A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the new Italian fascistic government's plan to fingerprint all gypsies. In the last week or so, the EU parliament finally passed a motion condemning the plan.
By an overwhelming ... 336 to 200. I recall reading somewhere that there were 70-something abstentions. But of those who voted, 37%, or well over a third, supported Italy's 21st century fascist resurgence. That's more than a little scary.
Now Italy plans to extend the proposal to everyone, and just allow the police to continue to conduct racial profiling of gypsies.
3 comments:
(1) Dang! The BBC report didn't give a country-by-country breakdown of the 200 (esp as a proportion of MEPs from that country). Now /that/ would be interesting, especially if overlaid with a map of the distribution of Roma.
(2) Bottom of the Heap (2008-06-19) in The Economist is a darn good read, especially about the shocking way Roma are treated, (not) educated, ....
(3) The Economist, (Rome v Roma) also talks of giving MAYORS the power to refuse residency to EU citizens if they are poor or ill-housed, "Both measures are clearly aimed at Italy's 50,000 Romanian gypsies who are particularly blamed for rising crime." At least we left such disgusting arbitrary decisions to nasty immigration ministers...
(4) Would there be a backlash in Oz if similar things were tried here? Probably not.
Yeah I was wondering about which MEPs voted which way as well... thanks for the links btw :)
As a point of interest, whilst they don't provide break downs of all MEPs, motion reports on the European Parliamentary web page provide a place for MEPs to comment on their votes. Of the ones (or bits of ones) in languages I can make sense of, it seems the primary reason for votes against was a general conservative 'anti-intervention into a private state's matters' sort of approach. I think that this is a completely valid argument for MEPs voting against the motion; after all, large parts of the European people don't like the idea of the EP intervening into individual state's laws and vote for MEPs accordingly. Such MEPs who be betraying their voters to vote for this sort of motion no matter what they might think about the law personally. As they say, representative democracy lets you get the sort of leaders you deserve, or as Plato might put it, the only way to avoid a tyrant taking over is to appoint a dictator.
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