Gypsy wanderers
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Roma children peer out from a caravan at Fleury Merogis camp, south of Paris. They are used to an itinerant life. Photography by Associated Press and China Foto Press |
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A gypsy family in Fleury Merogis camp faces a bleak future with no home to call their own. |
France recently expelled about 1,000 Roma because President Sarkozy says the camps they live in are dens of iniquity. But the Roma say they are paying for the sins of a few.
The wandering tribes of gypsies throughout Europe have encountered suspicion and prejudice for as long as memory serves. Marshal Ion Antonescu, the pro-Nazi wartime leader of Romania, deported 25,000 gypsies from Romania to the Soviet region of Trans-Dniester in 1942 where some 11,000 died from exposure, typhus, starvation and thirst.
In recent weeks, France sent about 1,000 gypsies back to Romania and Bulgaria because President Nicolas Sarkozy has described the camps where some of them live in as sources of trafficking, exploitation of children and prostitution.
There are between 10 to 12 million gypsies in the EU, most living in dire circumstances, victims of poverty, discrimination, violence, unemployment and bad housing.
An estimated 1.5 million live in Romania, a country of 22 million with the largest population of gypsies in Europe.
Tens of thousands have protested in cities across France against the government law-and-order crackdown that has targeted the Roma, as smaller demonstrations took place in European capitals.
Speaking during an annual feast held at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, community leader Iulian Radulescu said gypsies - also known as Roma - are being unfairly expelled from France, and that they are being punished for the sins of a few black sheep.
There are an estimated 15,000 Roma living in France. Under European Union freedom of movement laws, they are entitled to stay for three months without a permanent residence or job before facing expulsion.
Associated Press - Agence France-Presse
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A Roma pilgrim at the shrine at Lourdes. This year marks the 54th annual pilgrimage of gypsies and itinerant people to the French Marian shrine. |
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Her possessions in one hand and her child in another, a gypsy mother has little security to fall back on. |
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A Roma woman makes do with what washing she can manage at the Fleury Merogis camp. |
(China Daily 09/12/2010 page6)
