Gypsies need a Spartacus to liberate them from the tyranny of Fourth Reich

15-Year-Old Roma Girl's Deportation Shakes Up France's Immigration Debate

By Marie Bohner


The deportation of Leonarda Dibrani, a 15-year-old Roma student, continues to rattle France. It is not the first time that a school-aged child has been forced out of the country, but this time all the ingredients were there to expose, to a shocking degree, the contradictions of the country's poorly executed immigration policy, against the backdrop of a rise in deportations of undocumented immigrants, in the stigmatization of Roma people, and in political power of the populist extreme right.

The facts are as follows: On 9 October, just a few months shy of her family's five-year anniversary in France – a milestone which which would have granted them eligibility for a residence permit – the girl was forced to get off the bus that she was riding in on a class field trip. She was put on a plane by the police along with her mother and siblings to join her father, who had been deported the night before, in Kosovo. She has never lived there, she doesn't speak the language, and will be the target of discrimination there.

The Réseau Education sans frontières (Network for Education Without Borders), which lobbies against the deportation of students, quickly mobilized and denounced the actions of “blind and inhumane politicians”.


A political firestorm


As a first move after the outcry, and in the absence of both the Minister of Interior and the President who were both overseas at the time, the Prime Minister ordered an administrative inquiry about the conditions of Leonarda's deportation, promising the family would come back if there was a error.
France's Minister of the Interior Manuel Valls, who oversees policy on migrants and asylum seekers and enjoys high popularity in opinion polls, is ruffling feathers more and more, even within his own party, with his tendency to act alone without consulting the rest of the government.

The government has been weakened. Can one say this? Yes. Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called for an inquiry; Manuel Valls issued a defensive statement. The president of the National Assembly, Claude Bartolone, the very person who could, based on the institutional order, replace the president of the Republic if it were to collapse, publicly denounced the circumstances of the arrest. The President's Party, the PS grew indignant. François Hollande, some 3,000 kilometers from here reacted. Even the political blogs perceived this indignation.

On the eve of school holidays, on the 17 and 18 of October, thousands of secondary school students blocked access to their schools and protested in support of deported undocumented students. The demonstration was meant to demand the return of Leonarda, but it received limited public support from an immigration-weary public.


Lies and imbroglio


In order to sort through what has become the Leonarda Affair, an investigation was requested by the prime minister to understand the context of the deportation. Even before the report of the investigation was made public, word got out that the family was far from exemplary, did not make an effort to integrate into French society, and that the father, aside from having a reputation for violence had lied about his wife's nationality and that of his children, who were all in fact born in Italy.

The most insane part is that if what he (the father) says is true, his children are Italian. They therefore absolutely do have the right to reside in France or anywhere else in the E.U. And if it is the father who has been dishonest with the department of immigration the wife and children are at no risk if called before the French justice system. But are they really of Italian nationality? It is difficult to know as they destroyed their documents.

In fact, the surprising turn of events that certain members of their family are legally Italian may be much ado about nothing. It could be one more scheme, but it is also possible that they just want to escape from Italy. If that is the case, it says a lot about the condition of the “zingari” [gypsies] in Italy. One could still suppose that they themselves don't even know what their actual nationality is. The father would have revealed to the press that his wife and children had Italian papers that they would have destroyed. It's very possible that they didn't have the documents due to the Italian bureaucracy that is slow to untangle the maze of these transnational lives.


Is a return possible?

While the legal experts were pondering the possibility of a compromise for her, President François Hollande announced on the 19 October that because places of academic activity are exempt from deportation, Leonarda could return to France to complete her education, but without her family. The girl, who has publicized her cause with some of the characteristic awkwardness of someone of her age, has publicly refused.

DNA tests have confirmed Sasha Ruseva and Atanas Rusev, a Bulgarian Roma couple, as the biological parents of mystery child Maria, found in Greece.

Maria was found at a Roma camp in central Greece. Police noticed the lack of resemblance between the blonde girl and the adults she was staying with. Christos Salis and Eleftheria Dimopoulou, have since been charged with child abduction. They have insisted the girl was given to them legitimately.

Maria is currently being cared for by the Athens-based charity The Smile of the Child. There have been thousands of inquiries following an appeal to identify her.

Ruseva has reportedly admitted giving up a baby in Greece four years ago, but said she received no money. She worked as an olive picker, deciding to give the child away because she was too poor to bring her up.

One of the pieces of unfinished business in Fourth Reich is the full integration of Gypsies into the societies and nations
where they reside.  For too long, Gypsies have been marginalized and isolated, prevented from contributing their talents and participating in their societies.

We are very troubled to see antigypsy violence and protests, which in some places are increasing and getting worse. It's also an error for any society not to fully educate every child, and in too many places Gypsy children attend subpar, usually segregated, schools. And what is the result of that? Well, then Gypsies themselves begin to feel apathetic, uninvolved, and then that continues the cycle, which has to be broken.

France has failed to include international human rights standards against forced evictions in its domestic legal system. As a result, evictions of informal settlements where Gypsies live generally take place without adequate prior information, consultation or notice to residents.

In most cases, alternative housing is not provided and entire families are left homeless. Gypsies have no choice but to re-establish their homes in another informal settlement elsewhere, and schooling and medical treatment are interrupted as a result.

Gypsies need a Spartacus to liberate them from the tyranny of Fourth Reich. Our hearts go to suffering Gypsies. There are fifteen million Gypsies in Fourth Reich, who are treated like second-class citizens, creatures of a lesser God.  But Gypsies have been living in Europe for many centuries. In the 15th century, Gypsies arrived in Europe from India via Little Egypt, a passage in Northern Greece, where they got their name.

 

In the absence of other alternatives, many migrant Gypsies live in informal settlements for months or years in dire living conditions, perpetually fearing and often being forcibly evicted without adequate prior consultation, information or notice and with limited possibilities in practice to challenge their eviction through the courts.

Significant Gypsies are found in the Balkans, in some Central European states, in Spain, and in France. It's becoming more difficult for Gypsies every single day as they are treated as monkeys. The traveling people, gens du voyage, are suddenly finding themselves on the wrong side of the government, more so than at any other time since World War II.

Long-term housing solutions are very rarely offered to evicted Gypsies, who even struggle to access emergency shelter or other support mechanisms that would enable them to secure adequate accommodation.  Repeated forced evictions have disastrous consequences on Gypsies' health, education and ability to secure an adequate standard of living. Forced out of one informal settlement after another they end up in ever poorer housing conditions, forced to sleep on the streets and in tents until they manage to build another makeshift home.

Government is the #1 enemy of the people and the source of all major problems of humanity.  Anarchy is the best political system.  Basil Venitis, venitis@gmail.com, http://themostsearched.blogspot.com, @Venitis