Gypsy Shanty Towns Burn in Naples As Italian Police Swoop on Illegal Immigrants
| AR Articles on Europe |
|---|
| Prospects for our Movement (Feb. 27, 2004) |
| Europe on the March (Jun. 2002) |
| Can Europe Learn the Lessons of Yugoslavia? (Sep. 2001) |
| Germany: Islamic Gangrene (Nov. 1999) |
| Race in Scandanavia (Dec. 2003) |
| Search AmRen.com for Europe |
| More news stories on Europe |
Italian police began a nationwide round-up of nearly 400 illegal immigrants from the Balkans and North Africa yesterday in the midst of a series of arson attacks on Roma gypsy camps in the suburbs of Naples.
The first step in a drive on crime promised by the new centre-right government of Silvio Berlusconi targeted temporary encampments on the outskirts of cities from Naples to northern Italy. Some 118 people held in the operation were ordered to be expelled immediately for offences ranging from drug dealing and robbery to prostitution.
But in Naples local people have anticipated the new policy, taking the law into their own hands.
This week’s assaults on Roma shanty towns by scores of youths on scooters and motorbikes wielding iron bars and throwing Molotov cocktails were sparked off by the capture of a 17-year-old Roma girl who last weekend entered a flat in Ponticelli and tried to steal a 6-year-old girl. Chased by the mother and neighbours, she had to be rescued by police from being lynched.
The city erupted in fury, with local women leading the marches on the Roma camps to the chant of “Fuori, fuori [Out, out]”. Night after night young men—allegedly acting on the orders of powerful local clans of the Camorra, the Naples Mafia—have set the sites ablaze, blocking attempts by the fire brigade to put out the fires, with exploding gas canisters completing the destruction. The women jeered at the firemen, shouting, “You put these fires out, we start them again”.
Plumes of smoke were still rising yesterday from the smouldering, blackened ruins of a Roma gypsy camp attacked and burnt to the ground by local vigilantes in Ponticelli, a rundown industrial suburb in the east of Naples in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius.
The charred remains of the makeshift wooden shacks at the site on Via Malibran crunch underfoot. The only sign of life is dogs scavenging through the neighbouring mountain of uncollected, rotting rubbish.
There are similar scenes of devastation at camps nearby, including one in the incongruously named Via Virginia Woolf. At one squalid “nomad camp” beneath a motorway flyover, intact but deserted, a policeman guarding the site said that the inhabitants had fled during the night to avoid being attacked.
The signs of hasty panic were everywhere, with doors to the shacks left open and the ground strewn with clothing, shoes, bicycles, plastic bottles, pots and pans and children’s toys.
Hundreds of Roma families have fled for their lives with their belongings piled on to small pick-up trucks or handcarts. Some have been taken under police protection to a former school used to house illegal immigrants in a northern Naples suburb. Others have found refuge at Roma camps elsewhere in the Campania region, while a few have been taken in by Naples residents shocked at this outbreak of “xenophobia”.
The Naples arson attacks, however, are the result of long-festering anger throughout Italy over rising crime levels and urban degradation, much of it blamed on Roma gypsies and the estimated half a million Romanians who have emigrated to Italy since Romania joined the European Union.
According to the Roma rights group, Opera Nomadi, there are 2,500 Roma in Naples, 1,000 from Romania and 1,500 from the Balkans. A spokesperson for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) drew parallels with Roma people forced to flee from the Balkans, saying: “We never thought we’d see such images in Italy.”
In Rome, where Gianni Alemanno, the new right-wing mayor, has vowed to dismantle “nomad camps” to reduce street crime, police raided a Roma camp, loading the inhabitants on to buses and taking them to detention centres. Mr Alemanno has promised to deport 20,000 illegal immigrants.
Today the Berlusconi Cabinet will approve an emergency “security package” drawn up by Robert Maroni, the new Interior Minister and deputy leader of the anti immigrant Northern League. It includes the dismantling of Roma camps, the appointment of “special commissioners” to deal with “the Roma problem” in Rome and Milan, the tightening of border controls and the speeded-up deportation of immigrants who cannot show they have a job or an “adequate” income. Mr Maroni also wants to make illegal immigration a criminal offence.
