Controversy as Sarkozy expels scores of Roma

FRANCE expelled scores of Roma, packing them on planes and flying them back to Romania yesterday at the start of a crackdown ordered by President Nicolas Sarkozy which has drawn strong criticism.

A planeload of around 60 Roma landed at Bucharest’s Aurel Vlaicu airport in the early afternoon, the first expulsion since Sarkozy last month vowed action against Roma, Gypsy and Traveller communities.

The policy is attracting increasing concern, both at home and abroad, from those who fear it discriminates against one of the European Union’s most vulnerable and impoverished communities.

Sarkozy has linked Roma to crime, calling their camps sources of trafficking, exploitation of children and prostitution.

On July 28, he pledged that illegal Gypsy camps would be “systematically evacuated”. Several dozen camps have been evacuated since then.

Sarkozy’s crackdown on Gypsies came on the heels of much-publicised riots by French Roma, who attacked a police station in the centre of the country after the death of Gypsy youth there.

The measures are also part of a raft of new hardline security measures by Sarkozy, who came to power in 2007 on a tough-on-crime platform.

Yesterday the group flew from the French city of Lyon, where they were bused to the airport under police escort and boarded without incident.

A total 93 Roma were to be flown out yesterday, with flights to Bucharest and the western city of Timisoara due to take hundreds more today, and on August 26, with each adult granted €300 and each minor €100.

With unease growing over the roundups using tactics that one member of Sarkozy’s ruling party compared to those of Nazi-era France, the interior ministry insisted that each case had been looked at individually.

Romania’s president Traian Basescu said the expulsions showed the need for a Europe-wide plan on integrating Roma communities, while Foreign Minister Teodor Baconschi warned against “xenophobic reactions” in the wake of the economic downturn.

Baconschi said he “hopes” that all legal procedures have been duly applied for these “expulsions”.

Writing in French newspaper Liberation, Robert Kushen, director of the European Roma Rights Centre, criticised the French government for using the Roma “to show it is being tough when it comes to law and order“.

However, Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux insisted France is being careful “not to stigmatise any community,” but said the government can’t just let people occupy land illegally.

“Simply everyone understands we are enforcing simple rules: One cannot just illegally occupy land without authorisation,” Hortefeux told journalists.