Sir, – Two cases have emerged in Europe, where the identities of children found in the care of the Roma community are being questioned. This has aroused a media-led frenzy.
Therefore, to put it into perspective, let it be known that the Roma community has never waged war on children, it has never placed bombs in the presence of children and has never used drone-strikes against children.
In the past 10 years in Britain or Ireland, no Roma person has been involved in the disappearance and subsequent murder of missing children. In the US, where thousands of children go missing every year, no Roma involvement is mentioned. Since the end of the second World War, Roma people have become extremely impoverished and displaced (just as many Irish did following the Famine), and are viewed as pariahs by many of their own “equal” fellow-European citizens.
Unlike the other persecuted minority at that time, the Jewish people, the Roma have nowhere to go and no political powerbase and are now simply used to further the prejudices of extreme right-wing political movements in Europe.
Of course if the Roma minority were not there then who could we blame for the ills of humanity in Europe? Maybe the trolls or the gingerbread-man? – Yours, etc,
EUGENE TANNAM,
Monalea Park,
Firhouse, Dublin 24.