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Gypsy leaders accuse Italy of discrimination

22 October 2012
2 minute read

Gypsy leaders attending a ceremony at the former Auschwitz death camp Saturday accused Italy of harassment and discrimination, a news agency reported.

"Over the past year in Italy, we have had to deal with a situation unprecedented in the history of postwar Europe," said Roman Kwiatkowski, the president of the Association of Roma in Poland, according to Poland’s PAP news agency.

"For the first time since the end of World War II, the authorities of a state are actively engaged in policies of repression and discrimination against an ethnic or national minority, in this case the Roma."

Kwiatkowski spoke at an event marking the 64th anniversary of the Nazis’ gassing of the most of the remaining 2,900 Gypsy inmates at Auschwitz.

In recent weeks, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative government has come under fire for plans to fingerprint Roma living in Italy.

The criticism — from opposition parties, the European Union and international human rights groups — has included accusations of racism and discrimination.

The government, which has spoken of a "Roma emergency" in big cities, rejects the accusations. It insists the fingerprinting is part of a census needed to establish who is in the country illegally, to curb street crime and to get Gypsy children to attend school.

Recently, however, the Interior Ministry issued guidelines specifying that Gypsies will only be fingerprinted if they don’t have a valid ID.

Romani Rose, the head of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, echoed Kwiatkowski’s criticism, and called on the EU to intervene.

Both leaders addressed about 300 people gathered at the former Nazi camp in southern Poland, including Holocaust survivors and representatives of the governments of Poland, Slovakia and Hungary.

Up to half a million European Gypsies are believed to have perished during World War II, along with 6 million Jews, though the exact number is not known. Others were sterilized or subjected to grisly experiments.

The Nazis liquidated the Gypsy camp — the so-called Zigeunerfamilienlager — at the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex on Aug. 2, 1944, and gassed most of the remaining inmates, including women, children and elderly people. Others were sent to German factories as forced laborers.

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