Europe must put a stop to Italy’s racial laws, the fingerprinting of Roma citizens, the serious violations of children’s rights.
The Northern League Minister of the Interior, Roberto Maroni is going ahead with his programme of registering all Roma children with photographs and biometric fingerprints in spite of the official protests from Unicef, the EU Commission, the Jewish community and major antiracist associations. The dialectics Maroni uses to defend his persecutory policies is the same as those used by organizations that place ethnic cleansing among their priorities: “I want to go all the way with my proposal”, says Maroni, “and I will not be deterred by would-be antiracists or the opinions of those who do not know all the facts behind this terrible reality, a reality which makes Italy, from this point of view, one of the most backward countries in the world. Oh, yes, of course I want to respect children’s rights, the rights of children to live a normal life in decent living conditions, without being sent out to beg or even worse. That is why we have to identify all Roma minors, even by fingerprinting. I reject the idea that a civilised country can accept the fact that children are sharing living quarters with mice: and that is what’s happening in Roma camps. Let all those who have protested, from Unicef down, say whether they think it is right to allow children to live among mice in Roma camps in Italy. Are those what they mean by children’s rights? No, I will continue without hesitation along this road because my way is the only way possible to guarantee children’s rights”.
Racist demagogy. It is precisely these intolerant political and persecutory movements that have relegated the Roma to the most inhospitable areas of the cities, where they live among refuse; the miasmas of the sewers; fumes from the ring roads and factories; among parasites and mice. All the Italian right-wing parties have taken up positions against the Roma families, stirring up hatred and violence against them and ordering camp clearances carried out by members of the police force similar to pogroms. During these camp clearances, men, women and children are beaten, showered with racist insults, threatened and thrown out onto the streets like the Jews were after the concentration camps were closed and they were forced to set off on the long march to nowhere.
The highest police authorities justify every type of racist violence, denying that any inhumane and degrading treatment and beatings are taking place. Even Rebecca Covaciu, the young Roma girl who was awarded the 2008 Unicef Prize for artistic and humanitarian gifts, was beaten, insulted and submitted to a humiliating and disgraceful search by brutal police officers from Milan Police Headquarters. The same treatment was given to her younger brother and family by racist officers on June 17th, 2008, while two days later their father Stelian Covaciu - a Christian evangelical pastor - was brutally beaten up and sent to hospital covered with injuries and bruises. He has still not recovered from this terrifying assault.
At the same time, as reported by the Euro MP Viktoria Mohacsi, the police and Italian social services are illegally taking Roma babies and children from their mothers, sometimes accusing them of exploiting their children for begging, sometimes for no reason at all. The Roma children are immediately handed over to communities and “care homes” which receive large sums of taxpayers’ money for each new little “guest”.
EveryOne Group has collected together dozens of statements from Roma mothers who have suffered this same abuse and been deprived of their children. In several cases the women have attempted suicide by drinking petrol or bleach, throwing themselves in front of cars or trying to suffocate themselves by putting plastic bags over their heads. In the next few days some of these witness statements (complete with relevant documents) will be presented to the European Parliament and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Some of the activists have received threats and intimidation from the authorities because of their non-violent work in defence of the persecuted Roma. The media, quite clearly subjugated by those in power, are continuing their racist campaign which is aimed at presenting Roma citizens as criminals, child exploiters, rapists and people without morals. The pratice of begging, which both adults and minors have to resort to in order to survive (seeing there is no other form of sustenance or social aid, and programmes for their insertion into the world of labour) is presented by politicians, the authorities and media as a form of slavery parents force on their children in order to get rich. Begging, however, is just an extreme attempt to avoid death from hunger, thirst, infections and disease, acts of violence and desperation. Without the possibility of finding work, without any form of social assistance and shelter (they are sent away from flyovers, squatter camps, parks and derelict buildings daily), kicked out like animals from the cities and suburbs, the Roma in Italy (both adults and children) have no other choice but to resort to begging in order to survive.
