Has Jean Raspail's novel, The Camp of the Saints come to life in outside Naples where the Italian police began a nationwide round-up of nearly 400 illegal immigrants from the Balkans and North Africa? In the midst of the round-up, a series of arson attack on Roma gympsy camps in the Naples suburbs have been demolished by scores of "youths" on scooters and motorbikes wielding iron bars and throwing Molotov cocktails.
The reason for the attack is not the religious fervor of Islamic indignation, but that of native Italians infuriated by the presence of Roma, or gypsies in their midst. The incident that sparked the fury was the capture of a 17-year old Roma girl who last weekend entered the flat in Ponticelli and tried to steal a 6-year-old girl. Chased by the mother and neighbors, she had to be rescued by police from being lynched.
The city erupted in fury, with local women leading the marches on the Roma camps to the chant of “Fuori, fuori [Out, out]”. Night after night young men — allegedly acting on the orders of powerful local clans of the Camorra, the Naples Mafia — have set the sites ablaze, blocking attempts by the fire brigade to put out the fires, with exploding gas canisters completing the destruction. The women jeered at the firemen, shouting, "You put these fires out, we start them again”.Plumes of smoke were still rising yesterday from the smouldering, blackened ruins of a Roma gypsy camp attacked and burnt to the ground by local vigilantes in Ponticelli, a rundown industrial suburb in the east of Naples in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius.
The charred remains of the makeshift wooden shacks at the site on Via Malibran crunch underfoot. The only sign of life is dogs scavenging through the neighbouring mountain of uncollected, rotting rubbish.
There are similar scenes of devastation at camps nearby, including one in the incongruously named Via Virginia Woolf. At one squalid “nomad camp” beneath a motorway flyover, intact but deserted, a policeman guarding the site said that the inhabitants had fled during the night to avoid being attacked.
The signs of hasty panic were everywhere, with doors to the shacks left open and the ground strewn with clothing, shoes, bicycles, plastic bottles, pots and pans and children’s toys.
Hundreds of Roma families have fled for their lives with their belongings piled on to small pick-up trucks or handcarts. Some have been taken under police protection to a former school used to house illegal immigrants in a northern Naples suburb. Others have found refuge at Roma camps elsewhere in the Campania region, while a few have been taken in by Naples residents shocked at this outbreak of “xenophobia”.
The Naples arson attacks, however, are the result of long-festering anger throughout Italy over rising crime levels and urban degradation, much of it blamed on Roma gypsies and the estimated half a million Romanians who have emigrated to Italy since Romania joined the European Union.
According to the Roma rights group, Opera Nomadi, there are 2,500 Roma in Naples, 1,000 from Romania and 1,500 from the Balkans. A spokesperson for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) drew parallels with Roma people forced to flee from the Balkans, saying: “We never thought we’d see such images in Italy.”
In Rome, where Gianni Alemanno, the new right-wing mayor, has vowed to dismantle “nomad camps” to reduce street crime, police raided a Roma camp, loading the inhabitants on to buses and taking them to detention centres. Mr Alemanno has promised to deport 20,000 illegal immigrants.
Today the Berlusconi Cabinet will approve an emergency “security package” drawn up by Robert Maroni, the new Interior Minister and deputy leader of the anti immigrant Northern League. It includes the dismantling of Roma camps, the appointment of “special commissioners” to deal with “the Roma problem” in Rome and Milan, the tightening of border controls and the speeded-up deportation of immigrants who cannot show they have a job or an “adequate” income. Mr Maroni also wants to make illegal immigration a criminal offence.
Mr Berlusconi vowed during last month’s election campaign to curb illegal immigrants, describing them as an “army of evil”. Mr Berlusconi has also pledged to hold a Cabinet meeting in Naples next Wednesday to resolve the continuing rubbish crisis amid fears of an epidemic as warmer weather arrives.
Yesterday Flora Martinelli, the mother who caught the Roma teenager trying to steal her baby at Ponticelli, said she was “very sorry for what has happened. I didn’t think it would come to this”.
Why are the Italians fed up with the Roma?
But she said, “We have absolutely had it with the Roma, they have to go.” At one of the few remaining nomad camps, terrified Roma people were reluctant to speak. “We are not all criminals” insisted one thirty-year-old man. But at the market opposite the burnt-out Via Malibran camp, local people were unrepentant. “The gypsies don’t work, they don’t wash, and they steal,” said one youth. “This is our version of ethnic cleansing.”
And this is not the first time that the Italian government has threatened to expel the Roma.
