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Homeowners could be forced to sell part of their land so travellers and gypsies can have permanent sites Homeowners are facing the prospect of being forced to sell their own land to make space for gypsy campsites under orders from the government. ... the Government is launching what has been described as a 'land grab', which could see fields and even private gardens converted into pitches for mobile homes. One local authority is now warning its residents that their land could be brought under compulsory purchase if they refuse to sell up to make way for hundred of travellers setting...

Jail sentences were handed down today to an Irish family, who had netted tens of millions of pounds worth of goods in a series of burglaries dating back 20 years.Yesterday, after a crime spree that spanned 20 years and targeted the homes of the rich and famous, five members of a notorious Irish gypsy gang were finally locked away. The Johnsons, famed for stealing antiques worth tens of millions of pounds from stately homes, were known to reside on caravan sites across the south-west of England. It was from these poor man's homes that they meticulously researched and planned their...

"(CNN) -- Italian newspapers, an archbishop and civil liberties campaigners expressed shock and revulsion on Monday after photographs were published of sunbathers apparently enjoying a day at the beach just meters from where the bodies of two drowned Romany gypsy girls were laid out on the sand." "Two of them were pulled to safety but rescuers failed to reach the other two in time to save them. The Web site of the Archbishop of Naples said the girls were cousins named Violetta and Cristina, aged 12 and 13. Their bodies were eventually laid out on the sand under beach towels...

Italy to fingerprint all Roma gipsy children By Malcolm Moore in Rome Last Updated: 9:20PM BST 26/06/2008 Around 80,000 gipsy children are to be fingerprinted by the Italian authorities under a new scheme that has drawn comparisons to the policies of Benito Mussolini. Unicef said it was 'shocked and deeply worried' by Italy's plans to fingerprint all Roma children The Italian government has blamed immigrants, and particularly Roma gipsies, for the country's crime problems. Since Silvio Berlusconi became prime minister in April, gypsy camps in the south and north of the country have been burned by vigilante mobs. The home...

The gipsy mother who forced her daughter of 13 to marry a 14-year-old boy yesterday dismissed British values as irrelevant to her. Renata Gural said she was unconcerned by the outrage over the teenagers' Romany wedding ceremony at a pub in East London. Mrs Gural, 31, who is pregnant with her sixth child, said: "I'm not bothered what anyone thinks. "I'll be the one who decides if my daughter is old enough to marry. I got married when I was 14 in such a ceremony and it hasn't done me any harm. "Just because I live in Britain doesn't mean...

Paul Polansky, Head of Mission, Kosovo Roma Refugee Fund (KRRF) and Society For Threatened Peoples (GFBV), is one of the most important contemporary writers on the suppressed history and reality of Eastern European Gypsies. A native of Mason City, Iowa, USA, Mr Polansky has spent the last 15 years living with various Gypsy communities of Eastern Europe. Mr Polansky spoke to SHIV KARAN SINGH: How did you first get involved with the Gypsies of Kosovo? Because of my research in the 1990’s, documenting the stories of Gypsy survivors of World War II death camps in Czechoslovakia, which resulted in one...

Italy starts rounding up Romanian immigrants By Malcolm Moore in Rome and Bruno Waterfield in Brussels  Last Updated: 3:07am GMT 03/11/2007     Italy has begun rounding up thousands of Romanian immigrants for deportation after passing a new "public order and security" law. Death of Italian woman brings tensions to crescendoMasgras Neculai, 30, a petty thief, was named as the first Romanian who would be expelled under the new law, which allows anyone who is considered "dangerous" to society to be sent home.   Police in Rome have begun rounding up Romanians   The law was rushed through the Italian...

   Protest ... Tina Borer   Britain's No1 gipsy site KO'd By JOHN TROUPFebruary 24, 2007       RESIDENTS of a tiny village swamped by more than 1,000 travellers have won their battle to have the intruders thrown out. Locals were celebrating last night after a planning inquiry ruled those on the illegal site, the biggest in Europe, must go.Families in Crays Hill, Essex, claim the travellers made their life hell after swarming into the village about six years ago.They say some residents received personal threats, that travellers’ children disrupted the local school, and property prices dived dramatically.Council chiefs...

