Fingerprinting Italian Roma

Despite outrage across Europe, the Italian government has started fingerprinting Roma living in the country's camps. The daily Die Presse is reminded of the past: "Of course, this merely serves the purposes of security. ... On the orders of the minister of the interior, the Roma camp dwellers will have their fingerprints taken. Men and women, adults and children - to 'fight crime' and 'protect' Roma children from exploitation. The prejudice that all the 'Zingari' are thieves and child abductors is an enduring one. ... Now the Roma are being put under suspicion as a group - officially and without the slightest compunction." The paper writes that above all the President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies Gianfranco Fini and his comrades in arms should remember that "together with their German 'friends', their earlier political role models had previously registered the Roma living in Italy. And what started with registrations ended in the gas chambers of Auschwitz."

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