Hello, Mr. Romanian Foreign Minister, Wake Up To Defend Your sGypsyţ Citizens

Romanian MEP Renate Weber was cursed to share membership at home, in the National Liberal Party, or PNL, with less potent politicians.

While Weber took a clear stance against the recently adopted policy in Rome, Italy, which calls for all Gypsies, including children, to have their fingerprints recorded, the PNL led government in Bucharest was complacent at best, and failed to defend the interests of Romanian citizens abroad, many of whom were of Gypsy origin and targeted by the Italian government policy.

Weber stated that Italy's recording of Gypsies' fingerprints is in violation of the human rights and a policy inspired by the Nazis, according to ANSA, of July 1, 2008, at 4:46 pm CET.

Italy's minister of interior, Roberto Maroni, a member of the anti-immigration Northern League, defended his policy stating that “We have to know who lives in Italy, their whereabouts, their occupation and their plans for the following months. s...ţ It is no secret to no one that children are exploited into committing crimes and moved from one city to another to avoid apprehension,” according to The Time & Transcript, New Brunswick, of June 30, 2008.

This time, the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs gave a lame excuse for its lack of action against this move, which targets many Romanian citizens of Gypsy origin, as deputy minister of foreign affairs Raduta Dana Matache said in an ANSA interview that the Government in Bucharest was aware of “a larger number of Gypsies leaving Italy, but relayed on Gypsy organizations for the information, as the Romanian state had no statistics available.”

So, between Romania's lack of statistics and Italy's fingerprinting of an entire community we are reminded of the WWII research on the Gypsy population conducted by Dr. Robert Ritter, with the Office for Com batting the Gypsy Nuisance. Most of this office's work meant locating and classifying on racial grounds the Gypsies living in Germany and Austria. The Third Reich had a 1933 law “against the usual offenders” which basically referred to Gypsies, who were herded in camps and marked with the black triangle of the “anti-social types.”

And on 8 December 1938 the SS head Heinrich Himmler issued an order to “fight against the Gypsy nuisance”, based on Ritter's work which basically came down to recording “every Gypsy in the Reich.”