Germany's worrying

undemocratic trends.

Beauty and murder

in Dresden.

Hungary: Police ups reward for information on Roma crime

MTI April 25 Hungary's national police chief told MTI on Saturday that he had increased the reward for information leading to the perpetrators of recent attacks against the Roma to 50 million forints.

Jozsef Bencze said the attacks committed against Roma in Nagycsecs, Tatarszentgyorgy and Tiszalok are connected and the perpetrators are believed to belong to the same circle. Instead of the 10 million forints reward that police offered in each of the cases, 50 million forints will be given to anyone supplying information that will lead to the perpetrators, he added. Bencze noted that two people were killed in Nagycsecs last November and a father and his five-year old son were shot dead in Tatarszentgyorgy in February. In the most recent attack, a Roma man was shot dead on Wednesday. The attackers left behind various traces, including two DNA samples, but these have not been found in the criminal registry, Bencze said. A team of 70 police officers are involved in the investigation, including highly experienced criminal experts, he added. Police have so far investigated as many as 10,000 people who were in the vicinity of the incidents, including 2,000 who were questioned, Bencze said. Hungarian police has also received much useful help from international experts in drawing up the suspects' profile, he added Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai said that the government will do all it can to assist the police and create law and order so that no one should have to live in fear in Hungary. He said that the killing of a Roma citizen in Tiszalok was part of a series of shameful acts, and amounted to an offense against the whole of the Hungarian Republic.

Amnesty accuses Austrian police of racism

Veronika Oleksyn
AP
April 9

Immigrants and ethnic minorities living in Austria are more likely to be suspected of crimes than whites and are regularly denied their right to equal treatment by the country's police and judicial system, Amnesty International said Thursday.

In a report released in Vienna, the human rights watchdog also said Austrian authorities do not effectively investigate and punish racially motivated police misconduct.

"Amnesty International is concerned that the Austrian criminal justice as a whole, and the police in particular, are failing to provide the same level of service to foreign nationals and members of ethnic minorities as it routinely provides the Austrian citizens," the report said.

Based on case studies and interviews with lawyers, community leaders, justice system officials and others, the report also found that ethnic minorities in the Alpine republic are subject to a range of negative stereotypes and that these prejudices can impact the behavior of law enforcement officials.

"Amnesty International is concerned ... that in everyday practice skin color too often appears to constitute a determining ground for police interventions in Austria," the report said.

In particular, Amnesty said there was "considerable evidence" Austrian police has engaged in widespread discriminatory ethnic profiling over the past decade, particularly in its efforts to counter drug-related crime. Often, the targets are young black men, the group said.

"The majority of individuals of African origin that Amnesty International met with insisted that random identity checks, often involving searches, were still — despite a notable improvement over the last two years — a routine part of their existence," the report said.

Interior Ministry Rudolf Gollia acknowledged that there had been individual cases of police misconduct toward foreigners, but insisted it wasn't a widespread problem.

"We reject allegations of institutional discrimination or racism in Austria's police," Gollia said.

The report said Austrian law enforcement agencies often fail to give serious consideration to complaints from ethnic minorities and fail to investigate offenses against them effectively and impartially.

Two months ago, undercover police officers in Vienna attacked an American teacher they mistook for a drug dealer. Mike Brennan said he believed he was singled out because he's black.

Police acknowledged the mix-up, but the officers were not suspended.

"I'm concerned about the officers still working," the 34-year-old teacher told The Associated Press on Thursday, adding he was encouraged by Austrians who approached him on the street or in cafes to wish him well and apologize for what happened to him.

Heinz Patzelt, secretary general of Austria's chapter of Amnesty International, said it would be easy for Austrian authorities to quickly improve the situation — if they acknowledged that racial discrimination was widespread and not limited to individual cases.

"Racism is a cancer that will spread and spread if it is not diagnosed," Patzelt said.

Amnesty International - http://www.amnesty.org/

Maledetti romeni

Umberto Eco on the recent anti-Romanian campaign in Italy.

Roma father, 5-year-old son shot dead in Hungary

Reuters
February 23


A father and his 5-year-old son were shot dead in an attack on a Roma family home in Hungary on Monday, and two children were injured when the house caught fire, local news agency MTI reported citing local police.