Roma are not welcome in other parts of Europe:
Cristian David, the Romanian Interior Minister, arrived in Rome yesterday for talks on the crisis. Calin Popeascu Tariceanu, the Romanian Prime Minister, said Italy should have followed the example of France and Germany in refusing to allow nomad encampments to spring up. He said a distinction must be drawn between “honest Romanians” with jobs and criminals who “have tainted the image of all Romanians working abroad”.Giulio Riccio, head of social policy at the Naples council, condemned the “criminal aggression” at the Roma camps, adding “I am ashamed to be Italian”. Rosa Iervolino Russo, the Mayor of Naples, said she deplored “all violent and racist actions”.
Franco Frattini, the Foreign Minister and former EU Commissioner, denied the new Italian government was “xenophobic” but said the Schengen agreement on free movement across EU frontiers needed to be “updated”. It is estimated that there are at last 700,000 illegal immigrants in Italy.
Pietro Fusella, manager of a hotel in Via Chiaia, in Naples’ historic centre, said both the rubbish cisis and the attacks on Roma camps were unjustly damaging the city’s image. “Both problems are in the suburbs, not the centre” he said. He had put up a webcam on the hotel website to show that the street outside was “clean and safe”.
Last year the centre-left government of Romano Prodi expelled over 200 Romanians with criminal records after a Romanian was accused of murdering an Italian woman at a Rome railway station. However, the centre-right swept to power in elections last month, arguing that much tougher measures were needed.
In the UK, gypsies are known as Travellers. According to Wikipedia, 25,000 Travellers live in Ireland, 200,00 to 300,000 are in Great Britain, and 7,000 reside in the United States. Worldwide, together with other "gypsies," there are about 15,000,000, with the largest numbers residing in the Balkan Peninsula, the Americas, the former Soviet Union, Western Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
They divide themselves into give main groups:
1. The Kalderash, the most numerous, traditionally cauldron-making coppersmiths, from the Balkans, many of whom migrated to central Europe and North America;
2. Gitanos or Ciganos, mostly in the Iberian Peninsula, North Afriaca, and southern France; associated with entertainment;
3. Sinti, known in German and Dutch as Zigeuner and in Italian as Zingari, mostly in Alsace and other regions of France and Germany. (Other experts, and the Sinti themselves, insist that the Sinti are not a subgroup of Roman but rather a separate ethnic group which also had Indian origins and a history of nomadism);
4. Romnichal mainly in Britain and North America; and
5. Erlides settled in southeastern Europe and Turkey.
There are subgroups that are hard to categorize in Finland, Norway, Sweden that are distinguished by occupational specialization, territorial origin, or both. Some of these group names are Bashaldé; Churari; Luri; Ungaritza; Lovari (Lovara) from Hungary; Lyuli (Jughi, Multani, Luli, Mug(h)at) from Central Asia; Machvaya (Machavaya, Machwaya, or Macwaia) from Serbia; Romungro (Modyar or Modgar) from Hungary and neighbouring carpathian countries; Xoraxai (Horahane) from Greece/Turkey; Boyash (Lingurari, Ludar, Ludari, Rudari, or Zlătari) from Romanian/Moldovan miners; Ursari from Romanian/Moldovan bear-trainers; Argintari from silversmiths; Aurari from goldsmiths; Florari from florists;, and Lăutari from singers.
Contemporary scholars have suggested that one of the first written references to the Roma, under the term "Atsinganoi", (Greek), dates from the Byzantine era during a time of famine in the 9th century. In 800 CE, Saint Athanasia gave food to "foreigners called the Atsinganoi" near Thrace. Later, in 803 CE, Theophanes the Confessor wrote that Emperor Nikephoros I had the help of the "Atsinganoi" to put down a riot with their "knowledge of magic"."Atsingani" was used to refer to itinerant fortune tellers, ventriloquists and wizards who visited the Emperor Constantine IX in the year 1054.[57] The hagiographical text, The Life of St. George the Anchorite, mentions that the "Atsingani" were called on by Constantine to help rid his forests of the wild animals which were killing his livestock. They are later described as sorcerers and evildoers and accused of trying to poison the Emperor's favorite hound.
Linguistic and genetic evidence indicates the Roma originated from the Indian subcontinent. The cause of the Roma diaspora is unknown. However, the most probable conclusion is that the Roma were part of the military in Northern India. When there were repeated raids by Mahmud of Ghazni and these soldiers were defeated, they were moved west with their families into the Byzantine Empire. This occurred between 1000 and 1050 CE. This departure date is assumed because, linguistically speaking, the Romany language is a New Indo-Aryan language (NIA)--it has only two genders (masculine and feminine).
We can see why the presence of Roma of traditional cultures may cause consternation when living among in a modern industrial society:
The traditional Roma place a high value on the extended family. Virginity is essential in unmarried women. Both men and women often marry young; there has been controversy in several countries over the Roma practice of child marriage. Roma law establishes that the man’s family must pay a dowry to the bride's parents, but only traditional families still follow this rule.
And child marriage is still occurring in places such as ... London and Romania once they reach puberty.
