Muslims. Not than anyone even mentioned the displaced Romani-Gypsy on the Balkans, ethnically cleansed from their Mahalas in Kosovo by Kosovo-Albanian Muslim thugs, but then again... it was those that claimed to being ethnically cleansed.
When I basically, some years back, predicted this as going to be happening sooner or later, because I was able, then already, to see the writing on the wall, I was laughed at and this notion was considered by many an impossibility in the free and democratic European Union.
Now we are seeing the true face of the EU and that it is either entirely unable to do anything against this happening, whether in Italy or elsewhere, or, and this is what it really appears to me, a Gypsy, that they are entirely unwilling to do something to help the Romani People, despite their rhetoric to how they want to help the Roma(ni) and all that jazz.
What I can see here as well is now why they want every Gypsy, every Rom, to accept the term Roma, or just simply by them to be called Roma: They can lump all of us then together as “Roma” and do what they like then. Same why everyone in Britain is now called Gypsy, but one is only ethnically a Gypsy now, according to the laws in many areas, if one actually still travels; thereby all those Romani that have settled, either on Gypsy Caravan Sites, official or private, or in houses, are no longer, under those laws, considered “ethnic Gypsy”. Wait till they play a similar joke with the title of “Roma”.
Is there something afoot to ethnically cleanse all “Roma” out of Europe? Things seem to point into that direction for we can see that, when it comes to the Gypsy in the European Union to who this is happening, as we can see now in Italy, and now even Roma of Italian nationality are being hunted down and driven out, nothing is being done against it by neither the EU nor the UN.
The question too awful to contemplate and ask, but asking it one must and this is, whether Italy may in fact be the “stalking horse” for more of this to come for Gypsies throughout the European Union. One can but hope and pray that this is not the case.
However, the way things look this is what it is.
So, therefore, aside from praying that this may not be something that will soon sweep across the European Union, maybe it would be a good idea if we would prepare to fight it as well.
© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Reports from Austria, such as from Tirol, suggest that large numbers of Kalderah Roma of Italian nationality are fleeing into Austria. They are being driving from the country of their birth by fascist thugs and by government degree nearly.
The Italian government, so reports suggest, has placed the Roma camps around Naples and Rome (and elsewhere?) under a State of Emergency, giving the security services and the governments, municipal and local complete control over the areas and sweeping powers.
Is this the Europe 2008 and of freedom and democracy or are have we, accidentally, entered a time warp and have ended up in the fascist 1938?
While it is indeed the year 2008 one could well believe that one be back in the times of Hitler and Mussolini. The European Union stands idly by while one of its member states expels citizens from another EU member state wholesale for no other reason than their ethnicity. In Bosnia and Kosovo they called that ethnic cleansing when it was, supposedly, done to the Muslims. Not than anyone even mentioned the displaced Romani-Gypsy on the Balkans, ethnically cleansed from their Mahalas in Kosovo by Kosovo-Albanian Muslim thugs, but then again... it was those that claimed to being ethnically cleansed.
When I basically, some years back, predicted this as going to be happening sooner or later, because I was able, then already, to see the writing on the wall, I was laughed at and this notion was considered by many an impossibility in the free and democratic European Union.
Now we are seeing the true face of the EU and that it is either entirely unable to do anything against this happening, whether in Italy or elsewhere, or, and this is what it really appears to me, a Gypsy, that they are entirely unwilling to do something to help the Romani People, despite their rhetoric to how they want to help the Roma(ni) and all that jazz.
What I can see here as well is now why they want every Gypsy, every Rom, to accept the term Roma, or just simply by them to be called Roma: They can lump all of us then together as “Roma” and do what they like then. Same why everyone in Britain is now called Gypsy, but one is only ethnically a Gypsy now, according to the laws in many areas, if one actually still travels; thereby all those Romani that have settled, either on Gypsy Caravan Sites, official or private, or in houses, are no longer, under those laws, considered “ethnic Gypsy”. Wait till they play a similar joke with the title of “Roma”.
Is there something afoot to ethnically cleanse all “Roma” out of Europe? Things seem to point into that direction for we can see that, when it comes to the Gypsy in the European Union to who this is happening, as we can see now in Italy, and now even Roma of Italian nationality are being hunted down and driven out, nothing is being done against it by neither the EU nor the UN.
