Everyone Group: “racist campaign again the Roma Gypsies puts their safety at risk”
Robe The prejudice that is hitting the Roma community in Italy is in danger of degenerating into an indiscriminate man hunt. In Naples attacks are still being carried out against the Roma people. In Via Malibran a makeshift shelter was set on fire by a gang of racists and 13 people
(six adults and seven children - two of them newborn babies) suffered burns and almost perished in the fire. In Ponticelli a group of young people armed with metal bars attacked some Romanian Roma. In Via Argine, some Roma children were chased by racists who hid their faces behind scarves. The latest episode is that of a six-year-old Roma child who was attacked by a “patrol” in piazzetta San Domenico, slapped, insulted and thrust under a public fountain. But all over Italy, from north to south, episodes of violence and anti-gypsy sentiments are underway, practically ignored by the media. “The European Commission must take immediate action”, say the worried leaders of EveryOne, Roberto Malini, Matteo Pegoraro and Dario Picciau “because instigation to racial hatred through the press and racist policies are expressly forbidden by the Directives, European Resolutions and Charters of Fundamental Rights of individuals and peoples. We have sufficient evidence to affirm that the case of the Roma teenager attempting to steal a baby in Naples is a put-up, but before the magistrates have issued a sentence, our politicians and media have issued their own verdict - not only towards the girl, but towards the gypsy community as a whole. For some time now EveryOne has been warning public opinion, the press and honest politicians against cases deliberately set up to sow the seeds of hatred towards gypsies and open the way for racial laws like the imminent safety decree and the notorious “Roma commissions” which are reminiscent of similar Nazi institutions. These are illegitimate measures that will be torn to pieces in the European Parliament” say the activists of EveryOne while they sound the alarm that in the present climate even the safety of the most famous Roma and Sinti could be jeopardized: “Due to the xenophobic madness stirred up over the last few days, no one is safe from the Italians’ anger which has been seriously fomented by propaganda. We have heard a group of football fans (probably with extreme right-wing sympathies) issue statements and serious threats against the champion from Milan, Andrea Pirlo, who is a Sinti gypsy, and the Roma players in the Inter team Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Sinisa Mihajlovic. “We don’t want a gypsy on the Milan team. We don’t want gypsies in Milan”, they said, using much coarser and heavier language, of course. We have alerted the Milan-based football teams and the authorities in Milan and Parma where these teams will play their last matches of the football season, but to prevent the spread of racial intolerance it is essential that the media begins to stick to the international laws that were intended to fight prejudice and the instigation towards racial hatred.”
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