Posted on 06/26/2008 2:01:48 PM PDT by blam
Italy to fingerprint all Roma gipsy children
By Malcolm Moore in Rome
Last Updated: 9:20PM BST 26/06/2008
Around 80,000 gipsy children are to be fingerprinted by the Italian authorities under a new scheme that has drawn comparisons to the policies of Benito Mussolini.
Unicef said it was 'shocked and deeply worried' by Italy's plans to fingerprint all Roma children
The Italian government has blamed immigrants, and particularly Roma gipsies, for the country's crime problems.
Since Silvio Berlusconi became prime minister in April, gypsy camps in the south and north of the country have been burned by vigilante mobs.
The home minister, Roberto Maroni, has now announced that all the Roma will be fingerprinted, including children. "This is not ethnic cataloguing, this is the ultimate safeguard of their rights," he said.
Article continuesadvertisement "We will take the children's fingerprints in order to stop those occasions when parents send their children out to beg. It is a proper census to make sure that those who have the right to stay here can live in decent conditions," he said.
According to the latest figures, there are 160,000 Roma gipsies in Italy, almost half of whom have Italian citizenship. The last census recorded that 80,000 of them are children.
The move has triggered memories of the segregation of Jews imposed by Benito Mussolini in 1938. "I remember when I could not go to school with the others," said Amos Luzzatto, a former president of Italy's Union of Jewish Communities.
"There is a latent racism in Italian culture and it manifests itself cyclically," he added. "Taking the fingerprints of youngsters from one ethnic group implies that you consider them to be congenital thieves."
Unicef, the United Nation's children's rights body, said it was "shocked and deeply worried" by the plans.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
My mother said that Gypsies steal babies.
Good, I was in Rome last summer and the Gypsies were just horrible. They need to clean up the whole city.
Sadly, many of them are brought up to steal. They’ve ripped off people I know, and they prey on tourists. Blame their parents if you don’t like it, not the responsible Italians who are trying to protect the public.
The implant chips will follow soon enough.
I have never been to Italy, but a large portion of my family is there and the multitude of stories I’ve heard about the gypsies are nothing short of horrendous.
White racists used to say, and I guess still do say, that blacks are all thieves, based upon their disproportionate participation in crime.
Of course, Blacks are not thieves. They traditionally suffered from a lack of opportunity, and, later, from the breakdown of the family caused by LBJ.
In the case of the Gypsies, though, is it not correct that in fact stealing is the culture? That parents and grandparents alike are thieves, and hope to raise good little thieves? That is, that they raise their kids to steal as much as others hope for their children to be doctors or lawyers?
Please, I am not stating that as fact. But, I have read quite a bit which suggests it is true.
Not a bad idea. Aside from the fact that many of these kids are trained to be thieves from birth, they are also often themselves the victims of various schemes (run by their own families) that ship them around within the country and to other countries, where they are put out to beg or commit crimes for other members of their extended families.
Good move. Enough already!
I’ve been robbed twice in my life so far and both times in Europe and both times by gypsies.
When UNICEF comes down on something, you can generally take it for granted that it is on the wrong side.
I wonder if folks in other nations are as sick of the U.N. and UNICEF as we are.
I’ve had two actual experiences with gypsies. When we were in Ericeira, Portugal, with the kids one summer there was a gypsy encampment nearby. Everyone said to watch out, because they would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down, and I think they knew what they were talking about.
The other was the experience of our English cousins in a village near Bath. A bunch of gypsies took down a gate and moved into the woods on the edge of their property. In typical English fashion the law protected them from being ejected. There was no legal recourse. Fortunately they eventually decided to move on.
I’m not saying that our illegal immigrant problem is like that of the gypsies, but can you imagine if the US tried to take prints of all illegals?
One could hear the howls of protest all the way to Italy.
It’s about time. The parents use these children to steal people blind and it’s almost impossible to stop this trafficking in stolen goods through children. The rob people in broad daylight in front of witnesses and run. Gangs of children will attack a single person and strip them of everything of value. Before this step, the children were let off scot-free and the organizers of these crimes, mother and father, were never prosecuted.
The US has it share of Gypsies, The Irish Travelers are the most notorious.
Last I heard the Roma didn't invent the Mafia, or the Corsican Union ~ that was a deal cooked up by Italian, Sicilian and French criminals.
If your cousins would have wanted to take the gate down, the local planners would have probably grade 2 listed it and denied their request.
The only Gypsies I ever met were thieves. Fingerprinting them is a great idea.
Why can’t Italy just crack down on crime?
Criminal behavior is the problem. Prove and punish it.
Suspicion may fall disproportionately on some groups that have a history of criminality. In the U.S., one ought to look at young muslim men more carefully at airports. In Italy, the police may wish to concern themselves with Gypsies.
But even if criminality is rampant in an ethnic or other group, one should still presume innocence. The vast majority of young muslim guys at the airport are on business trips. The vast majority of Roma are going about their daily lives not stealing.
That virtually all terrorist attacks are perpetrated by young muslim males doesn’t mean the suspension of individual liberty for them compared to others. It just means they’ll be watched more carefully. That’s logical, protective of everyone else, and doesn’t infringe on their rights.
We shouldn’t, however, round up all the young muslim men of the country and fingerprint them. “They might be taken to a madrassah and trained to be terrorists!” would be the equivalent logic as the Italians are employing. That’s wrong. Group guilt does not exist, in my opinion. Group punishment is immoral. Using the force of the state to preemptorily tag (fingerprint, chip implantation, yellow star armbands, etc.) certain groups as having a predeliction for criminality is wrong.
While a majority of terrorists are Muslims, and a majority of thieves in Italy may be Roma, that doesn’t mean the majority muslims are terrorists, or the majority of Roma are thieves.
It may even be that a majority of muslims support terror. I’ve seen where 38% of British Muslims believe they should kill a Jew when they find one. Nonetheless, that doesn’t mean Britain should put implant WiFi chips in the b*tts of every Muslim. Neither should Italy fingerprint all Roma children.
Thank the Lord on High that the Gypsies knew how to live on the road, without a home, nor with land to grow vegetables.
They taught those who were willing to learn how to survive.
Most of those folks have over the years moved to America. In the early days they taught Americans how to settle a nation and assimilated.
Too bad Europeans are not smart enough to figure out how to deal with the Gypsies.
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