A HUMAN rights group campaigning for gypsies has filed a complaint against British comic Sacha Baron Cohen over his film featuring a spoof Kazakh journalist who calls himself a former "gypsy catcher", German prosecutors said today. The state prosecutor's office in the northern city of Hamburg said the European Centre for Antiziganism Research had brought the complaint accusing Cohen of slander, inciting violence against the Sinti and Roma gypsy groups and violating Germany's anti-discrimination law. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan premiered last week in London and is due to hit German cinemas tomorrow....

Romanticized and persecuted, celebrated and shunned, Gypsies have become a growing presence in the world music circuit since the fall of Communism -- yet the everyday prejudice they face across Europe has persisted, and sometimes worsened. Even the word "Gypsy" is a misunderstanding, based on the notion that they are descended from Egyptians, though their ancestors actually migrated in the 11th century from Rajasthan in northwestern India. In recent years, the name they call themselves in the Romani language, Roma, has been increasingly embraced. By the 15th century, there were Roma communities in Eastern Europe, as well as the Iberian...

White House gates shut to 'Kazakh reporter' comic Fri Sep 29, 2006 8:46am ET Borat goes to Washington:PLAY VIDEOBy Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Borat, the fictional TV reporter from Kazakhstan, may have gotten under the skin of Kazakh officials but on Thursday he couldn't get past the gates of the White House. Secret Service agents turned away British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, in character as the boorish, anti-Semitic journalist, when he tried to invite "Premier George Walter Bush" to a screening of his upcoming movie, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." Also invited...

Part one shown on Australian TV this evening.Don't miss it, my Freeper friends. It's no wonder the Clintonistas have thrown everything at ABC/Disney, in a desperate effort to have the miniseries cancelled. Documents exactly what we've been following over the years on FR. Brave agents on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Dedicated people at Langley and the J. Edgar Hoover building, working around the clock to capture or kill Bin Laden, Ramzi Yusef et al. And all their efforts derailed by Clinton appointees like Berger and Allbright- selfishly putting their own careers (and covering their asses) before protecting the...

A store surveillance video captured footage of two small children sneaking behind display cases to steal thousands of dollars in jewellery, apparently on instructions from their mother and grandmother. Bedford police made the video public this week and said Wednesday that they believe they are close to making arrests. They started getting tips minutes after the video first aired on local television. "We're fairly certain . . . they are a family working together," Det. Matt Fleming said. "Can you believe a grandmother, mother and children?" The video, taken Aug. 2 at a store called the Consignment Gallery, shows one...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Jerry Biggs tracks gangs of professional shoplifters who can steal $20,000 worth of goods in a single day, but one of his biggest breaks came from the theft of a single tube of toothpaste. Biggs, who fights organized crime for drugstore chain Walgreen Co. (WAG.N: Quote, Profile, Research), said a trio of thieves had stolen at least $68,000 worth of goods from Walgreen stores around the country in 2005. The break came when an assistant store manager spotted a man stealing toothpaste and reported it to police, who stopped the man's car and found $10,000 worth of...

Reuters - Sun May 28, 3:47 PM ET Survivors of Auschwitz watch as Pope Benedict XVI pays respect by the death wall as he visits the former Auschwitz death camp May 28, 2006. Calling himself 'a son of Germany,' Pope Benedict prayed at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz on Sunday and asked why God was silent when 1.5 million victims, mostly Jews, died in this 'valley of darkness.' REUTERS/Peter Andrews German-born Pope Benedict XVI walked alone under the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" gate at the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau as he began a poignant visit...

In today’s edition, the Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad writes that it has learned from its sources that the 16-year old boy who was arrested earlier this week for the murder of 17-year old Joe Van Holsbeeck, is called Marius. He belongs to a family of Polish gypsies who have been living in Belgium illegally since 2000. Marius was studying garage mechanics at a school in Anderlecht, a Brussels suburb, where he was arrested on Monday evening at 4:30 pm. His teachers had recognized him on the footage of security cameras in Brussels Central Station. Marius had already been involved in...