Once married, the woman joins the husband's family where her main job is to tend to her husband's and her children's needs, and to take care of the in-laws as well. The power structure in the traditional Roma household has at its top the oldest man or grandfather, and men in general have more authority than women. As women get older, however, they gain respect and authority in the eyes of the community. Young wives begin gaining authority once they mother children.Roma social behaviour is strictly regulated by Hindu purity laws ("marime" or "marhime"), still respected by most Roma and among Sinti groups by the older generations. This regulation affects many aspects of life, and is applied to actions, people and things: parts of the human body are considered impure: the genital organs (because they produce emissions) as well as the rest of the lower body. Fingernails and toenails must be filed with an emery board, as cutting them with a clipper is a taboo. Clothes for the lower body, as well as the clothes of menstruating women, are washed separately. Items used for eating are also washed in a different place. Childbirth is considered impure, and must occur outside the dwelling place. The mother is considered impure for forty days after giving birth. Death is considered impure, and affects the whole family of the dead, who remain impure for a period of time. However, in contrast to the practice of cremating the dead, Roma dead must be buried. It is possible that this tradition was adapted from Abrahamic religions after the Roma left the Indian subcontinent.
Roma began immigrating to the United States in colonial times, with small groups in Virginia and French Louisiana. Larger-scale immigration began in the 1860s, with groups of Romnichal from Britain. The largest number immigrated in the early 1900s, mainly from the Vlax group of Kalderash.
Roma began immigrating to the United States in colonial times, with small groups in Virginia and French Louisiana. Larger-scale immigration began in the 1860s, with groups of Romnichal from Britain. The largest number immigrated in the early 1900s, mainly from the Vlax group of Kalderash.
In North America they call themselves "Pavees," non-Travellers called them "Knackers, Gypsies, Diddies, Pikers, tinsmiths, and Tinkers." The saying: "Not worth a tinker's damn" refers to these people. [See Romnichal and The Handbook of Texas Online]; Gypsies: The Other Americans]
Irish Travellers have depicted in our popular culture:
The Riches is an ongoing FX television series starring Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver as Wayne and Dahlia Malloy; the father and mother of an American family of Irish Traveller con artists and thieves. The series revolves around their decision to steal the identities of a dead "Buffer" family and hide out in their lavish mansion in suburban Baton Rouge, Louisiana.In Season 2 of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in Episode 18, "Up the Long Ladder", which aired on May 22, 1989, the Enterprise encounters a society, the Bringloidis, (cf brionglóid: meaning dream in the Irish language), that was founded by humans who left Earth centuries earlier to found a colony. They appear to be descended from Irish Travellers, possessing their accented form of the English language and a culture that appears very similar.
Season 2, Episode 21 of the NBC television show Law & Order: Criminal Intent titled "Graansha" focuses around the murder of a female probation officer who springs from a family of Irish Travellers.
Into the West tells the story of two Traveller boys running away from their drab home in Dublin.
In the Irish television soap opera The Riordans (1964-1979), many issues affecting the Traveller community were portrayed through the challenges faced by the Maher family.The film Snatch features Brad Pitt as a comically stereotyped "Pikey" who is also a bareknuckle boxing champion. In one humorous incident, his Traveller Clan defrauds the film's protagonists by selling them a caravan that falls apart the minute they try to tow it from the premises.
The film Rob Roy features Liam Neeson and details the exploits of the early 18th century Highland clan chieftain Rob Roy MacGregor. The film opens with MacGregor clansmen retrieving stolen cattle from robbers they call "Tinkers." Later on the wife of Rob Roy, when commenting on potential economic misfortunes for their clan, dismisses any relationship between their status and that of "Tinkers."
The film Chocolat includes Johnny Depp as Roux, a leader of a group of Irish travellers.
Traveller is another film, starring Bill Paxton, Mark Wahlberg, and Julianna Margulies.
The rural Irish sitcom Killinaskully (2003 - present) features a Traveller character named Pa Connors, played by Pat Shortt.
The 2004 movie Man About Dog features a group of Irish Traveller characters.
The documentary, Southpaw: The Francis Barrett Story, won the Audience Prize at the 1999 New York Irish Film Festival. It followed Galway boxer Francis (Francie) Barrett for three years and showed Francie overcoming discrimination as he progressed up the amateur boxing ranks to eventually carry the Irish flag and box for Ireland at the age of 19 during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Francie turned professional in August 2000 and now fights at light welterweight, out of Wembley, London.
A documentary-style drama release in 2005, Pavee Lackeen (Traveller Girl), depicted the life of a young Traveller girl, and featured non-actors in the lead roles. Its director and co-writer, Perry Ogden, won an IFTA Award in the category of Breakthrough Talent.
