A lively demonstration gathered outside the French embassy in London today to protest against the French government’s brutal expulsion of Roma people.
The demonstration was part of coordinated protests across Europe, organised by the European Network Against Racism.
Scores of Roma camps have been broken up by French police, and President Sarkozy has vowed that there will be 300 dismantled within three months. Roma people, including young children, have been forcibly deported.
‘Stop the deportations’
The London protest (see pictures below) was organised at just three days’ notice by the Irish Travellers Movement in Britain and supported by UAF. Protestors chanted “Roma rights are human rights”, “Stop the deportations” and “Sarkozy has got to go”. A delegation delivered a petition against the attacks on Roma to the French embassy.
Pics show: demonstrators with placards attacking Sarkozy and calling for equal rights for Roma. Florence (above), who is a French Roma woman, addressed the protest, as did UAF’s Simon Assaf (left).
More protests
Thousands of people marched in Paris and other French towns in protest against the government’s attacks on Roma. See this report and video from the BBC.
‘Round-ups’
In France, many antiracists have attacked Sarkozy’s brutal policy towards the Roma. One MP from Sarkozy’s own party used the term “rafles” – the French word for “roundups” – to bring home what the policy means. The word is associated with the Second World War roundup of Jews by French police on behalf of the occupying Nazis.
The new attacks on the Roma carry a frightening echo of the Holocaust, when around half a million Roma people were murdered by the Nazis alongside six million Jewish victims.
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