Uncovering the Past by Maria Husova 30 January 2006 World War II ended more than 60 years ago, but the Roma Holocaust in Slovakia is only now being recognized. Tens of thousands of Roma in Europe were among the victims of the Holocaust, but many Slovaks still don’t know that people other than Jews were victims of persecution during World War II. Only recently, moving stories of Roma survivors have begun to emerge. Those survivors are finally seeing their pain acknowledged in memorials, and some have even received compensation. The Roma Holocaust is called Baro Porrajmos in the Roma language,...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Broke and without enough money in the bank to pay its bills after the end of the month, the Florida Democratic Party has now been slapped with a lien by the Internal Revenue Service for failing to pay payroll and Social Security taxes in 2003. The state party's budget and finance committee voted Tuesday to ask for a new audit to account for more than $900,000 it believes somehow disappeared from the books during the 2003-2004 calendar years when the party was led by Scott Maddox, who is now seeking its nomination for governor. Maddox and successor...

The chili finger saga got even spicier this week: Anna Ayala's husband was arrested at the house the two shared in Las Vegas. San Jose police said the arrest Wednesday of James Plascencia on a $450,000 warrant was unrelated to the charges against his wife, which stem from the now-notorious fingertip she said she found in a bowl of Wendy's chili. Plascencia, 43, was taken into custody on four felony counts of failure to pay child support and child abandonment, one count of identity theft and one count of fraudulent use of official documents in San Jose. "He was using...

Serbs, Jews Gypsies mark 60th anniversary of dismantling of Croatia's "Auschwitz" www.chinaview.cn 2005-04-18 12:02:16 BELGRADE, April 17 (Xinhuanet) -- Bosnian Serb President Dragan Cavic and about 3,000 people, mostly Serbs, gathered in Bosnia's northern village of Donja Gradina on Sunday to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the dismantlement of the Jasenovac camp, Croatia's most notorious death camp in World War II. The Jasenovac camp, known as Croatia's Auschwitz and located about 100 km southeast of Croatia's capital Zagreb, was set up in 1941 by Croatia's pro-Nazi Ustasha regime. Donja Gradina used to be part of the Jasenovac camp complex. "In...

The first pictures have been released of the 105-year-old woman who died after being targeted repeatedly by burglars. Amelia Whale, shown here celebrating her 100th birthday, refused to move from the home she shared with her younger brother Leonard in Islington, despite four break-ins in 18 months. Police installed security bars and CCTV last year after the third burglary. But that did not stop Bernard Gallagher, 23, and Mark O'Brien 26, raiding her home last September and stealing £2,000. The men were captured on CCTV. The pair, both travellers, were caught on camera and traced to a campsite. They now...

Washington Times - Letter to the Editor 6/7/95 - Arlington Thomas Colton Ruthford During the past several months in the American press, the Democrats have frequently denounced the Republicans as Nazis due to their attempts to control runaway federal spending. How very ironic. I remember the Nazis. Let me share a little about them and recall some of their exploits. First of all, "Nazi" was gutter slang for the verb "to nationalize". The Bieder-Mienhoff gang gave themselves this moniker during their early struggles. The official title of the Nazi Party was "The National Socialist Workers Party of Germany". Hitler and...

Budapest – If the European Union has its way, the Roma (also called Gypsies) will eventually emerge from their shantytowns and makeshift camps and shed the shackles of centuries-old dis- crimination. Although that day may be distant, Europe's conscience has become aware of the plight of the Continent's most deprived minority. To some, they represent the swarthy violinists in dimly lit nightclubs. But across Eastern Europe, misbehaving children often are warned "you'll be given to the Gypsies" — those beggars and petty thieves who travel from town to town in horse-drawn caravans and live in deep poverty. In Bulgaria, the...

