Residents in the southern French city of Marseille took the law into their own hands and chased a group of Roma from their illegal camp before burning what was left behind, police said yesterday.


The scene in Marseille where some of the locals returned later to set fire to any belongings left behind by the Roma

By Our Foreign Staff
4:11PM BST 28 Sep 2012

Police arrived at the scene to keep the locals and the Roma apart as the Roma left on Thursday evening with their caravans and vehicles, but some of the locals returned later to set fire to any belongings left behind.

The locals, who blamed the Roma for burglaries in the area that had happened since their arrival a few days earlier, had warned authorities that if they were not evicted they would do it themselves.

“It’s no surprise this has happened,” said Caroline Godard of Rencontres Tsiganes, a group set up to help Roma. “There is a climate of tension that is being fanned. We are moving towards a war between the poor.”

The Marseille branch of France’s Human Rights League (LDH) said that although there was no violence and noone was injured in Thursday’s incidents, “one can fear the worst” for the future.

France’s Socialist government is currently attempting to get an estimated 15,000 Roma living in makeshift, often illegal camps across France to return to their countries of origin, mainly Romania and Bulgaria.

The policy of closing migrant camps and repatriating the Roma with a 300-euro incentive has been widely criticised. Critics have said the Roma will use the money Paris will give them to buy bus tickets back to France.

Romania, one of the two poorest countries in the European Union, has the biggest Roma minority in Europe: 620,000 according to the latest official census, more than two million according to local rights groups.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/9574080/Romas-chased-from-camp-by-Marseille-residents.html