WikiLeaks' rotten twist of fate

By John Keane Posted Mon 28 Oct 2013

Photo: Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks Party fell short of the principles of monitory democracy. (Leon Neal, file photo: AFP)

WikiLeaks has a proud legacy in the fight against the secrecy of the powerful, but its shambolic debut as a political party did nothing to advance the cause of accountability, writes John Keane.

There are three sensitive secrets I'd like to reveal about the topical subject of secrets. The first is surely the most obvious, and shouldn't really be secret: we live in the age of monitory democracy in which muckraking, the public exposure of secrets kept by the powerful, is the new norm.

Public struggles to tame arbitrary power are chronic. Individuals and groups using mobile phones, bulletin boards, news groups, wikis and blogs, sometimes manage, against great odds, to heap embarrassing publicity on their powerful opponents.

Corporations are given stick by well-organised, media-savvy groups such as Adbusters. Power-monitoring bodies like Human Rights Watch, Avaaz.org, Global Witness and Amnesty International regularly do the same, usually with help from networks of supporters spread around the globe.

There are initiatives such as the World Wide Web Consortium (known as W3C) that promote universal open access to digital networks. There are even bodies (like the Democratic Audit network, the Global Accountability Project and Transparency International) that specialise in providing public assessments of existing power-scrutinising mechanisms and the degree to which they fairly represent citizens' interests.

Politicians, parties and parliaments are roughed up by dot.org muckrakers like California Watch and Mediapart (a Paris-based watchdog staffed by a number of veteran French newspaper and news agency journalists). And, at all levels, governments are grilled on a wide range of matters, from their expenses claims and human rights records to their energy production plans and the quality of the drinking water of their cities.

Even the military strategies and arms procurement policies of states - notoriously shrouded in strict secrecy - run into trouble, thanks to media-savvy citizens' initiatives guided by the spirit, and sometimes the letter, of the principle that under democratic conditions there should be no secrets in matters military.

In his Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-70), William Blackstone famously wrote:

There is and must be in every state a supreme, irresistible, absolute, and uncontrolled authority, in which the right of sovereignty resides.

In the age of monitory democracy, this early modern principle of sovereignty becomes questionable, and is vigorously questioned. States certainly carry on keeping secrets, and justifying them, for instance on the ground that talk of transparency is all 'la-di-dah, airy-fairy' (David Cameron), or that revealing all causes 'harm' to citizens by offering the enemies of state a 'gift they need to evade us and strike at will' (the recent solemn words of MI5 director-general Andrew Parker).

Such reasoning is refused by those who know that secrecy is the refuge of scoundrels, greedy for power over others. Justice Potter Stewart, in the United States Supreme Court's famous opinion in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), the so-called Pentagon Papers case, summed up the point: 'In the absence of governmental checks and balances', he wrote, 'the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the area of national defense and international affairs may lie in an enlightened citizenry - in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government'.

Second secret: from the time of its formation in 2006, WikiLeaks challenged the decadent political principle that in geo-military affairs 'secrecy lies at the very core of power' (Elias Canetti). WikiLeaks set out to be a public sentinel. It wasn't alone in its brave rejection of sovereign secrecy. These are times in which terrifying state violence directed at citizens is witnessed and, against tremendous odds, bravely confronted by citizen-uploaded videos, digital sit-ins, online 'hacktivist' collectives and media-savvy monitory organisations, such as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Anonymous and Burma Watch International. There are small citizen groups, such as the Space Hijackers, which manage to win big publicity by acts of daring, for instance driving a second-hand UN tank to Europe's largest arms fair in London's Docklands, ostensibly to test its 'roadworthiness', then to auction it to the highest market bidder, in the process offering prosthetic limbs for sale to arms dealers.