The question too awful to contemplate and ask, but asking it one must and this is, whether Italy may in fact be the “stalking horse” for more of this to come for Gypsies throughout the European Union. One can but hope and pray that this is not the case.
However, the way things look this is what it is.
So, therefore, aside from praying that this may not be something that will soon sweep across the European Union, maybe it would be a good idea if we would prepare to fight it as well.
© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008
English Romanies live in fear
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Romani-Gypsy families living in Southend, Essex, are hiding their identity for fear of abuse, according to a Tory councillor.
Blaine Robin, who represents the Kursaal Ward of the this Essex town, spoke out as June is “Roma Gypsy Traveller History Month”. The month which aims to celebrate the culture and history of the Romany people.
Mr Robin said that she has met a few families of Romany Gypsy heritage living in the Kursaal ward and that those she met afforded her rich, deep and meaningful insights into their heritage.
They do, however, so Councillor Robin, conceal their identity for fear of abuse by wider society.
I must say that, as they are in Essex ,I do not blame them seeing the situation in Crays Hill, the illegal Irish Traveller “village” - called dale Farm - that some have, purposely falsely, called “the biggest Gypsy settlement in Europe”, has caused and, unfortunately, the majority of the population, bar the older ones who know the difference, equate Romani with Traveller and that immediately with the problems caused by the Irish house dwellers masquerading as Travellers.
"Education is the key to raising awareness about what contribution this ethnic group has made to our society," said Councillor Blaine Robin.
Such education also must not be afraid to call a spade a spade and once and for all make the true point that Gypsy are Romany (Romani) and that the Irish Travellers are often, especially those “new” ones in places such as Dale Farm, are not even Travellers proper and definitely not Gypsy.
While we can but applaude that finally a History Month for the Romani has been created, something that this writer, as well as the International Romani Guild, the Romani Institute and the Gypsy Union, have been campaigning for – only no one wanted to know – even members of the Romani People did not – the way it has been created to represent more that one of the groups is entirely false and yet again intended to create the impression, at least in the eyes of the outsiders, that all “Travellers” are one Culture, which is not the case. For Britain the use of Roma, meant, I am sure, to replace Romani/Romanichal is also incorrect as the Romanichal are Sinti and NOT Roma. The month should have been the Romani History Month and should have excluded those not of Romani heritage. While that would have included the Roma who have arrived on these shores in the last decades of the last century only, really, it would have, at least excluded, as it should, other “Travellers” and here especially the Irish who are not of the Romani Race.
Period! Dosta!
© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008
Romani-Gypsy families living in Southend, Essex, are hiding their identity for fear of abuse, according to a Tory councillor.
Blaine Robin, who represents the Kursaal Ward of the this Essex town, spoke out as June is “Roma Gypsy Traveller History Month”. The month which aims to celebrate the culture and history of the Romany people.
Mr Robin said that she has met a few families of Romany Gypsy heritage living in the Kursaal ward and that those she met afforded her rich, deep and meaningful insights into their heritage.
They do, however, so Councillor Robin, conceal their identity for fear of abuse by wider society.
I must say that, as they are in Essex ,I do not blame them seeing the situation in Crays Hill, the illegal Irish Traveller “village” - called dale Farm - that some have, purposely falsely, called “the biggest Gypsy settlement in Europe”, has caused and, unfortunately, the majority of the population, bar the older ones who know the difference, equate Romani with Traveller and that immediately with the problems caused by the Irish house dwellers masquerading as Travellers.
"Education is the key to raising awareness about what contribution this ethnic group has made to our society," said Councillor Blaine Robin.
Such education also must not be afraid to call a spade a spade and once and for all make the true point that Gypsy are Romany (Romani) and that the Irish Travellers are often, especially those “new” ones in places such as Dale Farm, are not even Travellers proper and definitely not Gypsy.
