SAY NO to Ethnic Profiling of Roma in Italy

The La voix des Rroms and the EveryOne Group, joined by Rromani Baxt, Centre AVER contre le racisme, Ternikano Berno & Centre culturel gitan, started a petition against the announcement made by Italian Home Minister and Member of the North League, Roberto Maroni, of plans to record of fingerprints of Roma people in Italy.

`In the most cynical way, he justifies this measure by the need to protect the children!` say the initiators on the proposal that has been widely criticized by Italian politicians, cultural celebrities, civil society, the Council of Europe and the European Commission.

In the face of that strong criticism, Maroni continues to defend his proposal. Berlusconi government is criticized in Europe and in democratic world for its persecution of the Roma. In its 27th June editorial, The Independent qualified this behaviour a �spasm of cruelty� and the Maroni`s party of as a �notoriously xenophobic� one.

�Every act of popular violence against foreigners, every instance of official discrimination against the Roma, diminishes the country`s claim to be regarded as a civilised nation�, concludes the editorial.

The petition initiative fully agrees with The Independent and says NO to the proposal, which �recalls the darkest years of European and world history!�

`Let us not forget that the Rroms were often � guinea pigs � of repression and extermination policies, as those Rromani children from the Czech Republic on which Zyklon B was tested by the Nazis before they put it to use in the gas chambers of the concentration camps` says the initiative.

Sign the PETITION against any ethnic profiling of the Roma and prevent the return of the brown plague.