Mr Berlusconi vowed during last month’s election campaign to curb illegal immigrants, describing them as an “army of evil”. Mr Berlusconi has also pledged to hold a Cabinet meeting in Naples next Wednesday to resolve the continuing rubbish crisis amid fears of an epidemic as warmer weather arrives.
Yesterday Flora Martinelli, the mother who caught the Roma teenager trying to steal her baby at Ponticelli, said she was “very sorry for what has happened. I didn’t think it would come to this”.
But she said, “We have absolutely had it with the Roma, they have to go.” At one of the few remaining nomad camps, terrified Roma people were reluctant to speak. “We are not all criminals” insisted one thirty-year-old man. But at the market opposite the burnt-out Via Malibran camp, local people were unrepentant. “The gypsies don’t work, they don’t wash, and they steal,” said one youth. “This is our version of ethnic cleansing.”
Cristian David, the Romanian Interior Minister, arrived in Rome yesterday for talks on the crisis. Calin Popeascu Tariceanu, the Romanian Prime Minister, said Italy should have followed the example of France and Germany in refusing to allow nomad encampments to spring up. He said a distinction must be drawn between “honest Romanians” with jobs and criminals who “have tainted the image of all Romanians working abroad”.
Giulio Riccio, head of social policy at the Naples council, condemned the “criminal aggression” at the Roma camps, adding “I am ashamed to be Italian”. Rosa Iervolino Russo, the Mayor of Naples, said she deplored “all violent and racist actions”.
Franco Frattini, the Foreign Minister and former EU Commissioner, denied the new Italian government was “xenophobic” but said the Schengen agreement on free movement across EU frontiers needed to be “updated”. It is estimated that there are at last 700,000 illegal immigrants in Italy.
Pietro Fusella, manager of a hotel in Via Chiaia, in Naples’ historic centre, said both the rubbish cisis and the attacks on Roma camps were unjustly damaging the city’s image. “Both problems are in the suburbs, not the centre” he said. He had put up a webcam on the hotel website to show that the street outside was “clean and safe”.
Last year the centre-left government of Romano Prodi expelled over 200 Romanians with criminal records after a Romanian was accused of murdering an Italian woman at a Rome railway station. However, the centre-right swept to power in elections last month, arguing that much tougher measures were needed.
(Posted on May 19, 2008)
Comments
Just a little correction here.I believe it was a six month old baby the gypsy tried to steal.I think the Gypsies should get updated on current events.If they want to steal babies they should try going to Britain if they knew who was just elected Mayor of Rome.But with the rise of the BNP that night not be a good idea either. Maybe they should just go back to northern Indian where they came from
Posted by Tony Soprano at 6:36 PM on May 19
The notion that stealing someone else’s child would infuriate an entire neighborhood would be completely obvious to any of the rest of us.
This gives me some hope for Europe.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 7:22 PM on May 19
“The city erupted in fury, with local women leading the marches on the Roma camps to the chant of “Fuori, fuori [Out, out]”. Night after night young men—allegedly acting on the orders of powerful local clans of the Camorra, the Naples Mafia—have set the sites ablaze, blocking attempts by the fire brigade to put out the fires, with exploding gas canisters completing the destruction.”
Here’s a community that has a self defense organization that acts in their behalf, when the government not only fails to do so, but is responsible for bringing the crime and violence to their neighborhoods.
In a just world, Nurenburg-type courts would be set up in all Western countries to try the multicult elitists for crimes against their own countrymen and for sedition. They are without doubt a traitorous bunch.
Posted by Ranger at 7:42 PM on May 19
“This week’s assaults on Roma shanty towns by scores of youths on scooters and motorbikes wielding iron bars and throwing Molotov cocktails were sparked off by the capture of a 17-year-old Roma girl who last weekend entered a flat in Ponticelli and tried to steal a 6-year-old girl.”
Yes, the poor, poor, Roma gypsies driven from their shanties and then having the filthy gutters cauterized. So much horror and injustice over the attempted theft of one insignificant 6-year-old Italian girl? What ungrateful and wantonly cruel people these suburban Naples’ troglodytes are, to not be willing to sacrifice the life of one Italian child for the “strengths” of diversity.
