tagged w/ Gypsies
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"Sixty-eight per cent of Italians, fuelled by often inflammatory attacks by the new rightwing government, want to see all of the country's 150,000 Gypsies, many of them Italian citizens, expelled, according to an opinion poll.
The survey, published as mobs in Naples burned down Gypsy camps this week, revealed that the majority also wanted all Gypsy camps in Italy to be demolished .
About 70,000 Gypsies in Italy hold Italian passports, including about 30,000 descended from 15th-century Gypsy settlers in the country. The remainder have arrived since, many fleeing the Balkans during the 1990s.
Another 10,000 Gypsies came from Romania after it joined the European Union in January 2007, according to an Italian human rights organisation, EveryOne, part of the approximately half million Romanians believed to be in Italy.
Romanians were among the 268 immigrants rounded up in a nationwide police crackdown on prostitution and drug dealing this week, after new prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's likening of foreign criminals to "an army of evil".
But Romanian officials have sought to distinguish between the Romanians and Romanian Gypsies entering Italy.
Flavio Tosi, the mayor of Verona and a member of the anti-immigrant Northern League party, said his city had the biggest Romanian community in Italy, 7,000 strong, "working as builders, artisans and domestics. And they themselves say the Roma are a problem", he said.
In a second poll, 81% of Italian respondents said they found all Gypsies, Romanian or not, "barely likeable or not likeable at all", a greater number than the 64% who said they felt the same way about non-Gypsy Romanians.
Young Neapolitans who threw Molotov cocktails into a Naples Gypsy camp this week, after a girl was accused of trying to abduct a baby, bragged that they were undertaking "ethnic cleansing". A UN spokeswoman compared the scenes to the forced migration of Gypsies from the Balkans. "We never thought we'd see such images in Italy", said Laura Boldrini.
"This hostility is a result of the generally inflammatory language of the current government, as well as the previous one", said EveryOne director Matteo Pegoraro. "Italian football stars at Milan teams assumed to have Gypsy heritage, such as Andrea Pirlo, are now also the subject of threatening chants".
Commenting on the attacks in Naples, Umberto Bossi, the head of the Northern League party said: "People are going to do what the political class cannot".
The defence minister, Ignazio La Russa, said yesterday he would consider deploying soldiers to Italian streets to help fight crime, while a group of Bosnian Gypsies in Rome said they were mounting night guard patrols of their camp to defend against vigilante attacks.
Europe's leading human rights watchdog urged the government to prevent attacks on Roma communities. Christian Strohal, head of Vienna-based OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, said: "The current stigmatisation of Roma and immigrant groups in Italy is dangerous as it ... increases the potential for violence".""Sixty-eight per cent of Italians, fuelled by often inflammatory attacks by the... more
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A Roma refugee terrified of being sent back to Hungary remained in hiding today while his distraught wife and teenaged son appealed to the federal justice minister to reconsider his extradition.
Ottawa has ordered Adolf Horvath, 51, deported to stand trial on what his family claims are trumped up fraud and extortion charges motivated by his ethnic origins.
Fearing extradition was imminent, Horvath vanished five weeks ago.
"I miss my dad," Adam, 13, a Grade 8 student in Toronto, said as tears streamed down his face.
"I have no future without my dad. I can't live without him. If he goes to Hungary, he might be killed and I don't want that."
Horvath has reason to be afraid of going back.
He was repeatedly assaulted and threatened in Hungary, where abuse of Roma – sometimes referred to as Gypsies – is common. In one attack at home, skinheads stabbed and beat him badly in front of his horrified wife Erika, 36, and Adam, who was then just 2 1/2.
"They almost killed him," Erika Horvath said. "I have scars, too."
Horvath fled Hungary for Canada in 1999. His wife and son were granted refugee status and Canadian immigration authorities in 2004 decided he faced "more than a mere possibility of persecution" based on his Roma ethnicity.
As a result, Canada deemed him "a person in need of protection," which would normally preclude his being returned to Hungary.
However, in response to a Hungarian government request for his extradition, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson nevertheless decided he should be sent to face trial.
In making his decision, Nicholson relied in part on information from then-immigration minister Monte Solberg, who concluded Horvath did face a risk of abuse in his homeland. However, Solberg decided Horvath could rely on state protection in Hungary, and therefore could be extradited.
"It's just ridiculous. It's embarrassing that the Canadian government could make such a determination," said Ronald Poulton, Horvath's lawyer.
"If anything happens to him, I'm holding the government of Canada responsible."
Last month, the Supreme Court of Canada gave no reasons in upholding lower court decisions that the extradition order was lawful. That means Horvath has exhausted any legal way of remaining in Canada, beyond a change of heart from the justice minister.
Rather than take his chances with extradition, he skipped bail, and went underground.
"Every human being would do that, right?" Erika Horvath said.
"Honestly, I don't understand: If someone is getting protection from the country he's coming from, why do you want to send him back?" she said.
Horvath has produced court documents that indicate the complainants in Hungary only made their allegations to avoid their own trouble with police. There are also new documents suggesting that Hungary requested extradition on a charge that was never laid.
The family is pleading with Nicholson to end the extradition proceedings.
"I still have nightmares where the police are beating my family up," Adam, who drew a picture four years ago showing a police officer laughing as he was shooting his dad, wrote to the minister.
"I would be heartbroken for the rest of my life if he is gone."
A Justice Department spokesman said Nicholson would have no comment.
Roma have frequently been persecuted in Europe, with tens of thousands dying at the hands of the Nazis.
Both the U.S. State Department and Amnesty International have noted Roma face mistreatment or even torture at the hands of police or racists.
Poulton, who called the risk of harm to his client in Hungary ``extremely acute," said he's worried about the family.
A Roma refugee terrified of being sent back to Hungary remained in hiding today while... more
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