Berlusconi Targets Gypsies Amid Bias Against EU’s Top Minority

A proudly liberal piece concerning Italy’s overdue crackdown on the criminal Roma (gypsies) population.**

Rebecca Covaciu, like most little girls, likes to draw pictures of the things she knows best: Her brother playing the accordion for spare change, a self-portrait as she begs for money to buy food, a shack under a bridge.

Rebecca is a Roma, or gypsy, as her ethnic group of Romany speakers is more widely known. She moved to Italy from Romania with her parents and two siblings two years ago. Since then, authorities have driven her family out of a half-dozen makeshift camps. In June, Italian men shouting racist taunts punched her and shoved her to the ground.

** The absence of a written history has meant that the origin and early history of the Roma people was long an enigma. As early as 200 years ago, cultural scholars hypothesised an Indian origin of the Roma based on linguistic evidence. Genetic information confirms this. > Fraser, Angus (1995-02-01). Gypsies (Peoples of Europe), 2nd edition, Blackwell, Oxford. ISBN 978-0631196051. 

Romania, which entered the EU last year, has Europe’s largest population of gypsies, a term rooted in the false notion that they originally hailed from Egypt. Anyone holding a Romanian passport is free to work without restriction in 11 EU member countries. The 15 other nations, including Italy, have imposed temporary limitations on the types of jobs Romanians may have as their country’s economy integrates itself into Europe’s.

Source

To contact the reporter on this story: Steve Scherer in Rome at scherer@bloomberg.net 

2008-08-06