I was more active generally in anti-racism in education.

We definititely need more people like you back in the UK, DD.
I know it’s hard to believe, but there has been a steady increase in racist incidents in British schools over the years. Instead of an improvement in race relations in schools (after the Macpherson Report), we’re actually seeing a deterioration:

http://www.channel4.com/news/a.....ols/529297

Unfortunately, it’s the parents who are to blame, they are instilling racist, xenophobic and islamophobic attitudes into their kids from an early age – i think the parents should be educated more than the kids!
It’s disheartening to think that these parents were young once and going to school at the time when you were probably an activist in anti-racism in British schools. Haven’t they learned anything?

The first video and news article you posted did not mention that they were Roma,hence the confusion. Anyway, that does not take away from the shameful behaviour towards them.

I wasn’t involved in Roma rights while I was in England. I was more active generally in anti-racism in education.

Up to 20 families fled their homes off the Lisburn Road in the south of the city last night following repeated attacks on their houses. The 115 Romanians, most of whom are understood to be from the Roma community, were taken to the church in police mini-buses.’
http://www.blather.net/zeitgei....._belf.html

Another blot on our terrible record towards the gypsy and traveller communities in Britain.

Were you active in campaigning for Romany Gypsy human rights in Britain, DD?

In the USA, the police would have cordoned off the area and kept people at a distance until the investigation was complete,

In the USA, during hurricane Katrina, there were thousands of bodies strewn all over New Orleans for weeks on end, left there for days just because they happened to be black (and this “insensitivity” is from the the richest country in the world).

When blacks were shown on TV taking food from abandoned supermarkets to feed their children, they were described as “looters”. When whites were shown on TV, they were described as “looking for food”……So, before you get on your high horse to criticise southern Europeans for “insensitivity” and “lack of good cordon control” and other condescending crap against southern European people, look closer to home..(but you never miss an opportunity to swing your morality hammer at the inferior Hispanics, Greeks, Degos, Wops, Mexicans and Chicanos, do you George? You’ve been doing it since 2005 in here – but not anymore ).

DD, I know how involved you are with Roma issues so i thought you might be interested in the latest example of discriminationa against the Roma community..

You may have seen this already but this happened today and i am truly horrified:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSQ1siHMQBE

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/200.....a1618.html

…so much for “tolerant Britain”.

My take on the photo of the Italians sunbathing in the backdrop of the Roma children’s bodies is that the fault lies with the Italian authorities. In the USA, the police would have cordoned off the area and kept people at a distance until the investigation was complete, and the coroner (CSI) etc arrived to remove the bodies.

To me, it seems that the sunbathers were just being selfish and would have stayed there no matter who had died (Roma or Italian persons).

Just a case of insensitivity and lack of good cordon control.

Just my two cents..

Some years ago, a Roma mother of 13 children and grandmother of many more, while searching for anything valuable to her family in the Aspropyrgos/Liosia waste dump, was buried alive. No one cared and no one did anyhting.

Some years later a worker at the same dump was buried alive and the dump closed for many hours if not one day, with all authorities trying to find his body, successfully I think.

No other comment.

I don’t want us to be like that but we seem incapable of anything else. I know we can’t walk around crying and weeping over every injustice that happens. That would probably render us utterly useless to do anything at all. But we can all care about our fellow human beings. If perhaps we saw ALL people as people, we would be less able to treat others in such disgusting ways.

and the fact that while this is everywhere, there are people in each war zone who still have the capacity to not only be moved but to move others. (And I am WAY too cynical and misanthropic a person for Pollyanna points of view; to me, this empathy and action is the grim and desperate requirement of being a human being, not an optional feel-good fiction.)

Anyway.

Writing about these things should be bearing witness in a way that implicates the reader in a deeply personal way and demands action and change and human improvement because all our lives depend on it. (And when I say things like *that,* people say it’s ‘histrionic.’ Well, the privileged ones for whom this is all abstract do.)

I remain hugely appreciative of the courageous, honest, and empathic witness in your writing about the Roma people in the Mediterranean, DD. Writing this way requires skinlessness on the part of the writer, and few are able or willing to do this, and it’s the only kind of writing that can really effect change, I believe.

I remain completely incapable of *not seeing* that this is us, regardless of who or where the ‘us’ is. I understand Xenos’ point about … Italy has been treading a road back to fascism for several years now, and Berlusconi takes it one leap further. … My advice is to avoid anything to do with Italy…, but the thing is, America is practicing this very kind of Fascism on immigrants here, and so are many, many other countries. I do not believe racism and discrimination are something we can avoid. Refuse our tourist dollars to Italy with a public statement about why, sure, or if we live there, join in the action of flooding the authorities with hundreds of thousands of non-Roma fingerprints. Find our ways to be activist wherever we are – active-ist – yes. But just wait it out? Didn’t work in 1939-1945. Go somewhere else? Where?

Violetta and Cristina, 12 and 13 year old cousins.

And the cap on the heartbreak, and the most egregious illustration of the psychosis, for me:

It appears that several people present on the beach filmed the tragic event with their video phones and that the police have acquired some of these images. We have asked the authorities if we can take a look at these videos and meet the two surviving children in order to throw light [on the] case…

Shades of Du’a Khalel Aswad.

What, going to go back to the office after holiday and say to your friends over lunch: ‘hey, you want to see the gypsies drown?’ Okay, maybe one or two of these people who filmed their death turned their video footage over to the police voluntarily, but WTF were they doing filming it instead of trying to help them in the first place? In what world can they live with themselves? Okay, yeah, I know. In this one.

We are sick unto death. And you know, we are responsible for it. We.

.

Thanks for the space to make a really long, long comment. I’m still really upset. And thank you again for writing this DD.