The attack in Tatarszentgyorgy, a village 65 km (40 miles) southeast of Budapest, is the latest in a series on Roma houses in which seven people have died over the past year.

Peter Papp, criminal director of the county police, told MTI that a preliminary autopsy report showed the father and his son were shot dead. Two other children were hurt in the blaze.

Viktoria Mohacsi, a Roma Hungarian member of the European Parliament, told Reuters after visiting the scene that the two Roma were shot as they were trying to escape the house.

Local and national police declined comment, saying it was too early to give any details.

It was not immediately known whether the attack was racially motivated, but Mohacsi said Monday's attack resembled similar ones on Roma elsewhere in Hungary over the past year.

"I believe this (fire) could not have been caused by anything other than a petrol bomb," Mohacsi said.

"My assumption is that this attack was racially motivated," she added.

Erno Kallai, ombudsman in charge of national and ethnic minority rights, said in a statement that attacks on Roma people were alarming and he would raise this in parliament on Tuesday.

"In the past year there have been over 10, or according to some opinions even more, violent crimes committed against Roma families or their houses," Kallai said.

"A common feature of these cases is ... that perpetrators are still unknown," he added.

Hungary has one of the largest communities of Roma, also known as gypsies, in eastern Europe, making up 5 to 7 percent of the 10 million population.

A deepening recession and job losses is stoking resentment against the Roma in Hungary and has led to a strengthening of the far-right which fights against what it says is a rise in "Roma crime."

Italy Cracks Down on Sexual Violence and Illegal Immigration

Sabina Castelfranco
Rome
Voice of America
February 20

Silvio Berlusconi

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government on Friday approved tougher measures to crack down on sexual violence and illegal immigration.

The Prime Minister issued an emergency decree at a cabinet meeting Friday in response to a series of rapes blamed mostly on foreigners.

The rapes in the last weeks have shocked Italy. Two Romanians were arrested for the rape of a 14-year-old girl on Valentine's Day.

The newly approved government package, which must be approved by Parliament, increases jail sentences for rape, gives free legal counsel to victims of sexual violence and makes stalking a crime.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said mayors have also been allowed to organize patrols of unarmed citizens so that they can point out to police forces where there are risks for urban security or situations of social degradation.

The government says the aim of such patrols, which have drawn criticism from the center-left opposition, is to boost security on city streets.

The opposition says the government is promoting vigilante justice but Maroni Friday defended the measure, saying that setting up organized groups of volunteers would avoid the creation of "do-it-yourself" patrols seeking to take matters into their own hands.

The decree also allows authorities to detain immigrants for six months, up from two months, while they work to identify them, process asylum requests and expel those not entitled to stay.

Romania's foreign minister Cristian Diaconescu said, meanwhile, that his country does not want citizens suspected of committing crimes in Italy to be repatriated.

The minister said Romania would like to overcome this abnormal situation through dialogue and cooperation with its Italian partners in the near future.

Diaconescu is expected to travel to Italy on Monday, where he plans to discuss the issue with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini. Some one million Romanians are estimated to live and work in Italy.

Immigration issues and racism on Facebook. Concerns in Italy

The on-line environment and the social networks are the favorite and cheapest way to share fast and cost-free your ideas and thoughts. The principle of the freedom of speech is an advantage able to wave on various occasions. Including when you use it for expressing your hate, and even the incitement to kill.

In Italy the anti-immigration campaign is continuing, two days before the discussion of the security package by the Council of Ministers. The package was drafted by the Minister of Interior, Roberto Maroni, representing the anti-immigration Northern League. He also announced its intention to call for a G8 reunion, this May, dedicated to countering the illegal immigration. Also this Friday, the Senate is expected to discuss an anti-rape decree, issued by the same minister, aiming to prevent and counter those crimes. Last Saturday, the Italian media covered the case of a 14 year old girl, raped by a man of Romanian origin.

The Italian president, Giorgio Napolitano, rejected recently one of the key of the security package, the creation of volutarily militia units, working alongside the police force in the operations of identification of people considered a security problem. In the last two years, such units operated at informal level in various towns in Italy and were involved in various actions against the Roma people and immigrants, including the arson attack on the Roma settlement from Milan, in 2007. Between November 2005 and June 2007 the so-called “Black Panda Gang” made up of private citizens and members of the police force, were guilty of many cases of beatings, violence and kidnapping carried out against illegal immigrants.

