France slams Fidel Castro's 'holocaust' charge on gypsy migrant expulsions

[mike r]

Source: AFP

FRANCE has criticised Fidel Castro for accusing France of "racial holocaust" regarding its expulsion of Roma migrants, saying the former Cuban leader's words are "unacceptable". "The use of 'holocaust' by Mr Castro demonstrates his ignorance of history and disdain towards its victims," French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said today. "Such words are unacceptable."...

Speaking in Havana yesterday, Mr Castro said gypsies in France "are victims of the cruelty of the extreme right wing in France" and "victims of another kind of racial holocaust".

Earlier this week, Thomas Hammarberg, commissioner for human rights of the Council of Europe, likened France's rhetoric on the issue to that used by the Nazi and fascist regimes...

The French Government maintains it has been scrupulous in observing national and EU laws. France has deported almost 1000 Roma migrants to Bulgaria and Romania since President Nicolas Sarkozy's government launched a high-profile security crackdown. More than 8000 Roma have been deported from France since the beginning of the year, with 9875 expelled last year.

Read more: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/france-slams-fidel-castros-holocaust-charge-on-gypsy-migrant-expulsions/story-e6frf7jx-1225918738009

[pampango]

1. Well, Nicolas. Targeting a minority group for harsh treatment for their "collective guilt",

not punishing an individual for what he or she has done wrong, is pretty close in intent, if not in severity to the holocaust. And the holocaust didn't start with concentration camps (that's where it ended), but with the targeting of minority groups for harsh treatment for their "collective guilt" as members of an "outsider" group (Jews, homosexuals, Roma, disabled, etc.).

And, Nicolas, while you may publicly content that the Roma were not targeted, your own government documents proves are incorrect, at best.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h8EBROUV14bXPK3RbtEAcuG5QVPA

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

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[Gecko6400]

3. You're right. "People who

live in glass houses should not cast stones."

[AzNick]

4. If you want to adopt a Roma family, please let us know

French municipalities by law have to provide an area for migrant workers and their families to live on.

They usually do it at their own expense, not that of the families.

When these families leave, they always leave it trashed, with piles of human waste.

They are also famously involved in illegal activities: theft, pimping, undeclared labor and organized beggary.

They also refuse to send their children to school and instead use them to beg.

Lately one of them was shot by the police after a violent confrontation and his clan went and attacked the police station with axes, with the cops locked inside and refusing to use lethal force so as not to make matters worse (actually they were gendarmes, who are known for being a little more trigger happy than civilian cops).

So you tell me: your solution to the problem is... ?

[LostinVA]

6. It isn't Nazi-like racial targeting

[Lucky Luciano]

7. When I am in Europe I watch the Roma carefully.

People told me to watch out for their kids in particular who are often trained to be expert pickpockets because the laws prevented the kids frm being prosecuted. I did see an instance of a Roma toddler having fun with her parents giggling and joking as they sat on the sidewalk and the second the child saw my face, she put on a sad face and begged for money! The little actress was well trained too! Would have been convincing if I had not seen her laughing and having a good time seconds before!!

[pampango]

8. I've seen the same thing in the Philippines and they, obviously, were not Roma.

Begging is a syndicate in many places. Collective punishment is not the answer.

What Sarkozy is doing is pure politics. The Roma who are deported (and paid $300 to boot) are citizens of EU countries and can come back to France the next day (and maybe make another $300 to leave again :) ). Sarkozy is just using them as a political football to score points with conservative, law-and-order voters. The liberal parties in Europe are the ones condemning his actions.

[Lucky Luciano]

10. Not a big fan of Sarkozy's final solution here either.

Justifying the blanket ethnic punishment is horrible.

Lots if begging rackets throughout the world. I have seen it in Cambodia and many third world countries. It was a big premise in "Slumdog Millionaire" as well. Some pretty evil people running those rackets.

[BillH76]

13. It's not so simple as you make it seem.

Roma culture is extremely ethnocentric. It teaches that the Rom only have moral obligations to other Rom, and not to "clowns" (i.e., non-Roma), who are legitimate marks for Roma scams, of which there are many.

Not all Roma buy into this. Some of them escape the culture and lead normal lives. But as long as the culture replicates itself, it is a danger to French society. France has every right to deport the illegal Roma immigrants. The legal ones are probably already detached from Roma culture and do not constitute a problem.

