The Independent makes the mistake of assuming that Italians have shame.
Italy = worse than Poland
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-picture-that-shames-italy-873743.html
QuoteThe picture that shames Italy
It's another balmy weekend on the beach in Naples. By the rocks, a couple soak up the southern Italian sun. A few metres away, their feet poking from under beach towels that cover their faces and bodies, lie two drowned Roma children.
The girls, Cristina, aged 16, and Violetta, 14, were buried last night as the fallout from the circumstances of their death reverberated throughout Italy.
It is an image that has crystallised the mounting disquiet in the country over the treatment of Roma, coming after camps have been burnt and the government has embarked on a bid to fingerprint every member of the minority. Two young Roma sisters had drowned at Torregaveta beach after taking a dip in treacherous waters. Their corpses were recovered from the sea – then left on the beach for hours while holidaymakers continued to sunbathe and picnic around them.
They had come to the beach on the outskirts of Naples on Saturday with another sister, Diana, nine, and a 16-year-old cousin, Manuela, to make a little money selling coloured magnets and other trinkets to sunbathers. But it was fiercely hot all day and, about 2pm, the girls surrendered to the temptation of a cooling dip – even though they apparently did not know how to swim.
"The sea was rough on Saturday," said Enzo Esposito, the national treasurer of Opera Nomadi, Italy's biggest Roma organisation. "Christina and Violetta went farther out than the other two, and a big wave came out of nowhere and dashed them on to the rocks. For a few moments, they disappeared; Manuela, who was in shallow water with Diana, came to the shore, helped out by people on the beach, and ran to try and get help."
Other reports said that lifeguards from nearby private beaches also tried to help, without success. "When Manuela and Diana came back," Esposito went on, "the bodies of her cousins had reappeared, and they were already dead."
It was the sort of tragedy that could happen on any beach. But what happened next has stunned Italy. The bodies of the two girls were laid on the sand; their sister and cousin were taken away by the police to identify and contact the parents. Some pious soul donated a couple of towels to preserve the most basic decencies. Then beach life resumed.
The indifference was taken as shocking proof that many Italians no longer have human feelings for the Roma, even though the communities have lived side by side for generations.
"This was the other terrible thing," says Mr Esposito, "besides the fact of the girls drowning: the normality. The way people continued to sunbathe, for three hours, just metres away from the bodies. They could have gone to a different beach. It's not possible that you can watch two young people die then carry on as if nothing happened. It showed a terrible lack of sensitivity and respect."
The attitudes of ordinary Italians towards the Roma, never warm, have been chilling for years, aggravated by sensational news coverage of crimes allegedly committed by Gypsies, and a widespread confusion of Roma with ordinary, non-Roma Romanians, who continue to arrive. The Berlusconi government has launched a high-profile campaign against the community, spearheaded by the programme announced by the Interior Minister, Roberto Marroni, to fingerprint the entire Roma population. The move has been condemned inside Italy and beyond as a return to the racial registers introduced by the Fascist regime in the 1930s. The fingerprinting of Roma in Naples began on 19 June.
The most senior Catholic in Naples, Cardinal Crescenzo Sepe, was quick to point out the coarsening of human sentiment which the behaviour on the beach represented. But the Mayor of Monte di Procida, the town on the outskirts of the city where Torregaveta beach is located, defended his citizens' behaviour.
When the Roma girls got into difficulties, he said: "There was a race among the bathers and the coastguard and the carabinieri to try and help them." He rejected the claim that the indifference of the bathers was due to the fact that the girls were Roma.
The two cousins were given a Christian Orthodox funeral service in the Roma camp in Naples, attended by 300 Roma and city and regional representatives.
In a speech yesterday, Mr Maroni proposed, "for humanitarian reasons", granting Italian citizenship to all Roma children in Italy abandoned by their parents.
The Italians and the Roma
Roma have been living in Italy for seven centuries and the country is home to about 150,000, who live mainly in squalid conditions in one of around 700 encampments on the outskirts of major cities such as Rome, Milan and Naples. They amount to less than 0.3 per cent of the population, one of the lowest proportions in Europe. But their poverty and resistance to integration have made them far more conspicuous than other communities. And the influx of thousands more migrants from Romania in the past year has confirmed the view of many Italians that the Gypsies and their eyesore camps are the source of all their problems. The ethnic group is often blamed for petty theft and burglaries. According to a recent newspaper survey, more than two thirds of Italians want Gypsies expelled, whether they hold Italian passports or not.
Arivederci Roma?
Couple of points:
-disgusting behavior by the Italians in this particular case, no doubt about it, but in regards to the general issue one must, as always, raise the question: if the Roma always manage to totally alienate themselves from settled-down populations, even those who otherwise co-exist peacefully with other minorities, maybe just MAYBE, just for a tincy-wincy bit this is influenced by the unique aspects of their culture and it's suggested behavioral patterns toward outsiders. As I said, just maybe.
-non-Roman Romanians? :huh:
Unless they stank I'd probably have no clue there were corpses on the beach nearby.