Photo: Protesters supporting Edward Snowden demonstrate outside the US Consulate in Hong Kong in June. (Reuters: Bobby Yip )

Then there are global headline-making initiatives that lunge non-violently at the heart of highly secretive, sovereign power. Until recently (it has now been overtaken by Edward Snowden's revelations), WikiLeaks was the most talked-about experiment in the arts of publicly probing secretive military power. Pundits at first described it as the novel defining story of our times. That missed the point that its spirit and methods belonged firmly and squarely to the age of monitory democracy. WikiLeaks engaged in a radical form of muckraking motivated by conscience and supported by a shadowy band of technically sophisticated activists led by a charismatic public figure, Julian Assange. It took full advantage of easy-access multi-media integration and low-cost copying of information whizzed around the world through digital networks. Posing as a lumpen outsider in the world of information, aiming to become a watchdog with a global brief, WikiLeaks first sprang to fame by releasing video footage of an American helicopter gunship cursing and firing on unarmed civilians and journalists. Then it managed to send shock waves throughout the civil societies and governments of many countries by releasing sprawls, hundreds of thousands of top-secret documents linked to the diplomatic and military strategies of the United States and its allies and enemies.

With the help of mainstream media, WikiLeaks produced pungent effects, in no small measure because of its mastery of the clever arts of 'cryptographic anonymity', military-grade camouflage designed to protect both its sources and itself as a global publisher. For the first time on a global scale, WikiLeaks created a viable custom-made mailbox that enabled disgruntled muckrakers within any organisation to release classified data on a confidential basis, initially for storage in a camouflaged cloud of servers. WikiLeaks then pushed that bullet-proofed information into public circulation, as an act of radical transparency and 'truth'.

WikiLeaks was guided by a theory of hypocrisy and democracy. Its aim was to construct an 'intelligence agency of the people' (Julian Assange). He supposed that individual employees within any organisation would be willing to act as whistleblowers, not just because their identities would be protected by encryption, but above all because they would spot intolerably wide gaps between the publicly professed aims and private filthy secrets of their organisation. For Assange, hypocrisy would function as the night soil of muckrakers. Its rakes in the Augean stables of secretive government and business would have a double effect: multiply the amount of muck circulated under the noses of shocked citizens, whose own sense of living amidst the muck of secrecy would make them angry, and move them to action.

Muckraking in the style of the WikiLeaks platform had yet another source, which helps explain why its attempted criminalisation and forcible shut-down is already spawning many similar offspring, such as ICIJ revelations from the arcane world of the mega-rich, and Publeaks, a newly-launched Dutch website designed to protect whistleblowers, shed light on wrongdoings and to encourage investigative journalism. Put simply, WikiLeaks fed upon a contradiction deeply structured within the digital information systems of all large-scale complex organisations. States, corporations and other large organisations take advantage of the communications revolution of our time by going digital and staying digital. They do so to enhance their internal efficiency and external effectiveness, to improve their capacity for handling complex, difficult or unexpected situations, swiftly and flexibly. Contrary to the famous thesis of Max Weber, the data banks and data processing systems of these organisations are antithetical to red tape, stringent security rules and compartmentalised data sets, all of which have the effect of making these organisations slow and clumsy. So they opt for dynamic and time-sensitive data sharing across the boundaries of departments and whole organisations. Vast streams of classified material flow freely - which serves to boost the chances that leaks of secrets into the courts of public opinion will happen. Without knowing it, WikiLeaks in effect followed the wisdom of the old rhyming French proverb: 'Secret de deux, secret de Dieu; Secret de trois, secret de tous' (secrets between two are God's; among three, they become secrets known by everybody).

WikiLeaks ventured further. It reasoned that if organisations respond to leaks by tightening internal controls on their own information flows, a move that Julian Assange once described as the imposition of a 'secrecy tax', the chances are that these same organisations will trigger more than their own 'cognitive decline', their reduced capacity to handle complex situations swiftly and effectively. They would also increase the likelihood of resistance to the secrecy tax by motivated employees repulsed by the hypocrisy and injustice of their organisations. Little wonder, thanks to WikiLeaks, that figures like Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald have become symbols, unelected but legitimate public representatives, of such virtues as courage, staying power, decency, dislike of dirty secrets, openness and truth in public life. Little wonder, too, that in the name of state secrets the United States government in particular wants to hunt them down, using dirty tricks, just like the highwaymen denounced by Abraham Lincoln as a threat to democracy: 'A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!"'.