[polly7]

17. My brother in law's family descends from eastern European Roma.

His grandparents remember how they lived, they begged but did not steal. They squatted on land and begged for work and food. By the sounds of it, they were among the exception but he was told they were a proud family who did what they had to. No one would hire them, they had children to feed. They also told him of children who were taken from Roma families and institutionalized in the 60's, half-starved, medicated with dirty needles, half worked to death ...... many of them never seeing their parents again. I saw a documentary on it a few months ago, it reminded me just of what we did to the First Nations children here. Any kind of bigotry and stereo-typing against a whole population is sad and ugly.

[BillH76]

14. I was attacked by Roma pickpockets twice in ten minutes on the Metro.

They work in pairs. One drops a bunch of stuff as a distraction, and the other tries to get your wallet. Fortunately I stopped them both times by pushing them away from me. They melted into the subway crowd.

[Lucky Luciano]

15. I would have pounded their fucking heads into a fine dust.

If you steal or attempt to steal from me I become extremely violent without conscience or remorse...ok...execpt for the eight year old kid I watched as he was about to try to break into my car to grab my bags in Ecuador. I was sitting in a cafe eating lunch with the car in plain sight while I watched it like a hawk as it had my stuff. I saw him note the bags...then look around to see if anyone was watching...then he pulled out a screwdriver and looked around again as we was about to jimmy the lock in the trunk. As he looked he finally caught my smiling face as I shook my head saying tsk tsk! He smiled realizing how busted he was and took off. LOL little bastard ran off, but I guess it did not induce violence on my part.

[ProudDad]

19. You woudn't be a fan of SB1070 too, would you? (n/t)

[LostinVA]

5. There is nothing wrong with using the word "holocaust"

Especially since the Roma were a group the Nazis targeted and gassed, especially at Auschwitz. They were also used in many of Mengele's "medical" experiments.

[polly7]

18. Agree,

"The Romani were often accused of atrocities committed by others; they were blamed for the looting of gold teeth from a hundred dead Jews abandoned on a Rumanian road. Some were murdered in the Soviet Union on the pretext that Gypsies were spies. Nazi physicians made Gypsy women their guinea pigs. Many were sterilized because they were thought to be "unworthy of human reproduction," and were later exterminated. Romani who were married to Germans were not sent to camps at first, but were instead sterilized, as their children were to be after the age of twelve.

Later, many of these individuals also became victims of the Holocaust. The Romani were not only in danger in Germany, but also faced peril in all other parts of Europe. Vichy France deported 30,000 Gypsies to Nazi concentration camps. The Croatian Ustasha movement killed tens of thousands of Gypsies, and Romanians deported thousands of Romani to Transnistria (Ukraine) where many died of hunger and disease. There are no exact statistics on the number of European Gypsies exterminated during the Holocaust. Estimates place the number as high as between 500,000 and 600,000 people, with most of the deaths occurring at Auschwitz. The devastation brought by the Holocaust was not the end of Gypsy problems."

http://www.iearn.org/hgp/aeti/aeti-1997/roma-in-holocaust.html

[jwirr]

9. You know there is nothing new under heaven. When I was a kid the

gypsies came to town with a carnival. Be afraid! Be afraid! We had a dirt road that ran behind our grove and one of them asked my father if they could camp there for the days of the carnival. They were no trouble and left the place clean. To this day I always wonder if the knew that a little 5 year old girl was spying on them out of her bedroom window.

[awoke_in_2003]

11. don't act like Nazi's...

and people won't accuse you of being like them (yes, the nazi's went after the Roma, too)

[defendandprotect]

12. Certainly Hitler imprisoned the Roma ... and presumably from other countries, as well???

[Vehl]

16. Well the French Milice did help the Nazis

So its not as if the French were all against the ww2 holocaust or anything...there were quite a few nasty folks out there who simply loved what Hitler did

[KillCapitalism]

20. France is becoming a hotbed of fascism.

I guess they have a short memory because just 70 years ago they were in terror because of what the Nazi invasion had done to the country. Now there are groups that glorify the Nazi party, the SS, and even believe that holocaust was a good & necessary thing.

Contrary to DU's belief, France is not a progressive utopia. With Sarkozy in charge it's more like Germany in 1931.