The charters for human rights and the protection of peoples, the EU directives and resolutions have given a clear indication of the road to follow in order to eliminate the marginalization and hardship the Roma people are subjected to: a road dotted with real integration programmes with support for the existence, culture, traditions and dignity of an ethnic group persecuted to such an extent that it risks being brutally wiped out.
The Roma are a nation without a fixed territory and not a criminal association as Maroni and his “green shirts” would have us believe. The Roma families must be protected from the unprecedented racist campaign (if we leave out the years of the racial laws and the Samudaripen) being carried out by politicians, Italian authorities and unscrupulous media, all animated by the most blind racial hatred. The Roma families have to be protected from assaults and ill-treatment of all kinds that are being perpetrated by racist groups; gangs of everyday citizens galvanized by the xenophobic propaganda; the police force and action squads linked to right-wing parties and far right-wing parties (as well as others).
The Roma families must be protected from the extreme poverty they are forced to live in, a situation which sometimes forces them to take desperate measures in order to guarantee their own survival. Roma men and woman are loving parents, and their Roma children (who in such conditions are forced to grow up too quickly) try to help them, united by the same love and the same desperation. The politicians and authorities without any qualms have picked on the Roma people, the most vulnerable members of society, in order to present their own racial hatred under the form of a defence of “lawfulness” and “public safety” - thus exploiting in a shameful manner the suffering of an entire ethnic group, and they are doing so protected by a screen of ignorance and lies.
The politicians now governing Italy obtained their power precisely through these actions - using illegitimate means - putting themselves forward as the champions of an Italy “free from the Roma, free from illegal immigrants”. This behaviour is anticonstitutional, antidemocratic and criminal. Elections should be won by promoting projects of civil development, not by inciting people (the Italian people in this case) to fight a war of races against the weakest and oppressed ethnic group, spreading every kind of racist slander and lies, inventing sham cases and criminalizing a whole people.
Though late in the day, the former Minister of Social Solidarity, Paolo Ferrero, has decided to break through the wall of indifference and racial hostility that men lacking in civil and human values have erected. “On the 60th anniversary of the shameful racial laws”, declared Ferrero, “the Interior Minister, Roberto Maroni, has today gone so far as to introduce an ethnic register of Roma citizens, Italian or otherwise. We are talking, quite simply, of the same philosophy, culture and political decisions used by fascism and Benito Mussolini. The registration based on a person’s ethnic group - be they Italians or foreigners, Roma or otherwise - is a barbaric, unacceptable procedure, unworthy of a civilised country. I myself will stand in line to be registered by Roberto Maroni and I hope lots of other Italian citizens will do likewise”.
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Sign the petition against any ethnic filing of the Rroms in Italy
To: Italian and European authorities and Human Rights bodies
Promoters: La Voix des Rroms - Gruppo EveryOne
SAY NO to the the ethnic filing of the Rroms - with or without fingerprints’ record
The Home Minister of Italy and member of North League, Roberto Maroni, announced recently that he intends recording the fingerprints of Rroms located in Italy. In the most cynical way, he justifies this measure by the need to protect the children!
This proposal has been widely criticized by Italian politicians, culture’s personnalities, by civil society, the Council of Europe and the European Commission, but Mr. Maroni continues despite everything to defend his proposal.
Berlusconi government is criticized in Europe and in democratic world for its persecution policies towards the Rroms. In its 27th June editorial, The Independent qualified this behaviour a «spasm of cruelty» and the party of Mr. Maroni as a « notoriously xenophobic » one. The editorial ends with this lapidary statement : « Every act of popular violence against foreigners, every instance of official discrimination against the Roma, diminishes the country's claim to be regarded as a civilised nation.»
We fully agree and say NO to this proposal, which recalls the darkest years of European and world history! Let us not forget that the Rroms were often « guinea pigs » of repression and extermination policies, as those Rromani children from Czech on which the Nazis tested the "Zyklon B" before generalizing its use it in the gas chambers.
Sign the petition against any ethnic filing of the Rroms and prevent the return of the brown plague:
