Sarkozy accused of racism as he targets Gypsies

Roma camps across France are being targeted. Photo / AP

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has ordered authorities to expel Gypsy illegal immigrants and dismantle their camps, amid accusations that his Government is being racist in its treatment of the group known as Roma.

Sarkozy called a Government meeting yesterday after Gypsies clashed with police this month following the shooting death of a youth fleeing officers in the Loire Valley.

Sarkozy said those responsible for the clashes would be "severely punished" and ordered the Government to expel all illegal Roma immigrants, almost all of whom have come from eastern Europe.

He pushed for a change in French immigration law to make such expulsion easier "for reasons of public order". He said illegal Gypsy camps "will be systematically evacuated", calling them sources of trafficking, exploitation of children and prostitution.

The language has chilling undertones in a country where authorities rounded up Gypsies and sent them to concentration camps during the Nazi occupation in World War II. Former President Jacques Chirac, the first French leader to acknowledge the state's role in the Holocaust, condemned "the Nazi madness that wanted to eliminate the Gypsies".

Around Europe 250,000 to 1.5 million Roma were killed during the war. Accurate figures are difficult to find, because so many were rounded up away from public view, executed and dumped into mass graves.

French Roma representatives were not invited to the presidential meeting, and said they are the only ethnic group French authorities can openly target.

Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux insisted the measures "are not meant to stigmatise any community, regardless of who they are, but to punish illegal behaviour".

Romania and Bulgaria are members of the European Union and their citizens can enter France without a visa but they must get work permits to work or residency permits to settle long term.

Community leaders contend the very principle of the meeting - which singled out an ethnic group in a country that is officially blind to ethnic origins - is racist and warn of grave consequences if their side is not heard. France's Government does not count how many of its citizens are of a certain ethnicity; everyone is simply considered French.

"Today ... I am afraid we're preparing to open a blighted page in the history of France, which could sadly lead to acts of reprisal in the days ahead," said lawyer Henri Braun. "There is a huge problem of racism in France towards this population, there is enormous discrimination."

France's relationship with what it calls Gypsies is complex and complicated by divisions among the disparate populations.

One, formally given the administrative label of "travelling folk", includes several hundred thousand French citizens who have lived in France for centuries, and were traditionally nomadic but have become increasingly sedentary in recent years.

The other main Gypsy population is made up of recent immigrants who come mostly from eastern European countries like Romania and Bulgaria, usually illegally, and are often seen begging on the streets of French cities.

Those in the more established communities say they are being unfairly lumped together with illegal new immigrants. Sarkozy's orders targeted Roma, though the violence in Saint-Aignan this month was in a community of travelling folk established in the region for years.

Alice Januel, whose organisation represents Catholics among French Gypsies, warned that "if Mr Sarkozy thinks that by clamping down he is going to calm the youth, I don't think that he will succeed. We have a youth that is rebellious."

Sarkozy also proposed that France bring in about 20 Romanian and Bulgarian police to work in the Paris region and send French police to Romania and Bulgaria to help fight crime by Roma.

KEEPING TABS ON THE ROMA

* Many Roma do not show up in censuses as they try to hide their ethnicity, and in some countries it is illegal to identify the Roma in legal documents.

* Official estimates put the number of Roma people living in France at about 500,000 but unofficial estimates put it as high as 1.3 million.

* About 10,000 Roma were expelled from France last year.

* In Romania, the Roma population is 535,000 according to official Government estimates, but rights groups put it as high as 2.5 million, making it the largest Roma community in Europe.

* In Bulgaria, Roma form 4.7 per cent of the population, or about 370,000 people, according to the 2001 census.

* Hungary's Roma population is around 660,000, or 6.6 per cent of society, research studies show. Official census figures are not available, and many Roma hide their identity.

- AP