I think it says something about just how bad things are in the West, when the Camorra, the Naples Mafia acts more in the interests of the locals, then do the head of social policy on the city council and the mayor do.
As always, God help us all!
*KRONOS*
Posted by John PM at 8:23 PM on May 19
Mr Berlusconi vowed during last month’s election campaign to curb illegal immigrants, describing them as an “army of evil”. Mr Berlusconi has also pledged to hold a Cabinet meeting in Naples next Wednesday to resolve the continuing rubbish crisis amid fears of an epidemic as warmer weather arrives.
Yesterday Flora Martinelli, the mother who caught the Roma teenager trying to steal her baby at Ponticelli, said she was “very sorry for what has happened. I didn’t think it would come to this”.
But she said, “We have absolutely had it with the Roma, they have to go.” At one of the few remaining nomad camps, terrified Roma people were reluctant to speak. “We are not all criminals” insisted one thirty-year-old man. But at the market opposite the burnt-out Via Malibran camp, local people were unrepentant. “The gypsies don’t work, they don’t wash, and they steal,” said one youth. “This is our version of ethnic cleansing.”(FROM ARTICLE ABOVE)
This type of militant Nationalism brings me a feeling of pride. Maybe the bug will cross the Atlantic and infect White Americans?
Posted by at 10:49 PM on May 19
All perfectly good, natural, and legal-in the sense of
natural law. All law codes should be based on natural law, which
is the law of our own nature. And when the goverment is unable or
unwilling to enforce the law, then this duty falls back upon the
people. The Italian Goverment refused to enforce the immigration
laws so it fell to the people to do so. Those who reject this show themselves to be frauds. Does not a democratic goverment
rule with the consent of the people? That’s what the leftists
say they believe. If so, they should have no problem when the
people act directly in the face of intolerable provocation. God
bless the vigilantes, the vigilant ones, the ones who care. Does
America still have enough of these? Or are we too beaten down so
that when the time comes to act, we’ll look for someone else to
step forward. After all, the game is coming on and there’s cold
ones in the fridge.
Posted by Freyr at 11:33 PM on May 19
If the Left or the MSM want to call this racism, they must simultaneously expain what the events in South Africa entail.
In SA it is the blacks doing exactly the same (only more violently) to muslims and fellow blacks.
Posted by Commando at 4:55 AM on May 20
In picking a fight with Neapolitans, the Gipsies have unwittingly stirred up the very worst enemies they possibly could conceive of (with the possible exception of the Irish).
We all know how long souhtern Italian and Sicillian feuds can last for - and the utterly ruthless and shocking way thse feuds are prosecuted, coupled with a strict code of silence and a tradition of ‘looking the other way’.
Of course the Amrican Mafia had its genesis precisely amongst this milieu - and we all know how they instilled terror in those who crossed them.
Posted by Kenelm Digby at 7:02 AM on May 20
“He said a distinction must be drawn between “honest Romanians” with jobs and criminals who “have tainted the image of all Romanians working abroad”.”
The same kind of half-truth statement that is used by supporters of illegal aliens. The “criminal Romanians”, ie the Roma/Gypsies, are a Dravidian people. The ordinary Romanian is a Caucasian.
Posted by ODDL at 8:48 AM on May 20
“A spokesperson for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) drew parallels with Roma people forced to flee from the Balkans, saying: “We never thought we’d see such images in Italy.”
TRANSLATION: “We thought Italians were a bunch of chumps and rubes, an easy mark. We were betting that the people of Italy — like most Western Europeans these days — were so soft and deracinated that they’d just roll over for a bunch of undocumented pick-pockets, card-sharks, and baby-stealers. Guess we’ll have to go abuse the hospitality of the Dutch or the Belgians instead.”
And then there’s this:
“Giulio Riccio, head of social policy at the Naples council, condemned the “criminal aggression” at the Roma camps, adding “I am ashamed to be Italian”.
“Ashamed to be Italian”? Although I have visited Italy, I have no Italian blood. But right now, seeing my white European brothers and sisters over there rise up in this way to defend their homeland and their way of life against invading armies of PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS, I am ashamed NOT to be Italian.