Among the provisions of the package it is also the requirement for doctors to denounce to the police their patients, if they detain information they are illegal immigrants. According to Vivere Italia, Sveva Belviso, in charge with the social policies at the Mayory of Rome, created a Facebook group where the members are encouraged to offer information about the illegal Roma camps. Out of the 352 members - as for yesterday - 14 of them already reported such situations.

Also on Facebook, a couple of groups - whose age range of the members is mostly between 20-40 - are preaching various actions against the immigrants, mainly Romanians (rom+rum, Quelli che odiano i romeni, Piacere di conoscerti??? /ironisation of the logo a recent public affairs campaign of Romania in Italy etc.) - but also Chineses, Albanians, Tunisians. You could find there: anti-immigration posters; calls for expelling of all Romanians or even for coordinate action to aggress and kill them; solidarity with the victims of rape, violence and murder; call for individuals to do justice "by themselves, as long as the Italian justice is inefficient"; expulsion of Chinese immigrants. On the other side, the Romanian and anti-racism groups are almost absent, groups as "Against fingerprinting of the Roma community" or "Stop Discrimination against Romanians" aren't active for one, respectively almost two years.

The anti-immigration discourse is a constant of the last years in the Italian politics. As a leader of the opposition, in November 2007, the current prime-minister, Silvio Berlusconi, urged Italy to close its borders to Romanian workers and a conservative ally, from the Northern League called for an expulsion of tens of thousands of immigrants, after a wave of alleged crimes by foreigners.

The targets of the "citizen justice" are not only Romanians - after the rape of the 14 year girl, in the North of Sardinia, ten Italians entered and attacked in their house two men and one woman of Romanian origin - but other immigrants as well. On February 4, the Italian president called for a stop to xenophobia and racist violences, after an Indian man was beaten and set on fire near Rome. Navtej Singh Sidhua, a 35 year-old homeless working in constructions, was attacked while sleeping rough at a train station at the seaside town of Nettuno near Rome. Police have arrested two adults and a minor, who have confessed pouring petrol on him and setting him on fire. The reason: according to the Police sources quoted by ANSA news agency, the group wanted to "cap off" a night on the town, fuelled by drugs and alcohol, by doing something "sensational, to experience an intense emotion". In late October, a Chinese immigrant was beaten up by teenagers, while waiting for a bus in Rome and a young student from Ghana was beaten by Parma traffic police who mistook him for a drug posher.

According to statistics covering more than ten years, the assumption of a possible increase of the level of crime under the effect of the recent immigration waves is not covered by the reality.

Looking for scapegoats

The headline is back: The Italian politicians are angry against the increase of crimes committed by
immigrants originary from Eastern Europe. Berlusconi's centre-right coalition won the elections with a tough message against crime and he should continue to feed its voters by rhetorics, not by valuable steps to counter a phenomenon not suddenly appearing with the enlargement of the EU. But now it is possible to dilute the responsability, by focusing mostly of the ethnic origin of the perpetrators. As long as they hold IDs with citizenship of an EU country, they have to be treat exclusively as citizens of another EU country, and to apply in their case the rules and regulations available in this case.

If they are staying in camps, illegaly, in the suburbs of various Italian cities, the question is how it was possible to let them stay for so long? If they are begging in the street, try to apply the law and treat them as citizens who infringed this law.

For the individuals with criminal records, they are inter-state agreements according to which they could be extradited in their country of origins. Fingerprinting them, as it was asked at the end of the last year, it's again only a populist measure, without solving in fact the problem and only fuel the xenophobic feelings. Which is quite dangerous, because fueling also in their country of origin the ancient resentments. In Romania, they are often portrayed as being guilty of the bad image of the country abroad and such a positioning is nothing else than a green light encouraging the radical discourses.

On the other side, in the case of Roma the issue is a bit complicate and request a multi-layered approach. Many of them are simply victims of the human trafficking regional networks, both in their country of origin, than in Italy. Some of them don't even know where they are going to and they are simply exploited for prostitution or producing money. The NGOs should get more involved by preventing and protecting these people to get abused as well as to ensure their rights as full citizens are respected.

