NEWS
ROME, Italy (AP) -- Three U.N. experts accused Italy on Tuesday of discriminating against Gypsies by going ahead with a plan to fingerprint them, saying that Italian politicians are creating a climate of ethnic bias.
The criticism by the independent U.N. experts in Geneva came as the EU chief, Jose Manuel Barroso, addressed the issue during talks in Rome with Premier Silvio Berlusconi.
Barroso said he was confident that Italy would comply with EU principles and treaties. Berlusconi defended the treatment of Gypsies, who also are known as Roma.
Italy has drawn widespread criticism this month as it began fingerprinting Gypsies, including children, as part of a crackdown on street crime.
The European Parliament called the measure a clear act of racial discrimination and urged Italian authorities to stop it, while many human rights groups criticized it as racist.
The three U.N. experts said that "by exclusively targeting the Roma minority, this proposal can be unambiguously classified as discriminatory." They said they are "extremely concerned."
They also said they were "dismayed at the aggressive and discriminatory rhetoric used by political leaders, including Cabinet members, when referring to the Roma community."
"By explicitly associating the Roma to criminality, and by calling for the immediate dismantling of Roma camps in the country, these officials have created an overall environment of hostility, antagonism and stigmatization of the Roma community," said the statement. "This climate of anti-Roma sentiment has served to mobilize extremist groups."
Italy must uphold its obligations under international law, said the three: special rapporteur on racism, Doudou Diene; the independent expert on minority issues, Gay McDougall; and the special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Jorge Bustamante.
Recently, Italian officials have spoken of a "Roma emergency" in big cities, linking crime to the minority. Some cities have appointed special commissioners to deal with the issue.
The Gypsies often live off temporary work and mostly stay in encampments in squalid conditions with no access to health services, education, basic sanitary facilities or jobs.
More than 700 encampments have been built in Italy, mainly around Rome, Milan and Naples, housing tens of thousands of Gypsies.
In Naples, camps had to be evacuated after attackers set huts on fire and angry residents in neighboring areas protested the alleged attempt by a Gypsy woman to kidnap a baby. Authorities in Rome raided a camp to check for proper papers.
Berlusconi, speaking alongside Barroso in Rome, defended the fingerprinting. He insisted the measure is aimed at identifying illegal immigrants for expulsion as well as making sure that Gypsy children are sent to school and not begging in the streets.
The premier said the government only wants to "make these European citizens better integrated and to give them the same right to education that our children have."
Barroso did not evaluate the program.
But he said, "I'm sure a solution will be found, compatible with the great Christian and humanistic traditions of Italy, and also ... of Europe in general." He praised the cooperation that he said Italian authorities are offering to EU officials on the subject.
Opposition leader denounces attacks on Gypsy camps as gov't readies crime crackdown
Associated Press
ROME: Italy's top opposition leader on Monday denounced attacks on Gypsy camps, as Premier Silvio Berlusconi's new government prepared a crackdown on immigration and the European Parliament agreed to a debate on how Gypsies are treated in Italy.
Center-left leader Walter Veltroni, who lost to Berlusconi last month in elections, urged the government to balance security concerns with human rights.
Last week, attackers set fire to shacks where Gypsies lived on the outskirts of Naples, following an alleged attempt by a Gypsy youth to kidnap a baby from a home in a Naples suburb. The camps were evacuated.
There have been increasing calls by conservative politicians for harsher measures against foreigners in Italy. Surveys in the runup to the parliamentary elections that swept Berlusconi and right-wing allies into power indicated that many Italians blame immigrants for crime.
Berlusconi will lead a Cabinet meeting in Naples on Wednesday. Among measures expected to be decided at the meeting is a crackdown on illegal immigration and on foreigners who
Veltroni called the attacks on Gypsy settlements in Naples "very grave" and said anti-crime measures must achieve a "balance between security and rights," the Italian news agency ANSA quoted Rome's former mayor as saying.
The European Parliament on Monday approved a request by European Socialists to debate how Italy treats Gypsies, who are also known as Roma.
The debate, the latest in a series of occasional discussions in the parliament on Europe's 8 million Gypsies, was scheduled for Tuesday evening.
A European Parliament deputy from Hungary who is of Gypsy origin inspected camps in Rome on Saturday and in Naples on Sunday and deplored conditions.
Viktoria Mohacsi told reporters in Rome Monday that the conditions in Gypsy camps in Italy were the worst she had seen in Europe and that some camp residents have lived for as long as 50 years in Italy and are still illegal.
Rome's new, right-wing mayor, Gianni Alemanno, told reporters after visiting a Gypsy camp that he saw, "on the doorstep of Rome, images from the Third World, things beyond my imagination," ANSA reported.
Many of the shacks in the camps have no water or gas hookups.
He called for major effors "so that Rome doesn't become a city split in two," between the haves and the have-nots, ANSA said.
The Italian Radical party, which accompanied Mohacsi on her inspections, said it would seek parliamentary debate on treatment of Gypsies in Italy.
Last week, the European Roma Rights center sent a letter to several Italian government officials, including Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, decrying what it called anti-Roma "pogroms" in Naples. The Budapest-based advocacy group asked the Italian government to provide protection to all Roma in Italy and to investigate what happened in Naples.
There are some 7,000 Gypsies in Rome, a metropolis of 2.7 million people. Many Gypsies arrived from the Balkans in the early 1990s when ethnic conflict raged there, but other Roma families have been in Italy for generations and some trace ancestors in Italy to the 15th century