AmRenners planning a summer vacation abroad should definitely consider that wonderful boot-shaped nation on the Mediterranean — in particular, Rome (for their new right-wing Mayor) and Napoli (for their fight against gypsy criminality). Better to give your tourist dollars to our friends and allies, than to the race-traitors and surrender-monkeys of Paris (or Brussels or Amsterdam or Stockholm or…)
And one more thing…
Let us all STOP calling these people “The Roma.” It is a PC weasel-word intended to confer unearned dignity upon a group who are not merely lazy, but are committed to NEVER doing honest work. Calling them “Roma” also makes them sound like they are ethnic Romanians — which they most certainly are NOT. They are NOT from Romania and they are NOT white. They are GYPSIES. They may have traded their horse-drawn caravan for free public housing, and their crystal ball for a satellite dish, but nothing else about them has changed: they are still the same bunch of scam-artists and anti-social nation-wreckers that they’ve always been. Gypsies are to Europe what the worst sort of ghetto blacks are to the US. They are urban blight on legs.
Posted by at 9:50 AM on May 20
No, Mr. Digby; you have forgotten about the Lowland and Highland Scots’ loathing for each other. The two peoples on this planet who still hate each other with the most abandon are the Presbyterian Lowlanders and the Catholic Highlanders. It isn’t Turks and Serbs; it’s us.
I think it is pretty sad, as one of my friends in Edinburgh was a Campbell. One of my other friends was a MacDonald. They fought every day on the playground. They each wanted to know whether I was Catholic or Protestant, and I hadn’t been baptised, so I didn’t ken what that all meant.
We wouldn’t rape the other’s sisters, but we’d each make the others extinct, if those two were honest specimens.
Does anyone ever wonder whether multiculteralism is *designed* to cause civil wars?
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 10:01 AM on May 20
Unfortunately for the illegals Italy is becoming a country where legality will be enforced where necessary, finally, everyone must consider that now making the “error” to transit in the “wrong” road , after 18.00 hrs in most of the cities of this country it’s an health/safety/security risk and not as wrongly mentioned in most of the international news a crack down to the immigrants ( the legal ones, which are welcome are asking to stop the illegalities and crimes).
Posted by cabral at 11:43 AM on May 20
The EU of course, blames it on ‘racist’ Italians….funny how the same stereotypes and the same ‘prejudice’ pop up where ever gypsies appear.
I love to post this question to liberals: when you see a gypsie in Rome or Paris, do you keep a closer eye on your wallet? after some studdering, the usual response is “well I am careful whenever i travel” or some other avoidance of reality.
oh and the woman who tried to steal the baby? I bet the gypsies gave her a good beating -not for stealing but for being bad at it.
Posted by at 1:15 PM on May 20
“I think it says something about just how bad things are in the West, when the Camorra, the Naples Mafia acts more in the interests of the locals, than do the head of social policy on the city council and the mayor do. “
Posted by John PM
—————
No surprise, though. It’s the same thing here. That’s why Little Italy is the safest place to be in New York City. (Even the police have told me that.) The “locals” handle what the elected officials won’t or can’t.
As Freyr says: “When the goverment is unable or unwilling to enforce the law, then this duty falls back upon the people. “
And I say: Amen to that.
Posted by voter at 1:21 PM on May 20
“Just a little correction here. I believe it was a six month old baby the gypsy tried to steal.”
Tony Soprano
—————
Thanks Now that suddenly makes more sense. I was baffled at the statement that she had tried to steal a six-year-old “baby” from an automobile.
PS: I LOVED this story!
Posted by voter at 1:23 PM on May 20
“Does anyone ever wonder whether multiculteralism is designed to cause civil wars?”
I didn’t used to think so but now I’m beginning to wonder what it’s all about. I used to think that it was just about lowering wages and the bean-counting mentality of our business class wed to the psychosis of marxist misfits but now I’m really beginning to entertain notions I would have laughed at 15 years ago. Maybe that british guy who believes in shape-shifting 12 ft. lizards is right after all.
Posted by at 2:28 PM on May 20
That Italian man who said he was shamed to be Italian should be shipped off to some 3rd world country. Apparently he thinks that a Gipsy kidnapping an Italian baby is a good thing, after all it’s just the way Gipsy’s express their super precious culture.