While we can but applaude that finally a History Month for the Romani has been created, something that this writer, as well as the International Romani Guild, the Romani Institute and the Gypsy Union, have been campaigning for – only no one wanted to know – even members of the Romani People did not – the way it has been created to represent more that one of the groups is entirely false and yet again intended to create the impression, at least in the eyes of the outsiders, that all “Travellers” are one Culture, which is not the case. For Britain the use of Roma, meant, I am sure, to replace Romani/Romanichal is also incorrect as the Romanichal are Sinti and NOT Roma. The month should have been the Romani History Month and should have excluded those not of Romani heritage. While that would have included the Roma who have arrived on these shores in the last decades of the last century only, really, it would have, at least excluded, as it should, other “Travellers” and here especially the Irish who are not of the Romani Race.
Period! Dosta!
© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008
Hate Crimes - The Italian way to create security?
The recently redeemed Italian government of Romano Prodi passed earlier this year an emergency decree that
- allows the deportation of migrants from other EU countries
- limiting procedural safeguards of deportations and
- introducing administrative detention for European citizens if they are considered a threat to public safety
The decree was issued after the alleged murder of an Italian woman by a Romanian of Roma origin. Mr. Frattini, ex Commissioner for Justice and Civil Liberties at the European Union declared: "What has to be done is simple. Go into a nomad camp in Rome for example, and ask them: 'Can you tell me where you live?' If they say they do not know, take them and send them home to Romania. This is how the European directive works. It is simple and safe. Romania cannot say they will not take them back, because it is an obligation that is part of being a member state of the EU".
On 13th April 2008 Silvio Berlusconi swept back to power for the third time, after the Italian general election gave him and his centre-right allies an overwhelming lead in the Senate as well as in the Chamber of Deputies. Immediately after his election victory he already warned Italians of tough times ahead and announced more hard-line policies and practices towards immigrants to combat associated crimes.
Yesterday, Thursday 15th May, the Italian police proudly broadcasted that they arrested nearly 400 people in a successful crack down on 'illegal immigration' throughout the whole country. This 'cleaning action' in mostly migrant shantytowns in major urban areas across the country can be seen as consequential result of Italia's backslide into the far right in its government. The main focus of Italian concern about immigrant crime lies with the Roma, general known as "nomads".
Mr. Berlusconi's party, The People of Freedom (Il Popolo della Libertà) party, promotes on their campaign homepage that they would empty illegal camps, and remove nomads who have no legal residence or means of subsistence.
During the 'anti-immigration' operation of the Italian police in 15 regions, from North-Italy to Naples, 383 persons were arrested, 268 of it were foreigners. 177 persons are accused of thievery, 111 are accused of illegal immigration, 92 are accused of drug trafficking and 3 are accused of prostitution. 53 of the arrested persons were deported immediately and 65 of them were transported to detention camps.
"The anti-immigrant sweep was a positive thing because that's what people want," said Umberto Bossi, the minister of institutional reforms and federalism. "People ask us for safety, and we must give it to them."
In Naples Roma camps had to be evacuated, because mobs of local people started to attack the camps after a 16-year-old Roma girl was accused of trying to kidnap a baby. From 14th to 15th May local vigilantes burned a Roma camp near Naples to the ground. It was the sad result of this week's constant assault of Roma camps around Naples, mostly by youths on scooters and motorbikes using iron bars and throwing Molotov cocktails.
These massive assaults against Roma people don't accrue coincidently, but are the devastating result of hate speeches of politicians, xenophobic media coverage and authorities and discriminative laws that are stigmatising an entire ethnic minority. For example Milan introduced a special commissary for the Roma issue creating the basis for a pogrom against the Roma and migrant communities in Italy - Rome and Naples aim to follow up on this policy. These alarming developments even activated the Council of Europe and Thomas Hammarberg, Commissioner for Human Rights, came to the conclusion:
"The decision to institutionalise a body like the national commissary to control the Roma emergency is based on prejudices and it propagate these prejudices."
Source: UNITED
- allows the deportation of migrants from other EU countries
- limiting procedural safeguards of deportations and
- introducing administrative detention for European citizens if they are considered a threat to public safety
The decree was issued after the alleged murder of an Italian woman by a Romanian of Roma origin. Mr. Frattini, ex Commissioner for Justice and Civil Liberties at the European Union declared: "What has to be done is simple. Go into a nomad camp in Rome for example, and ask them: 'Can you tell me where you live?' If they say they do not know, take them and send them home to Romania. This is how the European directive works. It is simple and safe. Romania cannot say they will not take them back, because it is an obligation that is part of being a member state of the EU".
