Skip to content or view screen version

Gypsies in Italy: a New Holocaust

Roberto Malini Glenys Robinson Dario Picciau | 25.11.2007 16:22 | Anti-racism | World

Racism in Italy against Gypsy People kills many children, women and innocent men. Write me to subscribe the Campaign against the persecution of the Gypsies in Italy:  roberto.malini@annesdoor.com

Human Rights Watch has brought to the attention of the international community the racism gypsies are being subjected to in Italy.
Human Rights Watch has recently alerted the world of the institutional discrimination against gypsies in Italy and the illegality of the expulsion orders and camp clearances. There are those who believe it is up to the individual country to solve its internal problems without any outside interference, but this opinion goes against the reasons the European Union was founded for in the first place.
Human Rights Watch has published the hard facts, based on incontestable information and data, much of which was supplied to HRW by Gruppo EveryOne which is now acting as an international observatory. The “European view” allows us to go beyond the different forms of national propaganda, at times enlightening, but at other times totally unjust and oppressive towards minorities.
Hitler’s Nazi propaganda in Germany led the German people to believe that Jews, gypsies and homosexuals were problems of public order - that they were not to be protected but instead rounded up and put together in rehabilitation centres. Rehabilitation that was to be achieved through work (the work that “makes one free”) and medical treatment (like that of Dr Mengele).

But what the regime was really doing was wiping out, torturing, stripping its victims of all their possessions (including hair and gold dental crowns) and then eliminating them as though they were insects. The propaganda of those in power in Italy is creating the same situation, it is leading the Italian people to believe there is nothing wrong and wicked about throwing women and poor, sickly children out into the street.
Their poverty is described as “illegality” and the last activities they resort to in an attempt to survive (begging and minor services) are considered crimes. The truth is far different, and every innocent person (forced not only to live in conditions of hardship, but to suffer further torment through enforced camp clearances and being discriminated against) represents another tile in the mosaic of the second Porrajmos (the Gypsy Holocaust). A situation we hope in a few decades - or even before that - will be remembered as a crime against humanity.

There are no subtleties of ideology or interpretations: a woman, child, an innocent person forced to suffer from hunger and cold, humiliated, or even merely ignored, is a shameful crime. The persecution of the gypsies in Italy is leading to the deaths of hundreds of people, most of them children, bringing down the average life-expectancy of a Roma to just 47 years!

The Nazi leaders and the butchers in Armenia were clean, tidy, smiling, friendly and well-dressed, like many of our rulers, mayors, councillors and police prefects. The fact is that they, like those who went before them in the oppression of minorities, are like torturers, racists of the worst kind, cruel men and women, unscrupulous killers.

 roberto.malini@anesdoor.com

www.everyonegroup.com

Roberto Malini Glenys Robinson Dario Picciau
- e-mail: roberto.malini@annesdoor.com
- Homepage: http://www.everyonegroup.com

Comments

Hide the following comment

Genocide? Fasicts and racists out!

26.11.2007 17:20

Won't it be better to delete racist and fascist comments rather than comment on them? I would like to have a room for discussion where rabid fascists amd racists are not participating...after all we do normally exclude them from our initiatives. I would rather use the time and space to discuss the issues rised.
With all the respect for the very important work Malini is doing, I think to draw direct parallels between the Nazi genocide and the racist policies of the Italian government is slighly premature, but we are certainly heading in that direction. It is not the same to throw people in the gas chambres and throw them on the streets. However it is racism and intolerance that render the genocide possible - as certain comments from the racists clearly indicate: they do not see certain cathegories of people as people, they just hate them and don't mind if they die. Reason more their comments should not be on indymedia, as they obvioulsy incite racial hathred and juistify people being killed 'like insects'.
We are certainly heading in the dirction of genocide, and not only in relation to the Rom and Sinti. According to Nazi theory, the Blaks are even inferior to the Gipsys and the Jews. Think of he migrants shot dead at Ceuta and Melilla, think of those dumped in the desert with no food and no water, and what happens when nobody is watching? What happens to those who are intercepted before they can cross the border to a 'safe' country and are sent back to their possible deaths? The parallel with the Jewish refugees handed back to the Nazi is inevitable, but most people do not even manage to flee from danger becuse of immigration controls, thousands perish in the sea, we hear tales of boats capsizing because they are hit by the coastal guard boats and what is going to happen in 2008, when Frontex takes over the control of the maritime borders?

Catrina