I’m proud the Italians took action. I wish we could see this throughout the west. And someone above in a post got it right. They (multi-culturalists) were hoping to play the Italians for chumps.
Posted by RealityCheck at 2:36 PM on May 20
He said a distinction must be drawn between “honest Romanians” with jobs and criminals who “have tainted the image of all Romanians working abroad”.
STOP calling Gypsies “Romanians”!! I known two real Romanians - one is blond, blue-eyed man a Ph.D. in Economics from a world class university, and the other is a beautiful white brunette who is finishing her Masters thesis in Biotechnology at Georgetown. It is insulting to equate those two brilliant white people with wandering encampments full of dusky, scamming, thieving gypsies.
Posted by Jill at 3:18 PM on May 20
“army of evil”.
If only these wors could come out of the mouths of American pols when describing the Mexican invasion force.
Posted by at 3:34 PM on May 20
Does anyone ever wonder whether multiculteralism is designed to cause civil wars?
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 10:01 AM on May 20
> You always write very interesting posts and I always look for you in the blog. Here I think you are not correct to imply that there is a conspiracy to cause civil wars. I think that it is all about money and the power that owns it. There are competing/cooperating spheres of money and power acting in the world right now. One is the European Union, another is China, another India and we have the lesser players with North America, chiefly the U.S. playing an ever more tenous role. The mostly Islamic oil states are just sitting back and luxurating as long as their wells hold out. Russia is a wild card. I think that money and power is what is in favor of multiculturalism. With a sea of plebes who have no idea of any heritage or culture founded on traditions by way of a more and more useless education, they have both the work force and the consumers in their hand. There is no secret kabal of Jews or shadowy Bilderberger - Trilateral rulers (who have nearly all aged so much that they are non-players or dead). All of that is conspiracy theory hokum that feeds on the brains of the highly motivated but uneducated armchair political theorists who actually thing publications like Spotlight have any credibility.
No, the answer is as plain as the nose on our collective faces. Money is made when the most stability exists. A civil war is bad for business and investments as is any war, except for the mercenaries, and weapon makers. They want us dumb and without any palpable heritage. They want us to buy and they sell whatever can be sold. It is an never-ending looping circle that feeds on lives and sometimes itself. It has grown and grown until now, we are seeing the outer limits being approached. I know this is vague, but I hope it is metaphorically useful enough to make the point. You Michael, I think - are intelligent enough grasp the vision of the multi-headed hydra that is this life sucking beast.
Posted by Whiteplight at 5:01 PM on May 20
“Let us all STOP calling these people “The Roma.” It is a PC weasel-word intended to confer unearned dignity upon a group who are not merely lazy, but are committed to NEVER doing any honest work. Calling them “Roma” also makes them sound like they are ethnic Romanians — which they most certainly are NOT. They are NOT from Romania and they are NOT white. They are GYPSIES.”
— — — — — — —
Exactly! I have been thinking the same, well before this article came along. It seems that this new term is part of the re-making of our entire language. New words to replace old words with bad connotations.
These people are and have been known for centuries as Gypsies. Roma makes it too easy to confuse them with Romanians, as most uninformed people will do. That seems to be the whole idea behind it, doesn’t it? And in a few years, when they wear out that term, will they change it again to another? Probably. Just as blacks in this country are given to doing periodically.
Posted by browser at 5:58 PM on May 20
Any particular reason she was trying to steal a baby? The Gypsies are in despirate need of a cultural adjustment like the Shanty Irish went through after they came the the US in the 1800’s. Sad to say, the Gypsies do not have a unifying force like the Catholic church to set them on the right. All they seem to know is poverty, crime and bilking non-Gypsies out of their money.
Posted by Spartan24 at 6:12 PM on May 20
I never had the urge to kick a child until I encountered gypsy children in eastern Germany and later in Italy. They’ll come up to you, take your hand in theirs, brush up against your leg like a cat, hang on to you, look up and ask for money. Usually, they had cold sores around their mouths, deliberately caused, I suspect. They wouldn’t let go, looking at their mothers or whatever a short distance away. They had to be pushed off.
