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Utopia Talk / Politics / Should Roma people be registered?
Paramount
Member
Tue Jul 10 14:32:06
Far-right calls to register Roma 'echoes' Europe's dark history

During the Holocaust, Roma were counted and killed. Recent calls for a census stoke fears of a return to violent racism.


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FAST FACTS

There are between 120,000 and 160,000 Roma people living in Italy

In June, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini called for a census and threatened to expel those without citizenship

Reports said a similar demand was made in Germany

Historians and rights groups say census calls evoke memories of Holocaust, in which Roma were persecuted

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On May 16, 1944, Nazi gunmen encircled a section of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland where some 6,000 Roma prisoners were held. They were preparing to send the inmates to the gas chambers.

But the prisoners had caught wind of their plans and armed themselves with pipes, sticks, stones and makeshift weapons cobbled together from scrap wood and sheet metal.

While many Roma were murdered that night, their resistance led to Nazi Germany delaying their executions for several months, according to survivors.

During the Holocaust, censuses were used to identify minority groups to send to camps where Jews, Roma and others were slaughtered.

Each year, the Romani Day of Resistance is marked in Europe on May 16 to commemorate the uprising in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Just over a month after this year's remembrance, Italy's far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, dredged up dark memories when he proposed to register Romani communities in a census and deport those without Italian citizenship.

"Unfortunately we have to keep Italian Roma people in Italy because you can't expel them," said Salvini, who is a member of the far-right League (formerly the Northern League) and co-deputy prime minister.

"For Roma in Italy, this is nothing new," Ian Hancock, a Romani scholar at the University of Texas, told Al Jazeera.

During the Holocaust, Romani people were among the groups targeted by German Nazi authorities and their allies for deportation, internment, forced labour and genocide.

Read all about it here: http://www...k-history-180705171831676.html


We should at the least take the debate and talk to them about it. Because there are many people who voted for the far-right League and we can not ignore them because it is against democracy!
Pillz
Member
Tue Jul 10 14:57:39
Do it. Italy and the EU (while it lasts) have pretty solid rule of law, and laws against things like ethnic discrimination by the state.

This is only a contentious issue in the italian right because it would mean that they actually count and recognize a minority.... They haven't done that because it'd eventually lead to rights and stuff for native ethnic minorities of Greek and Albanian descent, like access to funding for education in native languages and stuff.

Both sides dislike the idea, since Italy has been pretty successful at stomping out linguistic and cultural identity so far as a result. But i wager its much bigger issue for the right
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