ROMA EXPULSION ORDERS CALLED INTO QUESTION BY LAWYERS (France)

At dawn on August 14, seventy Roma were evicted from the house in which they were squatting in the city of Montreuil, just south of Paris. Fourteen men were separated from their wives and children and placed into police custody. As evening neared, the men left the police station after each had been handed an official document: an Obligation to Leave the French Territory (OQTF), a month’s notice to pack their bags. The document clearly states the reason for their expulsion: they’ve lived in France for over three months, have insufficient financial resources to stay and no family obligations in the country. In accordance with European law, this gives France sufficient reason to demand their departure. The group’s lawyers, Helene Clement and Guillaume Traynard, think otherwise. The documents issued to the 14 Roma families are identical, save the blank space where their names and dates of birth were filled in by hand. Clearly, Clement and Traynard, argue, French authorities have failed to check the status of each of the Roma.

The Montreuil eviction does not appear to be an isolated case. Since 2008 French immigrant advocacy groups have voiced their concern over prewritten and identical declarations presented to all occupants of evacuated Roma camps across the country. “We can’t write it off as mere negligence by some policemen. It is clearly a national policy,” says Claudia Charles, who works with the French organisation Information and Support Group for Immigrants (GISTI). French and European laws are clear on this point: the personal circumstances of each OQTF candidate must be reviewed to determine their legal status. “The only thing these men have in common is that they belong to the Roma community,” says Traynard. “It’s an obvious singling-out of a population.” Among the 14 men, many insist they have not spent three months in France. Their assertion, however, is impossible to verify. As European citizens, they have no obligation to register in their host country, or to have their passports stamped when crossing the border. The evicted Roma families are now living in a house lent to them by the Montreuil city authorities. Their lawyers have filed a motion to overturn the OQTF’s issued on August 14.

The Roma question
Sitting on one of four double beds that fill the main room on the ground floor, Badarut Lunca, 33, speaks jokingly about his day at the police station. “The translator told us we had to leave France, but we were not obligated to return to Romania. We can just go to Belgium and return.” Like all his Roma friends, Lunca has no intention of returning to Romania. The European Research Council on Roma (CERR), a Budapest based pro-Roma advocacy group, says it has documented five cases identical to Montreuil’s in the last two months. But its indictment of French authorities goes beyond bureaucratic negligence. “The OQTF’s being churned out are not the whole story. When we talked to people who had been handed the documents we found a general climate of fear and intimidation by law enforcement agents,” says Victoria Vasey, director of legal affairs at CERR. On September 29, the European Commissioner for Justice, Viviane Reding, gave Paris an October 15th deadline to demonstrate that it is carrying out Roma expulsions in compliance with European law. “The Commission wants to know if France failed to implement directives and the procedural rights of EU citizens in a systematic way,” said Reding’s spokesman, Matthew Newman. An unsatisfactory response, the European Commission has warned, could compel it to take France to the European Court of Justice. But immigrant rights groups fear that for the sake of appeasement, the Commission could limit its investigation to legal concerns. “Where France is guilty is in its procedure,” decries GISTI’s Charles.

Burden of proof
“We will bring forth all the evidence, all the necessary guarantees, that there was individual examination [of each Roma expulsion case] in August," immigration minister Eric Besson told France’s Senate television channel on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the lawyer Guillaume Traynard says his clients are “sure to win” since they are European citizens and are protected by EU laws. A court in Montreuil will hear their case early next year. In Montreuil the Roma families huddle around their lawyer as he distributes a new official document. A court paper stating that an appeal of their OQTF is under consideration. “If the police stop you, show them this. They cannot deport you with it,” explains the lawyer. Nodding as they accept the document, the group looks far from convinced.

 France 24

Geert Wilders trial continues with prosecution case (Netherlands)

On Tuesday, the prosecutors Birgit van Roessel and Paul Velleman said the MP should be found not guilty of the concept of group insult.

By likening the Koran to Hitler's Mein Kampf, Wilders was focusing on Islam and the Koran, rather than Muslims, even if the statement can be considered upsetting, the public prosecutors said during court hearings in Amsterdam.

The public prosecution department was forced to take the case by the high court after anti-racism campaigners protested at its refusal to prosecute Wilders.

The defence will begin its case later this month.

Dutch News

One New York hate crime suspect is released while another is arrested (USA)

He faces similar charges as the other suspects, which include assault as a hate crime, police said.

One of the other 10 suspects was released on bail Thursday after a hearing in Bronx Criminal Court.

Ruddy Vargas-Perez faces 10 charges in the case, including four counts of robbery, second-degree gang assault, hate crime, harassment, unlawful imprisonment and criminal possession of a weapon. His bond was set at $25,000.

