Anti-Roma sentiment in Italy

Anti-Roma sentiment is hostility, prejudice, discrimination or racism directed at the Romani people. There's no reliable data for the total number of Roma people living in Italy, estimates put it between 140,000 and 170,000.

2007 and 2008

In Italy, many national and local political leaders engaged in rhetoric during 2007 and 2008 that maintained that the extraordinary rise in crime at the time was mainly a result of uncontrolled immigration of people of Roma origin from recent European Union member state Romania.[1] National and local leaders declared their plans to expel Roma from settlements in and around major cities and to deport illegal immigrants. The mayors of Rome and Milan signed “Security Pacts” in May 2007 that “envisaged the forced eviction of up to 10,000 Romani people.”[2]

In October 2007, extraordinary anti-immigrant sentiment exploded into violence toward Romanian immigrants and Roma in general. The violence was triggered by the murder of 47-year-old Giovanna Reggiani, a naval captain’s wife, which was attributed to a Romanian immigrant of Roma origin. Reggiani was raped, beaten, left in a ditch, and died the following week. The Italian government responded with roundups of Romanian immigrants and summary expulsions of some two hundred, mostly Roma, disregarding E.U. immigration rules.[3] According to Rome's then Mayor Walter Veltroni Romanians made up 75 percent of those who raped, stole and killed in the first seven months of the year.[3]

In May 2008, an unnamed 16-year-old Romanian girl from a different part of town was arrested for trying to snatch an unattended six-month-old baby.[4] After that mobs in several areas around Naples attacked Roma communities, setting homes alight, and forcing hundreds of Roma to flee.[5] The camp in Ponticelli was set on fire each month between May and July 2008.[6]

According to a May 2008 poll 68% of Italians, wanted to see all of the country's approximately 150,000 Gypsies, many of them Italian citizens, expelled.[7] The survey, published as mobs in Naples burned down Gypsy camps that month, revealed that the majority also wanted all Gypsy camps in Italy to be demolished.[7]

See also

Racism in Italy

References

  1. ↑ Thomas Hammarberg, “Memorandum following the visit to Italy on 19–20 June 2008,” the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, CommDH(2008)18, para. 26, July 28, 2008
  2. ↑ Amnesty International, The State of the World’s Human Rights 2008: Italy, POL 10/001/2008, June 2008, pp. 171-172
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 “Brutal Attack in Rome: Italy Cracks Down on Immigrant Crime Wave,” Der Spiegel, November 2, 2007
  4. ↑ Migrant hate fears over Italy gipsy camp fire, The Daily Telegraph, Malcolm Moore, Rome, 14 May 2008
  5. ↑ Violence Against Roma, Human Rights First, 2008 Hate Crime Survey, Italy, p. 6.
  6. ↑ Michael Stewart: The Gypsy 'menace': Populism and the New Anti-Gypsy Politics, Hurst Publishers, 2012, ISBN 9781849042192, p. 15.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 68% of Italians want Roma expelled - poll, The Guardian, Tom Kington, Rome, 17 May 2008