Roma witch hunt

"Explicit racism" so damn lame, how about the explicit racism of the Romanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians who have had these people living in their countries for anything up to 1,000 years and still haven't managed to assimilate them and continue to make them live on the fringes of their society like some sort of social pariahs.

The unfortunate case of the little Irish girl followed hot on the heels of the case in Greece, where incidentally a cache of arms and stolen credit cards were also recovered when the police raided this couple's house. The mother of the little boy, Ben Needham who disappeared some 20 years ago in Greece is convinced he was taken by gypsies, we can't possibly know whether that was the case or not, but she did say that the police were too intimidated by them at the time to do a proper search of their encampment. It is also a fact that both egalitarian Germany and socialist France are struggling with the influx of Roma Gypsies living in their respective countries. Here in London we all know that SOME live by begging, scamming and pick pocketing this is a fact and it's common for stolen goods to be recovered from them when police do go in to their encampments. For sometime there have been a number of them pitched up in Park Lane where they sleep, urinate, defecate and generally harass tourists and people going about their daily work. Local business have to swill the pavements down with disinfectant in the morning. They have been deported en mass from many countries including Italy where they were at one time camped up and down the banks of the River Tiber and where a couple of men among them were responsible for a particularly horrible murder of the wife of an Italian admiral on her way home from shopping. When I was last in Dublin a local taxi driver pointed out a large roundabout on a busy road where they had set up camp.

However, I concede that to an extent they have become demonised, but I would also suggest that this is not entirely without justification. Instead of blaming the host countries as racists, for not wanting to put up with in certain instances, totally unacceptable behaviour, perhaps we could point the finger more at the counties where they have emanated from who clearly revile these people and make no attempt to assimilate them in any way and where the Roma people themselves say they feel under threat.

I do hope the little one involved in this is not too distressed about what has gone on and I think she should have been left in the care of her parents whilst tests where completed, but yes "justifiable" is a good word to use in this case I think.I do tend to think what has gone on in Greece has heightened peoples thoughts on the subject of child abduction and if it results in children being returned to their true families I think it can't be a bad thing to stay vigilent.

All very difficult. I did think it was a bit of a knee jerk reaction, but as in all child protection situations, the safety of the child comes first - but with enough evidence to support it. And there didn't seem to be much evidence, did there? The word "justifiable", used by Iam 64 is a key word here.

I heard an Irish spokesman on the Today programme saying that the authorities were obliged to investigate any report of suspected abuse under the child protection guidelines -surely that has to be right.
It's a matter for the professionals involved to decide what is appropriate in an individual case - I don't know enough about the case, nor enough about child protection, to comment.
But it's dangerous for professionals, whether they're social workers, police, or healthcare professionals, to back off cases simply because of the fear of being accused of racism.

Working with the traveling communities presents some complex issues, not least of which the fact they're travellers and it isn't uncommon for families to move on during police/social work investigations into the welfare of children. Having said that, there is no doubt that the travelling communities are often subjected to racism.
I'm not defending the action taken by the guarda in this case. I don't know enough about the law in Eire, but I expect that like the police here, they have powers for the removal of a child if the child's welfare is at immediate risk. This doesn't sound to have fitted the legal test for immediate risk. If there were justifiable reasons to request DNA testing, and the parents agreed, that's what should have happened, with the child remaining at home. The risk of course, is they disappear and no doubt the police would have been criticised if the child had indeed been trafficked or abducted.

This appears to be another case where the police will be damned, what-ever they do. They just can't seem to get anything right these days and are blamed for all sorts of things.

phoenix sorry but I agree with bluebell on this one. There was no question of neglect or abuse, merely that someone thought that a blonde, blue eyed girl in a Roma family MUST have been stolen or abducted. At the very least the police could have left the wee girl at home while they carried out investigations into the entirely spurious allegations. Can you imagine such a draconian response, indeed any action at all, if someone spotted and reported a child who looked nothing like the rest of their Irish family? Undoubtedly a clear cut case of racism to my mind.

What makes you think it's "explicit" racism?

Surely there has been enough in the media recently about the "authorities" not doing enough to look at potential cases of, for want of a better term "wrong doing". There was plenty of criticism for the lack of action.

I don't see the case for racism here, although admittedly it's unfortunate that the two most recent cases in Greece and Ireland have involved families in the Roma community.

Sorry, bluebell but I get a little tired of the playing of the racism card. Surely we all want the protection of children to be the main factor in any case of this kind.

It's the case in Ireland which followed the Greek case. The police took the girl away (7 yrs old) pending DNA tests - I'm just horrified at that and the explicit racism

Was she found to be their child? Must admit I have missed most of this. I'm not happy with sweeping generalisations about any section of society, bluebell .