During 2004's "Live at Vicar Street" recorded by newly reformed Irish folk act Planxty, Christy Moore mentions hearing Traveller John Reilly sing for the first time and calls it a "Life Changing" experience, going on to dedicate the song "As I Roved Out" to the memory of John Reilly.
FightGame and Firefight by Kate Wild are teenage/young adult novels with a charismatic gypsy boy hero called Freedom Smith. They are thriller/sci fi based but they also deal with the real problems Gypsies and Travellers face
The 2007 film Strength and Honour deals with a man joining a Traveller boxing tournament in order to win money for his son's operation.
Robert Jordan's series of fantasy novels The Wheel of Time feature a group of nomadic people based on the Irish Travellers - the Tuatha'an - who share the name 'Tinkers' and a reputation (portrayed in the books as largely undeserved) for petty theft.
In Blood Will Out, the fourth episode of Series Two of the TV series Midsomer Murders (1999), a local magistrate in an English village attempts to oust Travellers from his jurisdiction by means of a paramilitary vigilante attack, but is prevented from doing so by the police.
The Roma may be unpopular in Europe, but they are still citizens of the new EU. One wonders how the ministers in Brussels will handle the discrimination and the apparent ethnic cleansing now occurring all over Italy.
The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail was set in France. He did not specifically name the Roma,in fact he was referring to North Africans. But what is happening to them in Italy could the fate of others as native Europeans become fed up with invaders from other cultures.
Parable or Reality - Thirty Years after "The Camp of the Saints"
So, what is France’s situation in 2003? The net migration figures are fuzzy estimates, due to internal migration within the European community. These days the number is closer to 100,000 than to 59,000. Adding the massive influx of illegal immigrants into French territory, which at first glance appears to be around 100,000 per annum (some of whom go on to other countries, however) reinforces the notion that France is becoming more and more North African “beur” (3) and “black.”(4) Conversely, the total fertility rate attributed to this F.N.E. population is vastly overestimated. Though the population of African origin still has a very high fertility rate, the gap in fertility rates between the population of North African origin and the average for the total French population is gradually closing. The fact that the rate for all of France has gone back up to 1.9 is not only due to the impact of immigration, but also because “French-by-ancestry” women are having more children.But the increase in France’s Muslim population is real it was 550,000 in 1962, 1.4 million in 1973, nearly 3 million in 1982, and it is more than 6 million today. There is, however, no indication that this increase will continue at the same rate. In fact, the rate has been slowing down. In any case, although it is likely that the Muslim religion will become the primary one in France over the course of the twenty-first century, this certainly won’t happen by 2015 and possibly not even by 2040, despite immigration, fertility differentials, and an increase in conversions to Islam.
Jean Raspail states emphatically that these populations will not assimilate. Although it is true that in France today the traditional motors of integration – the army, the church, school, work, civic obligations, urbanization – are obsolete or dysfunctional, other shared interests are coming to the fore to unite French men and women, regardless of their origins, around common values. Sport, music, celebrations, entertainment, communication, and the informal economy (5) are examples. But the Figaro-Magazine hypothesis relies heavily on the nationality differences between “French” and “foreigners.” As the authors note, “according to current lax policies granting automatic citizenship through birth on our soil, these F.N.E. children born in France are nearly all French,” which means that the problem is not between French and foreigners, but between those “French by origin” and those descended from immigrants.
We should therefore be turning our attention to the immigrant population or to their children rather than to the foreign population. The former group, of foreign origin but choosing to live in France with their children, cannot be considered as a monolithic bloc. One cannot put in the same box young women of North African descent – “beurettes” (6) – who are trying at all costs to get access to higher education, and the “big brothers – les grands frères” (7) – who find it more lucrative and of greater immediate relevance to devote themselves to selling drugs. Islam in France is itself very diverse. There is the Islam of the mosques and the Islam of the cellars, North African Islam and Black African Islam, and moderate Islam and radical Islam. To refer to an Islamic threat is to look at Islam only on the surface; Islam’s diversity was apparent recently when the Minister for the Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, attempted to constitute a council that would be representative of Muslims in France. What a variety of conceptions of Islam did he come up against!
To presume that the beurs will be the “leading [political] party in France” and that they will refuse to choose between traditional French conservatism and socialism, voting instead very differently and “for extreme [parties], almost certainly manipulated by religious or political powers from outside France”, bespeaks a certain contempt for their freedom of choice and does not correspond to any tangible reality today. Although it is true that there are neighborhoods in Paris (the 13th and the 18th) and towns (Roubaix, Vénissieux) and even a département (8) (Seine Saint-Denis) with populations that are predominantly of foreign origin, no significant development in electoral behavior has been noted in years past. What’s more, the Muslim Party in France has difficulty assembling more than 1000 people at any of its demonstrations.
Could it happen here? When conditions get bad enough you can count on it.
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