Roma, Travellers

via mostlywater, 9 July 2009: "Italy's parliament has given final approval to frightening legislation that allows vigilante-style citizen patrols to operate in the alleged fight against illegal immigration. The legislation passed also calls for jail terms of up to three years for people who knowingly house illegal immigrants and lengthens the amount of time that migrants can spend in detention..." more

from clandestinenglish, 25 May 2009: "They came to help. "40 officers from 20 countries came to work with 165 Greek border guards in the exercise". FRONTEX came to help Greece. Together they‘ll render crossing the borders even more life - risky. Together they will justify the higher prices traffickers are going to be asking for the job. High tech surveillance on the borders: "Frontex officers are using heartbeat and carbon dioxide detectors, along with heat cameras and other sensors to scan vehicles, and are watching the border with a surveillance helicopter and aircraft" at "the hottest area of illegal immigration in Europe", the border with Turkey that is..." more

from london no borders, 8 March 2009: "If as now expected the case of Dale Farm is heard by the UK supreme court, the issue at test will be whether a policy of physical exclusion, which has afflicted Gypsy life in Britain for generations, should finally be checked. Since the siege of Dale Farm commenced, public expenditure on anti-Gypsy measures in England has amounted to well over 200 million euro. That’s more than the entire outlay during the EU Decade of Roma Inclusion..." more

from IRR, 11 February 2009: "In a further blow to the Traveller families living at Dale Farm, the Court of Appeal has turned down their appeal application to the House of Lords, the final appeal court in the UK. This follows the Court of Appeal ruling on 22 January 2009 which overturned an earlier High Court ruling quashing a decision by Basildon Council to forcibly remove the families from their land..." more

from EveryOne, updated 18 February 2009: "On Friday 6th February, 2009 the Italian Senate approved the new emergency decree known as the “security package”, a series of discriminatory and persecutory measures that will affect the Roma people, immigrants and the homeless. The package authorizes the creation of “Padane” patrols, voluntary militias legally authorized to work alongside the police force, hunting out and reporting people who are considered a 'security problem'..." more

from various sources, 26 January 2009: "The Court of Appeal has ruled that 1,000 travellers living in Dale Farm in Essex can be moved on by Basildon Council. Up to 50 families now face being forcibly removed from their homes from what is the largest traveller community in the UK, including more than 150 children..." more

from everyonegroup, 9 January 2009: "At the present time, in spite of all the EU directives, resolutions, warnings, conferences and the inspection carried out by a delegation from the European Commission, no measures, no projects, no real social integration programmes have been undertaken to help the Roma people in Italy. Unfortunately the right-wing and far-right wing Italian Government is finding no opposition in this critical field from their political opponents... These measures are also making life very difficult for the Roma with Italian citizenship or those who took refuge in Italy in the 1970s and 1990s..." more

from occupiedlondon, 17 December 2008: "The high school students are making history and leave it to the others to write it up and to classify it ideologically. The streets, the incentive, the passion belongs to them. In the framework of this wider mobilisation, with the student demonstrations being its steam-engine, there is a mass participation of the second generation of migrants and many refugees also. The refugees come to the streets in small numbers, with limited organisation, with the spontaneity and impetus describing their mobilisation. Right now, they are the most militant part of the foreigners living in Greece. Either way, they have very little to lose..." more

from email, 24 November 2008: Source: Inter Press Service :: BRUSSELS, Nov 13 (IPS) - A political ideology based on the desire to exterminate Roma gypsies is emerging in parts of Europe, a Brussels conference has been told. Following a number of violent attacks on Roma by skinheads and other extremists in Bulgaria, it was announced during August 2007 that the far-right National Guard party was being established. more