Gypsy dead on beach don’t put off Italian sunbathers
The highly bigoted and callous attitude of many Italians to their Roma minority was revealed over the weekend after photographs were published of sunbathers continuing as normal with a day at the beach despite the bodies of two drowned Gypsy girls being laid out on the sand nearby just outside Naples, where a Roma encampment was burned to the ground this year after its inhabitants had been evacuated for their own safety. One of the deceased was 14, the other 16.
Italy’s latest wave of scapegoating and dehumanisation is fuelled by Silvio Berlusconi and his right-wing allies who, since elected to office in May, have appointed three special commissioners to deal with the Roma in each of Italy’s three biggest cities—Naples, Milan and Rome.
The government has also ordered the fingerprinting of the country’s entire Gypsy population, including children who make up more than half of the estimated 150,000 Roma in Italy.
tags: bigotry, crime, fascism, fingerprinting, Gypsies, hatred, Italy, politics, prejudice
