To achieve this, all unimaginable weapons of social pressure are being used.
Less than a week ago, in Marseilles, around 100 gypsies, among them some 30 children, settled outside the built-up area, at the entrance to the city, were evicted by the police. The order was issued at the request of the Mayor of Marseilles, who belongs to the same political party as the French president. In the evacuation order it says that they constitute *“a serious threat to public order”*.
In the north of France, near the city of Lille, the mayor, of La Madeleine, Sébastien Laprètre, has decreed two orders: one prohibiting begging and the other, prohibiting beggars searching for food and any thing else in rubbish bins installed in streets. So there is not the least doubt as to whom both orders are aimed at, these have been written in Romanian and Bulgarian. (We presume that nobody has notified the mayor that the majority of those seeking food in rubbish bins don’t know how to read and write).
The report drawn up by Doctors of the World (MDM – French acronym) in relation to the tragic consequences of the French Government’s deportation policy, says: Jean-François Corty, who is the Project director for MDM in France has said that *“in some camps we have taken similar action to that in a war zone. For example, in Seine-Saint-Denis we have distributed basic items because their essential needs, such as access to drinking water, are not covered”*.
The Romanian and Bulgarian gypsies are frightened, very frightened of being expelled. Therefore, they have abandoned their healthcare. Since this time last year when Sarkozy began persecuting them, they have stopped going to the doctor. The result has been that in Nantes, Bordeaux, Marseilles and Strasbourg only 8% have a medical card certifying that they have had the proper vaccines. Therefore, the overwhelming majority of people in the group analysed are not protected against common or even life-threatening diseases. According to Jean-François Corty *“The violence of the expulsions causes healthcare to be restrained”*.
The gypsies suffer very specifically from this kind of persecution. Doctors of the World say: only one out of every ten women has a follow-up appointment during pregnancy, therefore neonatal mortality, in other words, the mortality of gypsy children who die during the first month of their life, is nine times greater than the average French “non-gypsy” child.
The French Government is using medicine as a political weapon of repression against the gypsies which constitutes, according to Jean-François Corty, “an absurdity from the point of view of medical ethics”. In the neighbouring country there is State Medical Assistance, which the vast majority of gypsies depend on. Since 1st March this help is subject to an annual quota. The result has been devastating: of all the gypsies interviewed by Doctors of the World, 77 percent have no access to State Medical Assistance. Furthermore, the consequences have not been long in coming: there is an extreme number of cases of tuberculosis.
On the other hand, during the month of August, the TV programme *“Criminal Minds”* is being broadcast on the TV station *La Cuatro* which, as the name of the series indicates, shows the gypsies as real devils. Also, in “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding”, genuine racist and offensive rubbish, broadcast by Antena3, some of the episodes clearly constitute a crime with the Penal Code in hand.
An ailing wind is blowing through Europe, victim of the crisis, of unemployment, of the economy without conscience and by the political class so removed from the brutal reality of everyday life. What a pity that it is the president of France, cradle of the Enlightenment, who throws overboard the illuminated principles which the thinkers who based the right that all men have to life and liberty in Natural Law in the Century of Lights.
*Translated from Spanish by Rhona Desmond*