Quote from: Tamas on January 30, 2012, 05:10:32 AM
Couple of points:
-disgusting behavior by the Italians in this particular case, no doubt about it, but in regards to the general issue one must, as always, raise the question: if the Roma always manage to totally alienate themselves from settled-down populations, even those who otherwise co-exist peacefully with other minorities, maybe just MAYBE, just for a tincy-wincy bit this is influenced by the unique aspects of their culture and it's suggested behavioral patterns toward outsiders. As I said, just maybe.
Just say "racism".
Why do you post an article from 2008, Timmay?
Quote from: The Larch on January 30, 2012, 06:57:21 AM
Why do you post an article from 2008, Timmay?
One of my facebook contacts had just read it, I assumed it was new. :hide:
I'm fairly sure this article was posted here at the time. I've certainly read it before :mellow:
The Gypsies tried repeatedly to pick my pocket during my trip to Italy. Stuff like that's probably one reason people don't like them after awhile. But this incident was disgusting and shows that Italians aren't much better.
What makes you guys think there were just Italians at a beach in Naples?
Quote from: Iormlund on January 30, 2012, 08:02:06 AM
What makes you guys think there were just Italians at a beach in Naples?
Any other ethnicity would have been horrified and left. Except the Krauts who'd have made some disgusting kind of porn from the whole thing.
Quote from: Iormlund on January 30, 2012, 08:02:06 AM
What makes you guys think there were just Italians at a beach in Naples?
Racism.
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 30, 2012, 07:13:56 AM
I'm fairly sure this article was posted here at the time. I've certainly read it before :mellow:
Yup, the story rang a bell and that got me to check the date. That and the fact that it was freakin' strange to read something about people going to the beach in scorching heat in fucking wintertime.
Americans assume Italy is hot year round. :sleep:
Quote from: jimmy olsen on January 30, 2012, 08:37:25 AM
Americans assume Italy is hot year round. :sleep:
You think the Mediterranean is the tropic or what? :P
Looks like Naples is currently having the same weather we're having here: cold enough to make it miserable when it rains, but not cold enough to snow :angry:
Plus Naples has the unique odor of the unwashed wops mingling with the smell of the uncollected garbage.
Quote from: Tamas on January 30, 2012, 05:10:32 AM
Couple of points:
-disgusting behavior by the Italians in this particular case, no doubt about it, but in regards to the general issue one must, as always, raise the question: if the Roma always manage to totally alienate themselves from settled-down populations, even those who otherwise co-exist peacefully with other minorities, maybe just MAYBE, just for a tincy-wincy bit this is influenced by the unique aspects of their culture and it's suggested behavioral patterns toward outsiders. As I said, just maybe.
Oh, yeah, when I think of Europeans, I immediately think of a tolerant bunch who accord mighty respect to ethnic minorities, and never, ever do anything bad to them.
I love Gypsy threads on Languish. :cool:
i'm related to gypsies. The iberian kind, not the romanian ones. i think they're differnet anyway.
Quote from: HVC on January 30, 2012, 12:43:16 PM
i'm related to gypsies. The iberian kind, not the romanian ones. i think they're differnet anyway.
Yes, they sing flamenco instead of turbo folk. :lol:
Quote from: The Larch on January 30, 2012, 12:48:55 PM
Quote from: HVC on January 30, 2012, 12:43:16 PM
i'm related to gypsies. The iberian kind, not the romanian ones. i think they're differnet anyway.
Yes, they sing flamenco instead of turbo folk. :lol:
Portuguese iberian, so no flamenco... but plenty of knife fights :lol: And my favourite story is when one of them renamed his kid Ben-hur after watchign the movie in the theater hah
Quote from: The Brain on January 30, 2012, 01:55:38 PM
Quote from: HVC on January 30, 2012, 12:43:16 PM
i'm related to gypsies.
My first ignore poster. :)
lol. if it makes you feel any better i have no gypsy blood in my. great uncle married a gypsy woman.
You're not supposed to marry gypsy women. A quick $10 blow job behind the trailer park is all.
I remember this article from before too. I think I related the story about how a McDonalds I visited in Genoa was full of Roma, and how they were all over the place in Florence trying to pickpocket tourists; the chicks would distract you and then their kids would try to pickpocket you. Disgusting filth, using their kids that way. :mad:
For some reason they reminded me of Jawas though. :)
I am disgusted by the racism of the italians.
Quote from: Caliga on January 30, 2012, 07:37:45 PM
I remember this article from before too. I think I related the story about how a McDonalds I visited in Genoa was full of Roma, and how they were all over the place in Florence trying to pickpocket tourists; the chicks would distract you and then their kids would try to pickpocket you. Disgusting filth, using their kids that way. :mad:
It's pretty easy to just scream at people trying to pickpocket you. That's what I did last time I was in Atlanta. I ain't 'fraid of no poor.
They didn't try to pickpocket me (though from how I wrote my post it might seem that way).