The Holocaust horrors are unspeakable. The images of the Auschwitz death camp are indelible. Dr. Klara Swimmer speaks nonetheless. "You cannot imagine the pain, the suffering, and the smell," says the 80-year-old retired physician. She was a teenage Hungarian Jew when she entered the camp of the damned. Bill Kugelman, a Polish-born Jew, was interned behind the wire fences of Auschwitz when the first Hungarians arrived. He recalls the naked body of a young girl thrown from the train onto a heap of corpses. "She was blue all over," says Kugelman, also 80. "She was all blue," he repeats. His...

Romany Gypsies came out of India Anna Salleh ABC Science Online Monday, 6 September 2004 A Romany woman dances in downtown Prague during the third annual Khamoro Festival of Roma music and culture (Image: Reuters/Petr Josek) Legend has it that European Gypsies came from Egypt but a new genetic study has shown they came from a small population that emerged from ancestors in India around 1000 years ago. The research, by Professor Luba Kalaydjieva of the University of Western Australia and team, looked at the origins of eight to 10 million people in Europe commonly known as Gypsies. Roma, Romani...

WARSAW (AFP) - Hundreds of Roma from across Europe walked through the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland to pay homage to the half a million gypsies who died in the Holocaust 60 years ago. The gypsies, many of them Holocaust survivors or relatives of victims whom had travelled from Germany, Hungary and the Czech Republic, took the same path some 20,000 Roma on the night of August 2-3 travelled to Birkenau's crematorium five where they died. Known as the "Pharrajimos" in the Romani language, the Holocaust took the lives of nearly half a million gypsies in different...

MIDI - GYPSIES, TRAMPS AND THIEVES All the scum DemocRATS come to Bean Town to meet Al Qaeda's sending money so they won't get beat Better watch out, they’re gonna get you They will take your wallets…you’ll have nothing left by the time they’re through Liars, gays and freaks They fill up the Fleet Center with their grand perversion Liars, gays and freaks If we cannot stop the DemocRATS this time…our nation won’t survive There on the stage, the woman from hell She’s Satan’s daughter, we know her so well People who love her have lost their head And...

Five Years of Ethnic Cleansing of Roma, Ashkaelia and Egyptians and others regarded as "Gypsies" from KosovoBudapest, 10. 6. 2004, 16:00, (ERRC) Today marks the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the ethnic cleansing of Roma, Ashkaelia, Egyptians and other persons regarded as "Gypsies" from Kosovo. In the wake of the cessation of NATO action against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in June 1999 and the subsequent return of predominantly ethnic Albanians from abroad, ethnic Albanians violently expelled approximately four fifths of Kosovo's pre-1999 Romani population -- estimated to have been around 120,000 -- from their homes. In the course...

Budapest, 10. 6. 2004, 16:00, (ERRC) Today marks the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the ethnic cleansing of Roma, Ashkaelia, Egyptians and other persons regarded as "Gypsies" from Kosovo. In the wake of the cessation of NATO action against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in June 1999 and the subsequent return of predominantly ethnic Albanians from abroad, ethnic Albanians violently expelled approximately four fifths of Kosovo's pre-1999 Romani population -- estimated to have been around 120,000 -- from their homes. In the course of the ethnic cleansing campaign, ethnic Albanians kidnapped Roma and severely physically abused and in some...

ERRC PHOTO: The Albanian riots in Vushtrri/Vucitrn were first directed at UNMIK under the slogan "Stop arresting liberators!", then turned against the former Orthodox citizens of the town now lying in this graveyard, and from there assaulted the only living non-Albanian community at hand, the Ashkaelia. Serbs and Roma were burned out of their houses in the summer of 1999, leaving behind only the local Ashkaelia, who have now also been burned out of their houses. European Roma Rights Center (ERRC) Letter of Concern to Kosovo and European Authorities over Violence against Roma, Ashkaelia, Egyptians and Others Regarded as...

http://www.angelfire.com/tx4/yay/bigmidi.html MIDI - GYPSIES, TRAMPS AND THIEVES All the scum DemocRATS come to Bean Town to meet Al Qaeda's sending money so they won't get beat Better watch out, they’re gonna get you They will take your wallets…you’ll have nothing left by the time they’re through Liars, gays and freaks They fill up the Fleet Center with their grand perversion Liars, gays and freaks If we cannot stop the DemocRATS this time…our nation won’t survive There on the stage, the woman from hell She’s Satan’s daughter, we know her so well People who love her have lost their head And...

