Italië legt omstreden veiligheidsmaatregelen tegen minderheden voor aan Europese Commissie (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - As the Italian capital moves to destroy Roma homes and its government authorises the creation of vigilante gangs to 'keep an eye' on minorities, EU silence is attracting criticism from human rights advocates.
The mayor of Rome on Monday (16 February) ordered the demolition of dozens of encampments that are largely home to gypsies. The hard-right interior minister, Roberto Maroni of the xenophobic Northern League, said he intends this week to force through an emergency decree creating vigilante "patrols" to protect citizens, after a spate of rapes in Italian cities that have been blamed on immigrants.
Mayor Gianni Alemanno, a former neo-fascist, is currently overseeing the demolition of some 30 camps in reaction to anger over a trio of rapes of young women in different cities.
On Saturday (14 February), a 14-year old girl in the Caffarella Park in the capital was attacked and her boyfriend beaten up, allegedly by two men from eastern Europe. A 21-year-old Bolivian woman in Milan was similarly assaulted by someone described as north African.
Also on the weekend, A Tunisian man, recently released from prison, was arrested after the rape of a 15-year old girl in Bologna.
No link has been established between the camps and the rapes.
Following the attacks, interior minister Maroni, of the Allianza Nazionale, announced he would press for an emergency decree accelerating the authorisation of local "patrols" to assist police by hunting out and reporting on any "illegal activities" perpetrated by immigrants.
First founded in 1990, such "Padane" patrols already exist in a number of villages. In October, the Northern League announced that it would organise patrols in immigrant and Roma areas of Turin and Piacenza. In July 2007, criminal proceedings were launched against the leader of the Northern League faction on the Opera town council for inciting violence against Roma ahead of an arson attack on a gypsy encampment.
Under the draft new law, local councils would be able to create and co-ordinate these patrols.
Security package
On 6 February, the Senate approved the measures as part of a "security package" of laws, but the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, has yet to do so.
The legislative package would also establish a census of homeless people, with their ethnicity recorded in a database held by the Interior Ministry, and would require that doctors report irregular immigrants to the police.
The centre-left opposition Democrats managed to amend the bill to prevent the patrols from being armed and to limit their activities to the reporting of suspicious activity.
The patrols are also not to engage in "territorial defence activities" as originally envisaged in the legislation.
In an unusual move, the Italian government submitted the security package to the European Commission for an assessment last July. Normally, they submit laws for assessments after they have passed. At the time, the commission's main concern was the presence of language permitting the expulsion of EU citizens from Italy, which should otherwise happen in only the most exceptional of circumstances.
Regarding the security package and the authorisation of vigilante patrols, commission spokesman Michele Cercone said that as the bill was still before parliament, the commission would not comment until its passage.
One senior EU official however felt the Italian government was the subject of ignorance on the part of critics.
"All this is just prejudice against Italy. People here [in Brussels] don't know what's going on there. They should have a look at the facts before they judge. No individual groups are being targeted."
Serious and persistent breach
The EU's Amsterdam Treaty of 1997 gave the bloc a procedure by which the member states can impose sanctions against one of their number, including revoking its voting rights, in the event of a "serious and persistent" breach of human rights.
What defines one is left unarticulated, but Amnesty International believes that the sequence of Italian government actions in relation to immigrants and the Roma amount to such a breach.
"Technically, no individual groups have been named in the legislation," the group's EU office deputy director, Natalia Alonso, told EUobserver. "But in reality, in the context of what is going on - arson attacks on camps by these non-state actors, the census' ethnic profiling, anti-Roma speech by politicians - we know exactly who the legislation is targeting."
"Europe needs to hold the Italian government to account. This is a serious and persistent breach of human rights as described in the treaty."
UK Liberal Democrat MEP Sarah Ludford, deputy chairwoman of the European Parliament's sub-committee on human rights, told this website: "Dealing with integration, these informal settlements can be a real headache, sure."
"But this is dealt with by proper public policy - processing, reversing cutbacks to police services, improvements in border control, training of immigration officers - all the standard sorts of administrative work of a proper, developed EU country."
"If migrants are afraid of going to the doctor lest they be deported, then they won't go, no matter what infection they have. What about cholera or TB? This is atrocious public health policy, let alone the racism of it."
"And you hardly need an emergency decree to create a neighbourhood watch. These are de facto vigilante patrols, quasi-fascist. There are echoes of the 1930s."
She was frustrated that the EU would not move to sanction Rome for its actions.
"We are rightfully taking great interest in each other's banking regulations and car sector subsidies, but we look away when it comes to each other's human rights violations," she said.
"Merkel, Brown, Sarkozy - they need tell Berlusconi publicly: 'We're ashamed of you'."