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Gypsy girls' corpses on beach in Italy fail to put off sunbathers
Questions about the attitude of Italians to their Roma minority were again being asked yesterday after photographs were published of sunbathers continuing as normal with a day at the beach despite the bodies of two Gypsy girls who had drowned being laid out on the sand nearby.
A civil liberties group said it had asked for talks with the authorities to shed light on the circumstances of the girls' death. The incident took place outside Naples, where a Roma encampment was burned to the ground this year after its inhabitants had been evacuated for their own safety.
Accounts given by Italian media varied, but according to the news agency Ansa, the victims - aged 14 and 16 - and two other young Gypsies had been begging from daytrippers on the beach at Torregaveta, west of Naples, on Saturday. Other reports indicated they were selling trinkets. The area is easily reached from the city by a railway line that ends near the shore.
At about 1pm, the four girls decided to go into the water even though none of them, it seems, knew how to swim. They soon got into difficulties because of strong currents in the area and were hit by an unusually big wave.
Two of the girls were rescued by life-savers from a nearby private beach. But rescuers were unable to reach the two oldest until they were already dead.
Their corpses were dragged ashore and laid out on the sand under beach towels.
"But the knot of curious onlookers that formed around the girls' bodies dissolved as [swiftly] as it had formed," the newspaper Corriere della Sera reported. "Few left the beach or abandoned their sunbathing. When the police from the mortuary arrived an hour later with coffins, the two girls were carried away on the shoulders [of the officers] between bathers stretched out in the sun."
La Repubblica also expressed astonishment at the behaviour of those present. "While the lifeless bodies of the girls were still on the sand, there were those who carried on sunbathing or having lunch just a few metres away," it reported.
Corriere recalled that this was not the first time people had decided a death was no reason to give up their day at the beach. In August 1997, sunbathers carried on as normal after a man drowned near Trieste.
But the fact that the two victims on this occasion were Roma added an extra twist to the affair.
Italy is gripped by anti-Gypsy feeling. Since coming to office in May, Silvio Berlusconi's rightwing government has appointed three special commissioners to deal with the Roma in each of Italy's three biggest cities - Naples, Milan and Rome. It has also ordered the fingerprinting of the country's Gypsy population, including minors, who make up more than half of the estimated 150,000 Roma in Italy.
More
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/21/italy.race
Accounts given by Italian media varied, but according to the news agency Ansa, the victims - aged 14 and 16 - and two other young Gypsies had been begging from daytrippers on the beach at Torregaveta, west of Naples, on Saturday. Other reports indicated they were selling trinkets. The area is easily reached from the city by a railway line that ends near the shore.
At about 1pm, the four girls decided to go into the water even though none of them, it seems, knew how to swim. They soon got into difficulties because of strong currents in the area and were hit by an unusually big wave.
Two of the girls were rescued by life-savers from a nearby private beach. But rescuers were unable to reach the two oldest until they were already dead.
Their corpses were dragged ashore and laid out on the sand under beach towels.
"But the knot of curious onlookers that formed around the girls' bodies dissolved as [swiftly] as it had formed," the newspaper Corriere della Sera reported. "Few left the beach or abandoned their sunbathing. When the police from the mortuary arrived an hour later with coffins, the two girls were carried away on the shoulders [of the officers] between bathers stretched out in the sun."
La Repubblica also expressed astonishment at the behaviour of those present. "While the lifeless bodies of the girls were still on the sand, there were those who carried on sunbathing or having lunch just a few metres away," it reported.
Corriere recalled that this was not the first time people had decided a death was no reason to give up their day at the beach. In August 1997, sunbathers carried on as normal after a man drowned near Trieste.
But the fact that the two victims on this occasion were Roma added an extra twist to the affair.
Italy is gripped by anti-Gypsy feeling. Since coming to office in May, Silvio Berlusconi's rightwing government has appointed three special commissioners to deal with the Roma in each of Italy's three biggest cities - Naples, Milan and Rome. It has also ordered the fingerprinting of the country's Gypsy population, including minors, who make up more than half of the estimated 150,000 Roma in Italy.
More
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/21/italy.race
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An estimated 150,000 Roma, or Gypsies, live in Italy, many of them in encampments on the edges of cities such as Rome and Naples, a number of which are unofficial and badly rundown.
The Roma are a distinct ethnic and cultural group with their origins in northern India. They have lived throughout Europe, particularly in the centre and south, for many centuries.
Just over 40% of the country's modern Roma possess Italian passports, including an estimated 30,000 descended from 15th-century settlers. The rest are more recent arrivals, many coming from Balkan nations during the 1990s.
After Romania joined the EU at the start of 2007, an estimated 10,000 Romanian Gypsies came to Italy, forming part of a Romanian population in the country believed to total about 500,000.
What are public attitudes in Italy to the Roma?
Many people are openly hostile to the Roma, accusing them – especially the newer arrivals – of avoiding work in favour of theft and other crime and shutting themselves off from mainstream Italian society in squalid, illegal camps. Rights groups working with Roma people say they face severe discrimination, some of it tied to more general anti-Romanian and anti-immigrant feeling.
One recent newspaper survey found 68% of people wanted all Italy's Gypsies expelled, whether or not they held Italian passports. Another poll said more than three-quarters of people want unauthorised camps demolished.
In May, a mob of vigilantes torched a Roma camp in Naples following the arrest of a young Gypsy woman accused of trying to abduct a child.
How has the Italian government acted?
Critics say Silvio Berlusconi, the recently re-elected Italian prime minister, has exploited anti-Roma feeling for political ends.
His election campaign promised a severe clampdown on "Roma, clandestine immigrants and criminals" and his coalition's candidate for mayor of Rome pledged the expulsion of "20,000 nomads and immigrants who have broken the law".
Other politicians have gone further. The head of the rightwing, anti-immigrant Northern League party, Umberto Bossi, argued the attack on the Naples camp was understandable, saying: "People are going to do what the political class cannot."
What is the government proposing?
Berlusconi's interior minister, Roberto Maroni of the Northern League, caused controversy last month by proposing a plan to fingerprint all Roma living in camps, including children.
He said this would make it easier for authorities to identify child beggars and remove them from their parents, as well as to expel illegal residents.
What has been the reaction to this?
Italian civil liberties groups have expressed outrage, with one Jewish community leader saying the measure could eventually lead to "exclusion from schools, separated classes and widespread discrimination". Earlier this month, the European parliament voted to urge the Italian government against the measure.
However, Italy's legal system has already indicated there is nothing to stop discrimination against Roma. In a ruling handed down earlier this year, but only recently reported, the country's highest appeal court ruled in the case of six people accused of anti-Gypsy racial propaganda that it was acceptable to single out Roma on the basis that they are thieves.
They are Humans like anybody else.
How can you ignore a dead human ?
Italians don't have a heart?
WHERE IS THE EU?