On 13th April 2008 Silvio Berlusconi swept back to power for the third time, after the Italian general election gave him and his centre-right allies an overwhelming lead in the Senate as well as in the Chamber of Deputies. Immediately after his election victory he already warned Italians of tough times ahead and announced more hard-line policies and practices towards immigrants to combat associated crimes.
Yesterday, Thursday 15th May, the Italian police proudly broadcasted that they arrested nearly 400 people in a successful crack down on 'illegal immigration' throughout the whole country. This 'cleaning action' in mostly migrant shantytowns in major urban areas across the country can be seen as consequential result of Italia's backslide into the far right in its government. The main focus of Italian concern about immigrant crime lies with the Roma, general known as "nomads".
Mr. Berlusconi's party, The People of Freedom (Il Popolo della Libertà) party, promotes on their campaign homepage that they would empty illegal camps, and remove nomads who have no legal residence or means of subsistence.
During the 'anti-immigration' operation of the Italian police in 15 regions, from North-Italy to Naples, 383 persons were arrested, 268 of it were foreigners. 177 persons are accused of thievery, 111 are accused of illegal immigration, 92 are accused of drug trafficking and 3 are accused of prostitution. 53 of the arrested persons were deported immediately and 65 of them were transported to detention camps.
"The anti-immigrant sweep was a positive thing because that's what people want," said Umberto Bossi, the minister of institutional reforms and federalism. "People ask us for safety, and we must give it to them."
In Naples Roma camps had to be evacuated, because mobs of local people started to attack the camps after a 16-year-old Roma girl was accused of trying to kidnap a baby. From 14th to 15th May local vigilantes burned a Roma camp near Naples to the ground. It was the sad result of this week's constant assault of Roma camps around Naples, mostly by youths on scooters and motorbikes using iron bars and throwing Molotov cocktails.
These massive assaults against Roma people don't accrue coincidently, but are the devastating result of hate speeches of politicians, xenophobic media coverage and authorities and discriminative laws that are stigmatising an entire ethnic minority. For example Milan introduced a special commissary for the Roma issue creating the basis for a pogrom against the Roma and migrant communities in Italy - Rome and Naples aim to follow up on this policy. These alarming developments even activated the Council of Europe and Thomas Hammarberg, Commissioner for Human Rights, came to the conclusion:
"The decision to institutionalise a body like the national commissary to control the Roma emergency is based on prejudices and it propagate these prejudices."
Source: UNITED
British Secretary of State for Justice sacks only Romani magistrate for criticizing Police
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Jack Straw, the Secretary of State for Justice (now there is a joke), has sacked a magistrate, the only (probably) Romani magistrate (judge) in the entire country, for daring to criticize the police for failing to protect her daughter from being physically assaulted at school.
Mr Straw, the Secretary of State for Justice, has written to the magistrate saying that while he understands a mother's desire to help her daughter, her criticism of the police means she can no longer be trusted to be impartial in court.
This while other magistrates and judges do, often publicly, criticize the police without any repercussions. Nor should there ever be any repercussions for doing this for this is the job of the judiciary if and when this is necessary. Dismissing a magistrates just because he or she criticized the police for failing to do their duty in unacceptable, regardless of which ethnicity this judge should be. To further imply that, having criticized the police the magistrate could no longer serve on the bench because she could no longer be trusted to be impartial in court when the police is concerned.
"We have concluded that, although you acted with the best interests of your daughter, your behaviour has led to your impartiality being brought into question,” Jack Straw writes in the letter. “It is clear that by mentioning you were a magistrate and then criticising the police, the two issues became linked and therefore there is doubt whether you would be able to consider matters involving the police impartially.”
This is not just outrages, it smacks of British Justice becoming a mockery and a lackey to the State – once again.
Shay Clipson, 50, a magistrate from Grimsby, Humberside, who is believed to, probably, be the only Romany magistrate on the bench in England and Wales, had asked police to help protect her 13-year-old daughter from a gang that had been bullying her in and out of school.
She claims her daughter had been subjected to beatings, racially abused, spat on, had cigarettes stubbed out in her hair, and had been thrown into the traffic on a very busy road.