Defense attorneys for the nine other suspects waived bail for their clients, all of whom appeared Thursday in court. Attorneys had been assigned to some of them just moments before.

The attorneys also reserved the right for their clients to testify before a grand jury.

Two court dates have been set after a grand jury considers indictments: Some will appear on October 21 and others on October 22.

Vargas-Perez was surrounded by friends and family after the court appearance.

Vargas-Perez's attorney, Benjamin Heinrich, said Tuesday after his client's arraignment, "He had nothing to do with any of that horrific conduct, and he was as mortified as we all are by what happened to that poor man."

Vargas-Perez's family also maintained his innocence in the October 3 attacks.

The case involved three victims being held against their will by several assailants who beat them in an unoccupied apartment and sodomized two of them, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said last week.

A fourth victim was beaten and robbed in connection with the attacks, which New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg described as "torture."

The string of attacks began when members of a street gang calling themselves the Latin King Goonies learned that an aspiring member is gay, authorities said.

According to Kelly, the 17-year-old pledge was forced into the apartment around 3:30 a.m. Sunday and questioned about his contact with a 30-year-old man. He was thrown into a wall, forced to strip, hit in the head with a beer can, cut with a box cutter and sodomized with the wooden handle of a plunger, the commissioner said.

His assailants let him go, but threatened to hurt him or his family if he talked, Kelly said.

The victim went to a hospital for treatment, but said his injuries were from an attack by unknown assailants on the street, the commissioner said.

The same day, another 17-year-old was beaten and questioned about the same 30-year-old man, robbed of jewelry and held against his will in the same apartment, Kelly said.

About an hour after that, the 30-year-old man was lured to the location where the second 17-year-old was being held, was forced to strip and was tied to a chair opposite the teenager, Kelly said. The teenager was forced to hit the older male several times in the face and burn him with cigarettes, after which the suspects assaulted him with their fists and a chain and sodomized him with a small baseball bat, the commissioner said.

The 30-year-old man was later dumped outside his home, the commissioner added. Five of the suspects then went to the apartment the 30-year-old victim shared with his older brother and let themselves in using a key they'd taken from the man, Kelly said. There, they beat the man's brother and demanded money from him, Kelly said.

When the man refused, the assailants put a cell phone to his ear and he heard his younger brother say that he was being held against his will and to "give them the money," the commissioner said. The older brother told the suspects where they could find the money, after which they tied him up and left the apartment, Kelly added.

Ten of the suspects live in the Bronx, police said.

Pending charges include unlawful imprisonment, abduction, sodomy, assault, robbery, and menacing, all as hate crimes, the commissioner said.

CNN

Serbian thugs are the toys of nationalist and neo-fascist leaders (UK)

For the second time in three days Serbian thugs have laid waste to a European city in riots that have combined wanton and random violence with organisational talent and political backing. Yesterday in Genoa, the Scottish referee Craig Thomson had first to delay the kick-off for the Euro 2012 qualifier between Italy and Serbia by 45 minutes because of fans' rioting, and then call the game off after seven minutes. Earlier the angry young men from Belgrade went on the rampage in the Mediterranean port and Uefa have opened a "full and thorough" investigation into the incidents.

"Serbia is a land of sporting heroes, not of vandals and hooligans," Snezana Markovic-Samardzic, the sports minister, said. From Monica Seles to Novak Djokovic, there have been ample heroes. But the hooligans have been a fixture of Serbian life for decades, often used and abused by ruthless politicians, warlords and organised crime.

On Sunday many of the same hooligans turned the streets of Belgrade into a battlefield, ostensibly protesting against a Gay Pride march through the city, but running rings around the heavy police presence. The street violence was orchestrated politically by ultra-nationalist and neo‑fascist leaders. The rioters attacked the offices of the party of the president, Boris Tadic, and the offices of other political enemies, state television company and relatively liberal media outlets. They were egged on by extreme-right politicians who blamed the violence on the government for allowing a gay parade.

Extreme, aggressive nationalism was also on display in the stands at Genoa. Serbian fans burned Albanian flags and shouted slogans such as "kill a Shiptar" (a pejorative term for an Albanian). The message was one of recalcitrant and violent nationalism – that Serbia is keeping the breakaway Albanian province of Kosovo which declared independence two years ago.

Government officials see the two outbreaks of rioting as linked and distinctly political. "After these two incidents, I can say that these hooligans are a part of organised groups with financial support," Slobodan Homen, a justice ministry official, said. "Opposition parties are not directly involved but are exploiting the situation."