Moderation is sometimes an unsuccesful political strategy. But appealing to basic human feelings of hate, you open Pandora's box. Today, they are the Roma, tomorrow, they could be replaced easily by other ethnic groups. The general opinion is already prepared for everything.

Novinite: Sofia Mayor's "To Chicago and Back"*

Novinite
Ivan Dikov

February 6

During his meeting with members of the Bulgarian immigrant community in Chicago on Wednesday, which took place in the St. Ivan of Rila Church, the Sofia Mayor and informal leader of the GERB (1) party, Boyko Borisov, made certain statements, which spurred real hue and cry back home in Bulgaria.

In this article, I am not going to comment on the personality, political career, background, etc. of Borisov, neither am I going to discuss his party GERB and its political ambitions. I am just going to pick two of his statements, and discuss them pointing out why, despite the Mayor's inappropriate wording, they do make sense.

Because the fact of the matter is that, first of all, Borisov's statements do describe very real and grave issues for contemporary Bulgaria. And, second, it is remarkable that a top-ranking Bulgarian politician, and a hopeful for the Prime Minister position, finally put them so sharply in public.

The Sofia Mayor told the Bulgarian expats in Chicago that Bulgaria's greatest problem was its "bad human material", and that the country had one million Roma, several hundred thousand Turks, and 2,5 million retirees nostalgic for the great communist past. At the same time, 1,5 million of Bulgaria's best and brightest have left the country in the recent years.

For these words, Borisov was accused of fascism and political cynicism by fellow politicians in Sofia. Obviously, he couldn't choose a worse word than "material" when talking about Bulgaria's population - everyone knows it was the Nazis who talked about "good" and "bad" "human material".

But what happens when you substitute the word "material" for "human capital" or "human resources" in Borisov's statement? Isn't it true that Bulgaria has "bad human capital"? It certainly is.

Now, "bad" is also not the right word - low-skilled, low-qualified, badly educated, with low levels of political culture and civic activism - any one of these would have been a much more appropriate wording for what the Sofia Mayor apparently had in mind.

The fact is, though, that dozens of studies of international institutions, among other sources, have been stressing that the quality of Bulgaria's human resources is declining - this includes education, productivity, political participation and culture, civic awareness and activism, age structure, i.e. all the crucial prerequisites for building a healthy, dynamic, high-tech economy, a real civil society, and a prosperous state.

Bulgaria does have one of the worst (if not THE worst) demographic situations in the world. Bulgaria does have 2,5 million retired persons longing for the days of their youth, which happen to coincide with the country's communist past. Bulgaria does suffer the effects of the brain drain with 1,5 million qualified, young laborers emigrating after 1990. (While the country's population is on the decline, various statistics state between 300 000 and 500 000 Bulgarian babies have been born abroad in the recent years).

Bulgaria does have sizable ethnic minorities which are not well-integrated with the rest of the society. In general, the Bulgarian Roma are poorly educated, have lower standard of living, and lower political culture than the average Bulgarian citizens. (It is a whole other question why this is the situation of the Roma minority, and what should be done to improve it.) The Bulgarian Turks, while better integrated with the society than the Roma, could always be affected in their behavior by their potential affiliation with neighboring Turkey.

I believe this is what Borisov's words were supposed to stand for - stressing Bulgaria's issues with its aging population, the brain drain, and its pretty miserable failure to integrate properly its sizable Roma and Turkish minorities with the rest of the society. These are grave issues that contemporary Bulgaria must tackle immediately it wants to survive not to mention prosper.

And the fact that the GERB leader Borisov chose probably the worst possible words to put them does not change the grave reality that he described.

The Sofia Mayor also mentioned something else in this respect - the well-known fact that certain political forces in Bulgaria have been enjoying voting support along ethnic and age lines. Clearly, the overwhelming majority of the Bulgarian Turks have been voting for the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), while the majority of the Bulgarian retirees have been voting for the Bulgarian Socialist Party, the descendant of the former Communist Party. On top of that, the minorities and the pensioners usually have a much higher voter turnout than the general population.

I will leave aside the allegations that the DPS and the BSP are manipulating these two population groups in various ways in order to control their votes. I am just going to point out that if any allegedly democratic state has overwhelming voting divisions along ethnic and age lines, its situation is really precarious...