Ms Clipson said that on September 20, 2007, her daughter had been told by a key member of this particular gang that she was going to be subject to a beating, possibly during the lunch break, failing that definitely on her way home. Neither the headteacher nor the head of year would make themselves available to speak to to Ms Clipson, the mother. She then told the school that in that case she would have to involve the police."
But, she said, the local police made it clear that they would not intervene. When Ms Clipson complained about the officers' alleged inaction, the police reported her behaviour to the local bench committee and then to Mr Straw, who upheld her dismissal.
Police were later forced to investigate when her daughter was badly assaulted by a family member of the same gang. In a separate incident, recorded on mobile phones and uploaded to YouTube, Ms Clipson's daughter was kicked unconscious on the school playing field.
But Mr Straw, in a joint ruling with the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, found that by raising the fact that she was a member of the local magistracy, Ms Clipson cannot be trusted to do her job any longer with impartiality, especially as far as issues with the police are concerned.
This is absolutely ludicrous, and I am sure that the likes of the police officers in Grimsby, like a certain Detective Chief Superintendent, as well as the Secretary of State of Justice, and the Chief Lord Justice, are well aware of that. Especially in light of the fact that other magistrates and judges freely, as they should be able to, criticize the police as and when necessary and no one had a problem; then, nor should they have a problem with that.
David Howarth, the Liberal Democrat spokesman on justice, said: "Mr Straw's action is shameful and very heavy-handed ... Why can't a magistrate criticise the police? ... The police should not be able to end the career of a magistrate just because they don't like being criticised."
Ms Clipson said she feels let down by the system. "I was acting as a mother who had good reason to be both furious and to question the lack of competence and ethics that were being displayed. Not only was my child terrified for her safety, this campaign of terror was based on racism, mainly her Welsh accent, and possibly her Romany background, yet the police were not doing enough to support her."
The main reason, as can be seen from the case proper, is the ethnic background of the family, the child and the magistrate, Ms Shay Clipson. The police is institutionally racist, as was found with reference to the Stephen Lawrence inquiry (though there may have been reasons as to why the inquiry by the Metropolitan Police was in fact conducted the way it was), and they are most racist as far as Romani-Gypsies and Travellers are concerned.
In my very presence, when dealing with police on various matters, despite the fact that they are aware of my ethnicity as a Romani, they will use words like Pikey, Gyppo, and such, though not directed towards me but when they are talking about members of the Romani-Gypsy community and the Traveller community.
Therefore one can but surmise that the reason the police had chips on their shoulders when told by Shay Clipson that, when the police told her that they could do nothing in this case, and she told her that she knew different and that they could act according to the information from the “Bench Book” and she told them that she knew because she is a magistrate, they, the police, did not like being told thus by a mere Gypsy woman.
Where is this country coming to, and, as far as we Gypsy are concerned not this country alone, but the rest of the European Union?
Is this a taste to come for Gypsies in Britain, yet again that, if they are in good positions and they have a run in with the likes of those police officers and they know better than the officers and mention this that they will end up in trouble. We must remember that we once had a fine police force, though they mostly have had a problem with Gypsies, but after the 60's the police in this country, in the main, has become a joke, and has been riddled with corruption, Lodge involvement – their own Lodges even – and other underhand dealings. This was never cleared up and officers who “blew the whistle” found themselves on spurious charged and set up.
I rest my case...
© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008
Jack Straw, the Secretary of State for Justice (now there is a joke), has sacked a magistrate, the only (probably) Romani magistrate (judge) in the entire country, for daring to criticize the police for failing to protect her daughter from being physically assaulted at school.
Mr Straw, the Secretary of State for Justice, has written to the magistrate saying that while he understands a mother's desire to help her daughter, her criticism of the police means she can no longer be trusted to be impartial in court.
This while other magistrates and judges do, often publicly, criticize the police without any repercussions. Nor should there ever be any repercussions for doing this for this is the job of the judiciary if and when this is necessary. Dismissing a magistrates just because he or she criticized the police for failing to do their duty in unacceptable, regardless of which ethnicity this judge should be. To further imply that, having criticized the police the magistrate could no longer serve on the bench because she could no longer be trusted to be impartial in court when the police is concerned.
