This results in disproportionate policing of these communities, including stop and searches.Ĥ) Roma are disproportionately involved in human trafficking. The report found officers in 43 different police forces were more likely to presume that Romani and Traveller people were perpetrators than victims. A 2018 UK report found that this attitude is just as prevalent amongst the police. There is a tendency, reinforced by biased reporting, to see Romani people as criminals rather than victims. Romani and Traveller people are sometimes violent, but no more or less so than any other type of people. Often incidents of individual violence are the preface to mob violence and collective punishment against entire Romani communities. Whatever the incident, it is usually reported alongside calls to curb ‘out-of-control Gypsy crime’. From Bulgaria to Bristol, stories abound of Romani and Traveller people brutally attacking members of the public, invariably in headlines splashed across tabloid papers. This is a favourite of keyboard racists who often recount a time when a Romani person was involved in a violent altercation with them, or someone they know, or someone they heard about once down the pub. More recently, attacks on Romani communities erupted in Paris this year after rumours of Roma in white vans stealing children circulated on social media.ģ) Romani people are aggressive and commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime. Shortly after the Maria case a little girl and a little boy were taken away from their families in Ireland for DNA testing amidst fear that they had been snatched by Roma. The real damage was done by the media however, and fake cases of Gypsy child snatching popped up all over Europe. The little girl was still taken into state care though, as were five of her siblings. The Romani couple were only released after DNA tests proved that the child, known to the world’s papers as Maria the ‘blond angel’, was not in fact an abductee. In 2013, a blond, fair-skinned blue-eyed Romani child in Greece was assumed to have been kidnapped by Roma and her guardians were arrested. In 2010, British tabloids reported that Roma may have stolen Madeleine McCann in Portugal. In Italy, Roma were driven from an area of Naples in 2008 by an angry mob using molotov cocktails after rumours circulated they had stolen a six-month-old baby. Yet it is the completely unfounded myth of the ‘Gypsy child snatcher’ that still sparks mob violence and witch-hunts across our continent. The same happens in Hungary, where the ERRC found that Roma account for 80% of all children in state care in one county, despite only representing 20% of the local population. A European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) report from 2018 shows that Romani and Traveller children in England are three times more likely to be taken from their families and put into care than any other child. In fact throughout history and into the modern day it has usually gone the other way around, with Romani children being taken away from their families by the state to try and erase their ethnic identity through assimilation. But there is no evidence of this ever actually happening. One of the most pernicious myths about Romani people is that they are predisposed to periodically stealing children from white people. Begging Romani families may earn more as a group, but they don’t earn enough to get themselves out of desperate poverty. But begging is not a lucrative trade, no matter what the Daily Mail tells you. Poor people living in close knit families and communities certainly share their wealth amongst themselves to a greater degree than rich people do. The facts just don’t add up however, and there is no evidence of higher rates of criminality amongst Romani communities than amongst any other.ġ) Romani begging rings exploit your generosity to earn loads of money.ĭid you hear the one about the Roma begging syndicate? Romani people supposedly coordinate a begging racket which spans the entire European continent and brings in thousands - no - millions of euros to fund lavish lifestyles in Eastern Europe. It is a lie peddled by the factually lazy that Romani people are fundamentally criminal by nature. According to the tabloids the Roma, Europe’s most marginalised and impoverished ethnic minority, are in fact a sophisticated network of thieves, traffickers, and con-artists. Bigger than the Italian or Russian Mafias, more close-knit than the Triads, more dangerous than the Mexican cartels. Have you heard of the biggest organised crime ring in the world? No, not the bankers. Five lies you’ve been told about Romani people - writes Jonathan Lee
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