According to a European directive, member states are allowed to limit freedom of movement if they want so. Italy said it wanted to expulse thousands of Romanians. It had already started in Rome and Milan.
Nicolas Van Caillie
Italian police begin to round up Romanians
Italian police yesterday began combing shantytowns in Rome and other big cities to locate Romanians targeted for expulsion under legislation introduced after the gruesome murder of a woman on the outskirts of the capital this week.
One small makeshift settlement near the centre had been bulldozed by midday and its inhabitants bussed away for identification. The clearance of another site, where the alleged killer of the murdered woman lived, was held up only at the request of forensic science experts so that they could finish their hunt for clues.
Carrying their belongings in bundles and plastic bags, residents fled the camp in a quiet part of northern Rome as police stood ready to tear down their shacks, already made sodden and fragile by recent heavy rain.
The prefect of Rome, Carlo Mosca, said: "I shall sign the first expulsion orders straightaway. A hard line is needed because, faced with animals, the only way to react is with maximum severity." Italian media reports said the police were anticipating several thousand expulsions.
Mr Mosca's comments, which did not prompt controversy, came amid a nationwide outcry over the death late on Thursday of Giovanna Reggiani, the 47-year-old wife of a navy captain. Ms Reggiani was robbed, sexually assaulted, beaten and then dumped in a ditch near her home.
A Romanian of Roma origin, Nicolae Mailat, 24, was remanded in custody by a magistrate yesterday, accused of murder, sexual assault and theft. His duty lawyer said he had only admitted to stealing Ms Reggiani's bag.
The killing was the latest in a string of ugly crimes this year blamed on Romanians, who form Italy's biggest immigrant community.
An MP from the anti-immigrant Northern League said his party was organising vigilante patrols in predominantly immigrant areas of Turin and Piacenza today and tomorrow. In Rome officials of the Freedom Circles, a network of political clubs set up by Silvio Berlusconi's latest protegee, Maria Vittoria Brambilla, also announced patrols. But Ms Brambilla denied all knowledge of the scheme and said she had not authorised it.
A decree published yesterday which took effect immediately empowered prefects to order the removal from Italy of EU citizens judged to pose a threat to law and order. However, it includes certain guarantees. Expulsion orders need the endorsement of a justice of the peace or, in the case of suspects in investigations and defendants in trials, the approval of a prosecutor or judge respectively. Italy's most senior police officer, Antonio Manganelli, said EU citizens would be treated "with absolute respect for human dignity, without witch-hunts".
But the head of Italy's criminal lawyers' association, Oreste Dominioni, called on his members to protest at the measure, which he described as "authoritarian".
Tens of thousands of immigrants from eastern Europe live in shantytowns in the major cities, and particularly Rome. At the camp demolished yesterday a Russian who gave his name as Sergei said: "I've been here for a year. I've never had problems with the law. I don't know now what the future holds."
sources: The Guardian, Google news, Le Monde.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
All Europeans are equal, but some Europeans are more equal than others.
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There's currently about 10 million Roma in the EU.
Whose responsibility are they? The EU's? The countries' where they came from?
Since 2004, and even more since 2007, the EU has started paying much more attention to Europe's biggest ethnic minority. It's about time. They live in absolutely terrible conditions. By choice, or by lack of choice? They face employment and cultural discrimination, they lack appropriate housing and stereotypes against them are countless.
The Europe Agreements for the new 2004 member countries set the legislative framework obliging the members to respect the democratic principles and human rights established by the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris for a new Europe. After the murder of Giovanna Reggiani and the ensuing Italian reaction, one Romanian wrote that Romania wasn't ready to join the EU in the first place for its lack of action on behalf of the Roma.
“This murder is just another facet of a country that wasn’t ready to enter the EU. Even worse, it has a government that is only preoccupied with Europe as long as it can get a few nationalist votes.”
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