French students fight government’s anti-Roma racism

This video from France is called France: Mass student protest after Roma girl gets deported.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

French teens mount barricades after student deported

Thursday 17th October 2013

Hundreds rally after Kosovan seized during field trip

Hundreds of French teenagers erected barricades outside their schools and marched through Paris to protest against the expulsions of immigrant families – including their classmates.

A few clashed with police firing teargas but most marched peacefully.

Anger erupted this week over the treatment of 15-year-old Kosovan Roma Leonarda Dibrani who was detained in front of classmates on a field trip.

The government said her family had been denied asylum and was no longer allowed to stay in France.

Such expulsions occur regularly around France, but Ms Dibrani’s treatment touched a nerve, with students and left-wing politicians alike saying police had gone too far.

The students hope to press the government into allowing both Ms Dibrani and a recently expelled Armenian boy to return to France.

At one high school in Paris students piled green rubbish cans in front of the entrance and hung a banner saying “Education in Danger.”

“Everybody should have a chance. Everybody should have a job, work and have a family.

“When children try to achieve that and France refuses, that is not my country,” said protester Romain Desprez.

The Dibrani family fled Kosovo about five years ago because they faced discrimination.

“My home is in France,” Ms Dibrani said from the Kosovan city of Mitrovica. “I don’t speak the language here and I don’t know anyone.

“I’m frightened, I don’t speak Albanian. My life is in France.

“I don’t want to go to school here and I do not want to stay here.”

French Interior Minister Manuel Valls had defended the deportation of Ms Dibrani, her parents and five siblings as legal, but ordered officials to review the handling of the case.

But, confronted with an angry backlash from the left of the ruling Socialist party, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault promised the family would be brought back to France if Ms Dibrani’s rights were found to have been infringed.

And National Assembly speaker Claude Bartolone underlined the extent of disquiet in the Socialist camp.

“There is the law but there are also values on which the left must never compromise,” he said.

Reporting of the Greek ‘blonde angel’ case is all the more bitter for those who know the myths that have dogged Roma history: here.

The Swedish police force in the southern region of Skane has a database containing the details of over 4,000 Roma, including 1,000 children. The revelation came to light in a report from daily Dagens Nyheter at the end of September: here.

Related articles

• Protests In Paris Over Immigrant Expulsions (rferl.org)
• Paris students protest amid deportation outcry (dailystar.com.lb)
• France expels girl to Kosovo after class trip (arkansasonline.com)
• French Students Barricade High Schools to Protest Deportation of Classmates (commondreams.org)
• Roma girl expulsion sparks new row in France (aljazeera.com)
• French interior minister faces outcry over Roma girl’s deportation (praag.org)
• Roma expulsion row grips France (bbc.co.uk)
• Kosovar Girl Begs For Return to France as Classmates Show Support (on.aol.com)
• Schoolgirl expulsion reignites French migration row (worldbulletin.net)
• France expels girl to Kosovo after class trip (thenewstribune.com)