Football riots are common in former Yugoslavia, recently in Bosnia and Croatia and particularly in Belgrade where the big rivalry between Red Star and Partizan routinely results in tribal warring. High unemployment, no future prospects, 20 years of war, state collapse, Nato bombing and criminalisation all mean that bad behaviour from Belgrade youth is hardly surprising. But the hooligan problem has always also been a political toy.

The delije – or hardmen – that are the Red Star supporters have played several roles over the past 20 years: from brutal foot soldiers for militia leaders in the ethnic cleansing campaigns in Bosnia and Croatia; to revolutionary masses in the throng that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic as president in 2000; to street fighters in the neo-fascist campaign against the government, against the rest of Europe, against the US.

An early signal of the nationalist turmoil tearing old Yugoslavia apart came in 1990, when the Red Star hardmen fought Dinamo Zagreb's hooligans at the Maksimir in the Croatian capital. The wars started a year later.

The Belgrade thugs were led by Zeljko Raznatovic, aka Arkan, the gangland boss and warlord who later used the Red Star fan base to recruit his Tigers militia to carry out atrocities in Croatia and Bosnia. He was assassinated in 2000, having been indicted for crimes against humanity by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

The rioting in Belgrade on Sunday was explicitly political. Extremist political leaders were arrested and police say they recovered detailed riot plans from the detainees. Officials also believe the estimated 3,000 that went to Genoa were acting on orders from leaders in Belgrade. "We had reports this was going to happen," Tomislav Karadzic, the head of the Serbian Football Association, said. "These kids are just doing what they're told. Those issuing the orders are in Belgrade."

That football hooliganism in Serbia is as much a political as a social problem is clear from current attempts by prosecutors to have 14 fan organisations banned. They bear names such as Brain Damage, the Ultras, Alcatraz and the Belgrade Boys. They should be outlawed because of "activity aimed at the violent destruction of the constitutional order, violation of human and minority rights, and inciting racial, national and religious hatred", said the prosecutor's office.

Savo Milosevic, the former Aston Villa striker and Serbia's most-capped player, also saw a political agenda behind the Genoa carnage. "It's one of the blackest days in the history of Serbian football. Some people are again using football for certain other aims."

Ian Traynor for the Guardian

Beautiful Budapest is Returning to Fascism (Hungary)

The beautiful Budapest and much of the rest of Hungary is returning to fascism. Recent elections in Hungary have put the right wing Fidisz Party and the anti-Semitic Jobbik Party in power. New laws have given the government control over much of the media. Civil servants can now be fired without cause. The Chair of the anti-Semitic Party, Gabor Vona, recently showed off a uniform that was reminicent of the Nazi party during WWII.

Hungary embraced their version of the Nazi party during WWII. Called the ArrowArrow Cross Party, it was still sending Jews to their deaths after Adolf Eichmann had fled. After WWII Hungary became a satellite country of the USSR.

It is troubling to see a country that seems on the surface so civilized and accomplished turn to a disgraced and hate inspired philosophy.

"Neo-fascist thugs attacked RomaRoma families, killing six people in a series of murders. The right-wing populists of the Fidesz Party won a two-thirds majority in the parliament, while the anti-Semitic Jobbik party captured 16.7 percent of the vote, making it the third-largest party in Hungary, next to the Socialists. Unknown vandals defiled the Holocaust Memorial with bloody pigs' feet"Der Spiegel

Watch a video report. Fascists on the Rise Hungary

Ainsworth backs Racism: Kick It Out at Shrewsbury Town (UK)

Shrewsbury winger Lionel Ainsworth has cited racist abuse as a teenager as one of the reasons for  backing the Racism: Kick It Out day at the Prostar Meadow.

"It was in a youth game when I was 15. I didn't make a fuss, but I was mad inside," he told BBC Radio Shropshire.

As an ambassador for the scheme, the 23-year-old believes Kick It Out has helped improve things over the years.

"There's not the huge abuse I've heard about from the past, plus there's been a big influx of foreign players."
Ainsworth has the backing of his team-mates at Shrewsbury to mark the Kick It Out fortnight.

"Old fashioned banter could be hurtful. Nowadays it's all about what's happened on a night out, things like that," he added.

"Whether players are black, white, yellow, whatever - everyone's got to be protected, especially younger ones, and the dressing room wants to see this through.

"My mum was brave to marry a black man, and she told me a few stories about those days.
"I'm thinking about my mother, my friends, everyone who's suffered abuse.

"Nowadays it's more noticeable when things are said, but it is better now. I'm grateful for the Kick It Out campaign, and so are many players.

"I'm a black Englishman and very proud of it. I've played for England at various levels, and I want to get to the top and play for them again."

The 2010 Kick It Out campaign lasts for a fortnight, Shrewsbury starting their contribution to it at their home game with Lincoln on 16 October.

BBC News