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By JULIEN PROULT, Associated Press Writer Julien Proult, Associated Press
Writer Thu Aug 19, 11:35 am ET
PARIS France expelled nearly 100 Gypsies, or Roma, to their native Romania on
Thursday as part of a very public effort by conservative President Nicolas
Sarkozy to dismantle Roma camps and sweep them out of the country, the
Immigration Ministry said.
France chartered a flight to Bucharest, which left from the southeastern city
of Lyon with 79 Roma aboard, Immigration Ministry officials said. However,
Romanian border police official Cristian Ene, at Bucharest's Aurel Vlaicu
airport, said only 61 people were aboard. The French Immigration Ministry was
unable to immediately explain the discrepancy.
Fourteen other people were repatriated to Romania aboard a commercial flight
from the Paris region earlier in the day, the French officials said, adding
that another Romania-bound repatriation flight was expected Friday. Additional
flights were scheduled for later this month and September, Romania's Foreign
Ministry said.
Those repatriated Thursday left "on a voluntary basis" and were given small
sums of money euro300 ($386) for each adult and euro100 for children to
help them get back on their feet in their home country, a standard French
practice, officials said.
Roma advocates countered that the repatriations were hardly voluntary, claiming
that those who refused the deal would end up in holding centers and eventually
be sent home without funds.
Alexandre Le Cleve, a spokesman for Rom Europe, said the expulsions were
pointless because nothing prevented those sent back from immediately returning
to France, as many have done in the past.
"For those who left this morning, they can certainly take a plane as early as
tonight and come back to France. There's nothing to prevent this," Le Cleve
told Associated Press Television News in an interview. "Obviously, these people
come back, they are brought to the Romanian border, then come back to France,
can leave again and so on. There are some Roma people who have been sent back
seven or eight times, each time receiving the famous euro300."
Adrian Paraipan, a 37-year-old who was aboard the Lyon flight along with his
wife and three children, said he planned to return to France.
Click image to see photos of the crackdown
AP/Vadim Ghirda
"In two weeks, I will leave again," he said, adding that his family was unable
to make a living in Romania. Another person on the flight, Maria Serban, a
29-year-old mother of four, said her family will also consider going back.
France is allowed to repatriate Gypsies from Romania who as citizens of an EU
member state are allowed to circulate freely within the 27-member bloc if
they are unable to prove they can support themselves while in France, Le Cleve
said.
He suggested, as human rights activists have done in the past, that the
voluntary departures help inflate the total number of annual expulsions, a
figure the government releases to the media with much fanfare.
Foreign-born Gypsies are often seen begging on the streets of France's cities,
often with small children or puppies, and many French people consider them a
nuisance, or worse.
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." Some 50 camps have been
emptied since then, including at least two on Thursday, local officials said.
In the southeastern town of Saint-Martin d'Heres, near Grenoble, about 150 riot
police removed about 100 Roma adults and 45 children Thursday. That evacuation
went smoothly, and no incidents were reported, local officials said. Another 25
Roma were taken from their camp near Lille early Thursday, officials said.
Sarkozy's crackdown on Gypsies came on the heels of much-publicized unrest by
French Roma, who attacked a police station in the center of the country after
the death of Gypsy youth there. The measures are also part of a raft of new
hard-line security measures by Sarkozy, who won election in 2007 on a
tough-on-crime platform.
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.
Romanian President Traian Basescu said, "We understand the problems created by
the Roma camps outside the French cities" but insisted on the "right of every
European citizen to move freely in the EU." Romania, one of Europe's poorest
countries, joined the EU in 2007.
Basescu, who was speaking Thursday in the eastern city of Iasi, pledged to
"cooperate with France to find solutions."
Some critics contend the French crackdown is a cynical ploy to divert attention
from France's economic woes and attract far-right voters in the run-up to the
2012 presidential election. Sarkozy's approval ratings have been weak and a
financial scandal has embroiled a top government official.
Officials insist they are not stigmatizing Roma though Sarkozy's stance had
chilling undertones in a country where authorities sent French Gypsies to
internment camps in France during the occupation. They were kept there until
1946, about two years after France's liberation from the Nazis.
Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux insisted France is being careful "not to
stigmatize 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 authorization," Hortefeux told journalists during
a visit Thursday to the town of Crecy-la-Chapelle, east of Paris.
The government is also facing criticism from French-born Gypsies, known here as
"traveling folk," who have lived in France for centuries and are loath to be
confused with Eastern European Roma.
Hundreds of traveling folk are locked in a stand off with the mayor in
Bordeaux, after officials in the Atlantic coastal city forced them to vacate an
encampment there. The city offered them two alternative sites to set up camp
in, but the families refused, citing inadequate facilities.
___
Associated Press writers Alina Wolfe Murray in Bucharest, Oleg Cetinic in
Crecy-la-Chapelle, France, and Jenny Barchfield in Paris contributed to this
report.