As a citizen of the Republic of Bulgaria, I am clearly not OK with the fact that my government might be elected by people who vote for a certain party based on their ethnic affiliations, and on their longing for their youth gone by long ago...

As far as the brain drain is concerned, I do believe that everyone should have the right to travel and live wherever they want, as I myself have done it. But I also see Borisov's point in calling for efforts to attract our compatriots back home from abroad by presenting them with better opportunities in Bulgaria.

The plan for making Macedonia friendly to Bulgaria that the Sofia Mayor outlined in Chicago is the other case in hand. What he said in this respect was also badly framed but did make a valid point about how Bulgaria should protect its national interests.

Essentially, Borisov argued that Bulgaria should exert economic and political influence over Macedonia in order to make the Skopje government recognize the actual history of the Macedonian land, and to improve the condition of those Macedonian citizens who regard themselves as Bulgarian.

This statement is especially remarkable because it is probably the first instance in the recent years in which a top Bulgarian politician says that Bulgaria has clear strategic interests with respect to Macedonia, and suggests a way to go about pursuing them.

Because we do have thousands of people who see themselves as Bulgarians in contemporary Macedonia, and they do face social pressure. We do need economic cooperation with our neighbors. And we do need to stand firmly for our interests like every self-respecting sovereign nation does instead of bending over... every time Moscow, Washington, Brussels, and even Ankara and Athens ask us to do so...

To sum up - the Sofia Mayor Boyko Borisov did choose really bad words in Chicago, words that didn't make him look too good. But at the same time, among other things, he did send strong messages about actually identifying some of the nation's gravest problems, and the ways to go about solving them.

In these two particular cases - by trying to attract our best and brightest back home, and by pushing firmly for our interests in neighboring Macedonia.

* "To Chicago and Back" is a book by the Bulgarian writer Aleko Konstantinov published in 1894. It is a travel book with powerful social critique describing his journey from Bulgaria to the USA.


(1) GERB - Граждани за европейско развитие на България, Grazhdani za evropeysko razvitie na Balgariya - Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria is a centre right political party, established in 2006

Italian Auschwitz Survivor Warns Against Roma Discrimination

Italian officials agreed to call off fingerprinting the Roma, but would take a census

November 15, 2008
Deutsche Welle

On the 70th anniversary of anti-Jewish decrees in Italy, an Italian Auschwitz survivor has said the Roma population faces discrimination similar to Jews in Nazi Germany.

"History is repeating itself" in Italy, Piero Terracina said Friday, Nov. 14, at a conference marking the 70th anniversary of the notorious racial laws targeting Jews, which were approved by the Italian cabinet on Nov. 15, 1938.

"Everything started with the census of the Jews and the terrible consequences to which this led us," said Terracina, reported AFP news agency.

The 80-year-old Holocaust survivor was freed from the Auschwitz concentration camp in January 1945, shortly before the end of World War II.

The discriminatory decrees introduced in both Nazi Germany and Italy under then leader Benito Mussolini included the prohibition of mixed marriages between Jews and so-called "Aryans" and economic restrictions on Jews, among other measures.

Controversial laws affecting Roma

Roma were also persecuted by the Nazis

In September, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government came under fire from the European Union when it passed a controversial security package that seemed to be aimed against the country's large Roma community.

Significantly, city authorities in Rome have said they would conduct a census of the Roma population, but, under hefty pressure from the EU, agreed to cancel plans for mass fingerprinting.

The new deal also made illegal immigration a criminal offense with a prison sentence and made the use of minors to beg for money a crime punishable with up to three years in jail.

When Interior Minister Roberto Maroni announced the measures earlier this year, he said they were intended to "prevent phenomena such as begging."

Anti-Roma pages removed from Facebook

The social networking portal Facebook said it had removed seven pages from its Web site that had been created by Italian far-right extremists to incite violence against Roma.

The European Parliament had lodged a complaint with the California-based company.

Facebook said it bans hateful material, but Shimon Samuels from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights group, told Reuters news agency that the portal should create technology to filter out "hate speech."

"It's not a new thing -- it's happened before, it's even happened before on Facebook," he said. "We are not surprised this group of really marginal Italian neo-Nazis have taken advantage of it."