Slovakian troops sent in to stop gipsy riots By Francis Harris in Prague (Filed: 26/02/2004) Slovakian troops were deployed on the streets yesterday for the first time since the fall of communism to stop looting by Roma gipsies protesting against welfare cuts. Thousands of police backed by 2,000 soldiers in the ghetto towns of eastern Slovakia appeared to have temporarily ended attacks by mobs forcing their way into food shops. Near 100 per cent unemployment has brought thousands of Roma gypsies out on the streets The rioting was the most serious social disturbance in the young democracy, forcing the authorities...

SUN SPECIAL INVESTIGATION Britain's our dream Out in the cold ... gipsies in Strane Pod Tatrami, SlovakiaPictures: JON BOND By OLIVER HARVEY in Kezmarok, Slovakia RELATED STORIES • Sun Says GIPSIES determined to flee grinding poverty in Eastern Europe are preparing to flood into Britain in their thousands. They are counting the days until May 1 when countries such as Poland and Slovakia join the EU, a Sun investigation has revealed. Britain has pledged to welcome them with open arms — unlike EU partners such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain. And yesterday one grateful Polish dad-of-two told us:...

November 13, 2003 For Albanians, It's Come to This: A Son for a TV By NICHOLAS WOOD DURRES, Albania, Nov. 11 — Fatmira Bonjaku's husband is in jail, accused by the police of selling their 3-year-old son to an Italian man in return for the television set that six other children watch in the family's dimly lighted room. The police also say her husband had plans to sell their newest born, whom she is breast feeding. Mrs. Bonjaku, interviewed at her family's two-room shack on the outskirts of this port city, denied that she intended to sell her newborn but...

BUDAPEST The European Union pledged continued support Monday for the integration of Gypsies into society's mainstream, but said traditions that contravened human rights could not be tolerated. The comments - applying to Gypsy communities in countries slated to join the Union - came at a conference sponsored by the World Bank on the status and problems of the minority in EU candidate nations. While promising continued financial support for Gypsy integration, Anna Diamantopoulou, the EU commissioner for employment and social affairs, warned Gypsies that traditions that breach human rights would not be tolerated in the European Union. "When fundamental human...

Gypsies bid for asylum From correspondents in Skopje, Macedonia 20may03 HUNDREDS of gypsies have converged on Macedonia's border with Greece, hoping to persuade Greek authorities to grant them political asylum, a police spokeswoman said today. Authorities stopped the convoy of 12 buses from crossing the border at Medzitlija, 200km south of Macedonia's capital, Skopje. The 640 Gypsies were not allowed to leave the country because they had no passports, police spokeswoman Mirjana Konteska said. "They are still there," she added. The gypsies were among refugees who left neighbouring Kosovo four years ago after NATO action to end then-Yugoslav President Slobodan...

May. 8, 2003 Croatia plans to build monument to honor its Nazis By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - ZAGREB, Croatia The Croatian government announced Thursday it plans to buy land in southern Austria to build a monument honoring thousands of Croat Nazi troops and civilians who were killed in the aftermath of World War II. The announcement came just a few days ahead of Sunday's anniversary of the 1945 killings of tens of thousands of Croat soldiers and civilians who fled to Austria in fear of reprisals from antifascists. They gathered in Bleiburg, a small town near the then-Yugoslav border, waiting...