In Italy, there was a big difference between, say, Milan, Turin, and Venice,
where I encountered no gypsies, and Florence, where the leftist government of Tuscany welcomes them. There were gypsy beggars at the entrances of famous churches, gypsies exposing their damaged legs on the street, gypsy women keening on corners and approaching people (e. g., me and my friend) at dinner in an outdoor cafe. I was told by a cab driver in Cologne that there were gypsy families there for a few generations, in business, honest German-speakers. Fine, but the beggar gypsies on the streets of European cities are the most revolting class of people I have ever met.
Eugen
Posted by at 8:33 PM on May 20
Now so long ago, the Italians were complaining about the crime wave of Albanians. Now, since this plague of Gypsies has hit, it seems the Albanians have been put in the shade and forgotten.
Posted by at 9:33 PM on May 20
The Roma is living proof that an entire people can give itself over to evil.
Posted by ricpic at 9:38 PM on May 20
Thank you for your kind words, fellow AmRenners, but if I wanted to start a civil war across the entire developed West, I would use multiculturalism as my tool. I can not imagine a better one.
I also can not understand why this 17 year-old gal tried to steal a baby. She probably had two of her own already.
My wife is old-school Japanese, and a fluent German-speaker. She calls the Gypsies “Zigeuner.”
Our neighborhood has a bimodal age division. Most are retired military folks, and some are young families. Anyone who tried to steal a baby here would discover that the police take a long time to arrive.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 9:41 PM on May 20
Here’s the horrible, horrible question nagging my brain.
Is this child stealing charge just a pre-text for an attack? Is it true? Child-stealing is an old charge made against the gypsies. Is there anything to it, though?
My PC trained brain thinks probably not. It’s just too outrageous for anyone to try to pull off.
Then again, I’ve seen articles saying time and again that it’s wrong, and stereotypical, to accuse gypsies of being thieves. But they are thieves, and beggars, besides.
So if we’re told we can’t acknowledge that basic truth, then I wonder… is there something to this crazy child-stealing charge?
I don’t know, and it bugs me. If the charge is untrue — and merely made to create an outrageous pretext for attack — then the poor gypsy deserves an apology (yes, even if she does deserve tob be hassled for petty theft, loitering, and other crimes).
If it is, though, then that raises some horrible thoughts. Such as: how do you respond when people threaten your children?
Anyhow, I’m bent in a mental knot over this one.
Posted by at 3:01 AM on May 21
“I also can not understand why this 17 year-old gal tried to steal a baby. She probably had two of her own already.”
I suppose she could try to sell it. A white baby could fetch quite a good price, no doubt.
Posted by at 9:00 AM on May 21
“The Naples arson attacks, however, are the result of long-festering anger throughout Italy over rising crime levels and urban degradation, much of it blamed on Roma gypsies and the estimated half a million Romanians who have emigrated to Italy since Romania joined the European Union.”
Maybe it’s blamed on them because it’s their fault?
Posted by at 5:04 PM on May 21
I salute the Italian people for trying to take back their own country. The Gypsies are a plague and a curse upon any community they descend upon. They can cry me a river.
Posted by at 8:46 PM on May 21
How long will it be before some unelected imbecile EU bureacrat issues an edict commanding the Italians to be more sensitive of “cultural differences?” After all, who are the heirs of Virgil, Dante and da Vinci to say that stealing infants is always and universally wrong?
Posted by Cassiodorus at 9:33 PM on May 21
I am glad the Italians have stood up to the invasion of their country This has to happen in Briton and the USA before the corrupt and venomous politicians will get the message. Having had bad encounters with gypsies I understand the rage and frustration of Italians. VIVA ITALY! Long live the WEST!
Posted by Burr Hamilton at 11:58 PM on May 21
How long will it be before some unelected imbecile EU bureacrat issues an edict commanding the Italians to be more sensitive of “cultural differences?” —- Posted by Cassiodorus
————
That may not be long in coming. I wouldn’t be surprised.
They may be working on it right now.
Posted by voter at 11:31 AM on May 22
When governments fail to act in it’s citizen’s best interests, the people will eventually rise-up and correct the problems themselves.
Posted by Joe at 12:26 PM on May 27