ITALY:THE ITALIAN government's plan to fingerprint Gypsy children was condemned yesterday as a discriminatory "ethnic headcount" that insulted the country's Roma population.
The interior minister, Roberto Maroni, said the proposal, which would affect all Gypsies living in camps, would make it easier to identify child beggars. He said the government also planned to make it easier to remove children from Roma parents who sent their offspring out to beg on the streets instead of to school.
But a senior opposition member, Rosy Bindi, said the plan presupposed that all Gypsy minors were criminals. "This is a frankly unacceptable ethnic headcount."
Vincenzo Spadafora, head of Unicef in Italy, said he was "seriously concerned", adding that the government would be acting in a discriminatory fashion "unless it fingerprinted every child in Italy".
Silvio Berlusconi's government is introducing a series of measures aimed at reducing crime, for which immigrants are increasingly being blamed - including thousands of Romanian Gypsies who have entered Italy since Romania joined the EU last year.
Mr Maroni said the fingerprinting would get under way this year, as newly appointed Roma commissioners start carrying out a census of Italy's roughly 150,000-strong Roma population. - (Guardian service)