"We have concluded that, although you acted with the best interests of your daughter, your behaviour has led to your impartiality being brought into question,” Jack Straw writes in the letter. “It is clear that by mentioning you were a magistrate and then criticising the police, the two issues became linked and therefore there is doubt whether you would be able to consider matters involving the police impartially.”
This is not just outrages, it smacks of British Justice becoming a mockery and a lackey to the State – once again.
Shay Clipson, 50, a magistrate from Grimsby, Humberside, who is believed to, probably, be the only Romany magistrate on the bench in England and Wales, had asked police to help protect her 13-year-old daughter from a gang that had been bullying her in and out of school.
She claims her daughter had been subjected to beatings, racially abused, spat on, had cigarettes stubbed out in her hair, and had been thrown into the traffic on a very busy road.
Ms Clipson said that on September 20, 2007, her daughter had been told by a key member of this particular gang that she was going to be subject to a beating, possibly during the lunch break, failing that definitely on her way home. Neither the headteacher nor the head of year would make themselves available to speak to to Ms Clipson, the mother. She then told the school that in that case she would have to involve the police."
But, she said, the local police made it clear that they would not intervene. When Ms Clipson complained about the officers' alleged inaction, the police reported her behaviour to the local bench committee and then to Mr Straw, who upheld her dismissal.
Police were later forced to investigate when her daughter was badly assaulted by a family member of the same gang. In a separate incident, recorded on mobile phones and uploaded to YouTube, Ms Clipson's daughter was kicked unconscious on the school playing field.
But Mr Straw, in a joint ruling with the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, found that by raising the fact that she was a member of the local magistracy, Ms Clipson cannot be trusted to do her job any longer with impartiality, especially as far as issues with the police are concerned.
This is absolutely ludicrous, and I am sure that the likes of the police officers in Grimsby, like a certain Detective Chief Superintendent, as well as the Secretary of State of Justice, and the Chief Lord Justice, are well aware of that. Especially in light of the fact that other magistrates and judges freely, as they should be able to, criticize the police as and when necessary and no one had a problem; then, nor should they have a problem with that.
David Howarth, the Liberal Democrat spokesman on justice, said: "Mr Straw's action is shameful and very heavy-handed ... Why can't a magistrate criticise the police? ... The police should not be able to end the career of a magistrate just because they don't like being criticised."
Ms Clipson said she feels let down by the system. "I was acting as a mother who had good reason to be both furious and to question the lack of competence and ethics that were being displayed. Not only was my child terrified for her safety, this campaign of terror was based on racism, mainly her Welsh accent, and possibly her Romany background, yet the police were not doing enough to support her."
The main reason, as can be seen from the case proper, is the ethnic background of the family, the child and the magistrate, Ms Shay Clipson. The police is institutionally racist, as was found with reference to the Stephen Lawrence inquiry (though there may have been reasons as to why the inquiry by the Metropolitan Police was in fact conducted the way it was), and they are most racist as far as Romani-Gypsies and Travellers are concerned.
In my very presence, when dealing with police on various matters, despite the fact that they are aware of my ethnicity as a Romani, they will use words like Pikey, Gyppo, and such, though not directed towards me but when they are talking about members of the Romani-Gypsy community and the Traveller community.
Therefore one can but surmise that the reason the police had chips on their shoulders when told by Shay Clipson that, when the police told her that they could do nothing in this case, and she told her that she knew different and that they could act according to the information from the “Bench Book” and she told them that she knew because she is a magistrate, they, the police, did not like being told thus by a mere Gypsy woman.
Where is this country coming to, and, as far as we Gypsy are concerned not this country alone, but the rest of the European Union?
Is this a taste to come for Gypsies in Britain, yet again that, if they are in good positions and they have a run in with the likes of those police officers and they know better than the officers and mention this that they will end up in trouble. We must remember that we once had a fine police force, though they mostly have had a problem with Gypsies, but after the 60's the police in this country, in the main, has become a joke, and has been riddled with corruption, Lodge involvement – their own Lodges even – and other underhand dealings. This was never cleared up and officers who “blew the whistle” found themselves on spurious charged and set up.
I rest my case...
© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008
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