Slovakian Roma Forced to Ghettos Defying EU pressure, Slovakia is systematically segregating its Romany minority into ghettos, and barring their entrance into cities. By Arie Farnam | Special to The Christian Science Monitor KOSICE, SLOVAKIA – Teenager Lucie David still has nightmares about the evening two years ago when local police and neo-Nazi skinheads attacked her family's home in the small town of Stos in eastern Slovakia. "Rocks came smashing through the windows, and a crowd was outside chanting that they would rape me and my mother," she recalls in a whisper. After huddling together in the dark for several...

NEW YORK, Nov. 22 (JTA) — A Holocaust exhibit at a prestigious art museum in Zagreb is being hailed as a major step forward in Croatia’s willingness to deal honestly with its World War II history. Croatian President Stepan Mesic recently inaugurated the exhibit, entitled “The Courage to Remember,” at the capital’s Mimara Art Museum. “This is not an exhibition for historians, but one for those who want to revise history,” Mesic said in a speech at the opening. “This is not an exhibition for those who know but for those who do not know, and even more so for...

As Madelyne Toogood returns to court today, Irish Travellers and some experts on their culture are alleging that media coverage of Toogood and Travellers over the past three weeks has been unfair, unresearched and nothing short of racist. Toogood, an Irish Traveller, was videotaped by a security camera Sept. 13 apparently striking her 4-year-old daughter in the back seat of a vehicle parked outside a Mishawaka department store. "The last time I remember reading this type of language was when the Nazis were rounding these people up to throw them into ovens," says Larry Otway, a political scientist who has...

MIDI - DON'T WORRY BABY Well, we know, Terry, that you've stayed awake at night and you've been troubled New Jersey really is a mess that might just burst your Senate bubble We have good news for you…our judges will come through So we say…don't worry, Terry…(don't worry, Terry)…don't worry, Terry Rest assured that the fix is in Don't worry, Terry…(don't worry, Terry) It is no problem that the judges had sent bucks to Torricelli That's just the way we like to do things and so what that it is smelly As you tuck in your kids…know that we...

"Our account of the Spanish peninsula would be incomplete without a notice of that remarkable race, the Gypsies, who have long existed in this country, isolated from the rest of the community. they are also found in several other countries of Europe; but the accounts of those in Spain, where they are said to number some forty or fofty thousand individuals, are the most complete." "For a period of more than four hundred years, this singular group of people have been strolling, with little change, over Europe, like foreigners and strangers. Their "hand against every man, and every man's hand...

DALLAS (AP) _ The tearful testimonial Madelyne Gorman Toogood gave in front of glaring TV cameras after she was videotaped beating her daughter was starkly uncharacteristic of the reclusive, media-shy Irish Travelers culture to which she belongs, experts say. Toogood, who was caught beating her 4-year-old daughter, Martha, in a department store parking lot, said she is a member of the clannish, nomadic culture of Irish descendants, most of whom came to the United States as refugees during the potato famine in the 1840s. ``By nature, they're very reclusive people,'' said Joe Livingston, a South Carolina state investigator who has...

Some local authorities will not refer to Madelyn Gorman/Toogood and Margaret Daley as 'Travelers' but a local expert on Travelers says from the video he's seen, he believes the women are Irish Travelers. There are an estimated 12,000 to 20,000 Irish Travelers in the United States, mostly in South Carolina and Texas. This is where it is believed Gorman and her family is from. Travelers live a nomadic lifestyle, moving from town to town in large groups to do seasonal work but they've also been labeled, by some, as scam artists. Most Irish Travelers in this country are descendents of...

  Witnesses Say Racism at Heart of Romani Human Rights Abuses U.S. Newswire 9 Apr 18:30 Racism at the Heart of Romani Human Rights Abuses, Witnesses TellHelsinki CommissionTo: National and International Desks Contact: Ben Anderson of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, 202-225-1901; Web site: http://www.csce.gov/WASHINGTON, April 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Roma throughout Europe still encounter human rights conditions which lack the basic elements of human dignity, according to testimony delivered today before a hearing of the Untied States Helsinki Commission. The hearing focused on the age-old human rights struggle of Roma, insidious barriers to education opportunities for Romani children, activities of...