Sarkozy’s anti-Roma racism breaks French laws

More about this cartoon about Sarkozy´s racism against Muslims and Roma is here.

From AFP news agency in France:

French police are keeping secret lists of Roma and other travelling minorities in breach of laws on ethnic profiling, lawyers for rights groups alleged in a formal complaint seen by AFP on Thursday.

The allegation of the secret list of “non-sedentary ethnic minorities”, also reported on Thursday by the newspaper Le Monde, comes after the government drew international criticism this summer for stepping up deportations of Roma.

The complaint cites what it calls “illegal” and “undeclared” documents held by the Central Office for the Fight Against Itinerant Delinquency (OCLDI), a state body run by gendarmes, France’s paramilitary police.

According to the text of the complaint lodged by the groups the office compiled documents that aimed to “make a genealogy of Gypsy families“.

To do so “seems to be possible only by the use of a file” based on ethnic origin, it said.

The gathering by officials of demographic data classified by ethnic origin is prohibited in France. Authorities have denied such a list exists amid an outcry against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Roma crackdown in recent months.

Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said in August that authorities held data on nationalities but not on ethnic groups and denied the government was targeting Roma, hundreds of whom have been deported to Romania and Bulgaria.

However a note later came to light, signed by Hortefeux’s chief of staff Michel Bart and dated August 5, which was sent to police chiefs and stated that “Roma camps are a priority” in the crackdown and deportations.

In the complaint revealed Thursday, lawyer William Bourdon and two others acting for four Roma rights groups called for prosecutors to launch an inquiry.

Bulgaria: [anti Roma] Racism, injustice lead to murder conviction: here.

Especially hard hit in Romania is the Roma minority, which already faces discriminatory treatment and suffers from extreme poverty: here.

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