Fingerprinting Gypsies. The Italian case
This week, in Verona, eight Romany Gypsies were arrested for using children in hundreds of robberies. It emerged that they had been caught 123 times and used 93 different aliases. Now I ask you: is that normal?
The initial reflex may be a chilling one, especially when you read the headlines drawing comparisons between the Nazi persecution of sixty-five years ago and the current singling out of an ethnic group as part of a crackdown on crime. So is the birthplace of fascism is at it again?
It is a fact that the British press absolutely love linking anything they can to the old Nazi/Fascist days, whether it's incest in Austria, the election of a right-wing Mayor in Rome or England taking on Germany at Euro 96. Sixty-five years on and they seem disturbingly, perversely fascinated. It's no surprise, therefore, that when the Italian government plans a census of the Gypsy population and the British papers answer with cries of "mass deportations, torture and death" (The Times, Saturday 5 July 2008), there are several logical steps missing.
It is a fact that the British press absolutely love linking anything they can to the old Nazi/Fascist days, whether it's incest in Austria, the election of a right-wing Mayor in Rome or England taking on Germany at Euro 96. Sixty-five years on and they seem disturbingly, perversely fascinated. It's no surprise, therefore, that when the Italian government plans a census of the Gypsy population and the British papers answer with cries of "mass deportations, torture and death" (The Times, Saturday 5 July 2008), there are several logical steps missing.
So let's hear it out from the new Italian Government (of whom I'm no fan - at all) and the Red Cross. I may be easily persuaded, but when I read their justification, I no longer felt a sense of unease. Here it is, plain and simple. Out of the estimated 152,000 Romany Gypsies who live in Italy, an (again) estimated 60% live without papers. Out of this 60%, their kids don’t go to school, they live in camps with horrendous levels of hygiene and are involved in all sorts of "activities" that allow them to "make a living", so to speak.
You just need to travel to Southern Europe, Italy and Spain for example, and have a look at the amount of Gypsies begging -baby in tow- or forcing their kids to do so. Take a look at those digging into rubbish bins, for good measure. And if you class yourself as an observant person, keep your eyes out in the Madrid metro, or Barcelona, Milan and Rome, and check out who's got the lion's share in pickpocketing. It may make you feel better to think of this as a generalisation (and yes, of course stealing and pickpocketing isn't the Gypsies' monopoly, nor did they invent it), but go check for yourself. And they're highly skilled, those kids. You see them hopping from carriage to carriage, nodding and winking at each other until they've identified a particularly careless prey, wallet dangling out of their pocket. It's not unusual to spot Gypsy kids, boys and girls, as young as six caught by helpless police at an underground platform. Helpless because, unless the offenders are identifiable, there's absolutely F.A. they can do. Who are these kids? Have they got a fixed abode? Why aren’t they at school? Who are their parents?
Although it is fair to say that not all Gypsies live and work illegally, it is simply intolerable to have such large numbers of people choosing to live outside the law. This week, in Verona, eight Romany Gypsies were arrested for using children in hundreds of robberies. It emerged that they had been caught 123 times and used 93 different aliases. Now I ask you: is that normal? The fact itself that the government can only estimate the tens of thousands who are in Italy and estimate the number who live in camps and estimate those who carry out illegal activities is a sign that a serious clampdown is needed.
Critics of the plan argue that the Italians can hardly claim their country was crime-free before Gypsies settled in such high numbers. And it's true, but at least the authorities could reasonably keep track of offenders and re-offenders and organise their social services (i.e. custody, young offenders' institutes, rehabilitation packages, social security, council housing and the rest) accordingly. With such large numbers of people, many under 14, without a known identity or address, the authorities end up with their hands completely tied and their duty to protect the population all but a pointless exercise.
The idea of fingerprinting and photographing them may not instinctively be the most comfortable one - but is the alternative any better? And those who are crying out at the "Nazi methods": is it left-wing, instead to feel at ease when tens of thousands of kids are sent out by adults to rob and steal without any hope of an education and a better future?
read the remaining part of the article on Hagley Road to Ladywood
I live in the immigrant part of town next to Gypsies and we don't interact at all. The pickpocketing Gypsies look alot darker and shorter than the regular ones in Sweden. I think that this is a Mediterranian phenomenom.
joeblowman, your highly sophisticated sense of irony and sarcasm is totally lost on us earthly ejits.
do you think this has fundamentally to do with their skin colour?
do you think parents should be allowed to get away with keeping their kids away from school because of their skin colour?
who's discriminating?
again...im not sure i got your comment the right way, but again, ubersarcasm and super cryptic comments often have the effect of being unintelligible for a common simpleton like myself.
hagley road to ladywood - http://www.mymarilyn.blogspot.com
I was only trying to show that all Gypsies aren't the same and this isn't an inherent quality in Gypsy culture (I see them around me all day). I'm not white, and with that, I have no hang-ups when it concerns race. Don't be hyper-sensitive, remember it's just Jew Mind-control. On a side note, it's obvious to anyone over the age of 30 that all this Multicultralism stuff is meant to HIGHLIGHT not MINIMIZE the differences among us. As unbelievable as it sounds, before this latest Talmudic attack, people of different races/cultures didn't need to be told to be polite to each other.
Whether fingerprinting offers any solution or not is debatable, but having lived in Rome and travelling regularly to Italy, I can confirm that there is a significant problem with gypsy (or what the Italians call 'Rom') criminality - a type of criminality that impacts more on the average person in the street.
Few if any of the gypsy community are employed, in a nation whose indigenous workers are already increasingly considered 'precarious'. There is no social assistance to speak of in Italy, so you can only imagine how they come by their incomes. I should point out, however, that the Roma gypsies are not, by any means, the only source of 'migrant criminality'.
In my opinion, this case highlights one of the fundamental flaws of the EU. Freedom of movement of labour, goods and services is all very well, but the EU also positively facilitates the free movement of criminality and stubbornly fails to address the problem.
If individual nations within the EU could repatriate and permanently convicted non-national criminals, the problem would eventually be significantly reduced. But they can't, because liberal lawyers will be screaming blue murder and lamenting how the 'human rights' of their criminal clients are being violated.