Friday, October 25, 2013

Roma Face Persecution Across Europe In New Baby Stealing Panic

A girl is seen at the door of a caravan at an encampment of Roma families in Triel-sur-Seine, near Paris
It had been a long 72 hours for the Dublin Roma family whose seven year-old child was removed from them by the authorities, a series of events triggered after police read a Facebook message which called into question her parentage because she had blonde hair and blue eyes.  But at about 5:30pm last night, after a ruling from a secret family court a few miles and a world away in the centre of Dublin, the mood in the hardscrabble suburb of Tallaght began to lighten.

The adults were tight-lipped, but the kids gave it away. The DNA tests had revealed that yes, the girl was indeed the biological daughter of the Roma parents who claimed her. The children started running up and down the street, waving balloons, calling out the little girl’s name in celebration.

Shortly afterwards, a 21-year-old sister (neither the girl nor her family can be identified under Irish family law) dressed in a traditional flowing Roma dress, topped off by a less traditional fluffy pink dressing gown with polka dots, came out of the house and confirmed to journalists that the seven-year-old was coming home.

Holding back tears, the woman said that she was happy that her sister was coming home but talked in broken English about the agonizing trauma of the past three days. The child, she said, had not eaten for three days. The whole family had been very worried and upset. They had been crying every day. They hoped this would never happen to another family.  (more...)

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