Photo: Julian Assange's father John Shipton and members of the WikiLeaks Party prepare for the election campaign. (ABC News: Jason Om)

There's a third, less well-known secret, to do with WikiLeaks and parliamentary politics. When spending time (eight months ago) with Julian Assange in his embassy prison, discussions about forming a political party were only in their infancy. Events since that time suggest that WikiLeaks and its star dissident leader were unprepared for entering the democratic fray as a democratic party. It was not just that they failed to grasp the basic difference between dissident publishing of secrets using technical genius and the mechanics of running for public office. Their election campaign revealed a dirtier secret. Julian Assange and WikiLeaks fell short of the principles of monitory democracy: political humility, public openness and accountability, the willingness to admit mistakes, even to say sorry. For this transgression they were punished, initially by becoming embroiled in a disastrous public scandal of their own making.

Let's return to a thought of Elias Canetti. 'Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it,' he wrote. 'The children very quickly figure it out and then practise deception themselves.' The children, it should be added, are in turn found out, as we would expect in the age of monitory democracy. The point is relevant for what has been going on in and around WikiLeaks. Here was a fledgling political party competing in the recent Australian elections, committed to 'accountability and oversight', a party potentially poised to attract substantial numbers of disaffected voters, Beppe Grillo style. Political victory, even just one seat in the Senate, might have helped free Julian Assange from his Knightsbridge prison cell, backed by a global public willing to stand up for transparency and justice.

The WikiLeaks Party instead crashed and burned. Mid-way through the campaign, over a third of its governing National Council protested against the lack of internal democracy and resigned, among them one of its leading candidates (Leslie Cannold) and one of Julian Assange's oldest and most trusted political friends, Dan Mathews. The WikiLeaks Party ended up receiving less than 1 per cent of the national vote (opinion polls throughout 2012 showed by contrast that Assange had enjoyed substantial levels of public support, especially among Labor and Green voters).

Worse: we now know that Julian Assange virtually attended only one of the first thirteen meetings of the National Council (that could be excused because he was busy supporting Edward Snowden). He also attempted to grant himself veto rights and to reduce the National Council to a rubber stamp, whenever he didn't like its leanings. He insisted that since he had 'founded the party', he was entitled to appoint himself its president.

Then came the weird preference deals, in defiance of the wishes of the National Council. The WikiLeaks Party, like all others, was forced by law to submit a preference flow based on deals struck with other political parties. Public statements and leaked emails show how intensely the National Council was divided about collaborating with a shadowy preference fixer Glenn Druery, a man who knows a thing or two about secrets, an operator who advises a motley crew known as the Minor Party Alliance on how to leverage the preference system. While discussions within the National Council were lengthy and difficult, they did produce directives, but these weren't followed in either New South Wales or Western Australia.

These deals, with such odd parties as the Motoring Enthusiasts, the Sex Party and Shooters and Fishers, were more than mere 'administrative errors', as Julian Assange later claimed. Poison was spat in the direction of the Greens - the closest allies of Assange and the WikiLeaks Party. In Victoria, where there were 40 parties, the Greens ranked WikiLeaks second and the WikiLeaks Party responded by ranking the Greens 24th. In New South Wales, where there were 45 parties, the Greens placed their allies third (after themselves and the Pirates) and were rewarded with a ranking of 28th by the WikiLeaks Party, behind the Shooters and Fishers and the xenophobic Australia First Party.

Most absurd, and most consequential, was the scrapping of the straight preference swap agreed in Western Australia between the Greens and the Wikileaks Party national campaign manager Greg Barns, who went on to appoint a journalist and disaffected former Greens member, Gerry Georgatis, as the WikiLeaks Party candidate. While the Greens ranked him as their first preference, he took revenge on his old party by ranking them 6th, after the WA Nationals. This was said to be a mere 'gesture', but it had much to do with both spite and the popularity of the WA Nationals, their 12 WA parliamentarians and record vote at the March 2013 state election in Western Australia. While some WikiLeaks Party preferences did eventually flow to Senator Scott Ludlum, the closest political ally of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, the so-called gesture cost both parties time and the row became the focus of media attention. Ludlam lost on the first count, but he was granted a Senate recount (only the second in Australian history), which is still underway.

Video: Julian Assange joins The Drum (ABC News)

Faced with a public outcry about the byzantine preference deals, the WikiLeaks Party announced that there would be an 'immediate independent review' to 'ascertain why National Council directives were not achieved'. That was over two months ago. It seems that the 'independent review' will probably never happen. John Shipton, the father of Julian Assange and CEO of the party, attacked the National Council (and threatened legal action) as a 'bunch of raving fucking lunatics'. On Twitter and local radio, Assange's mother has meanwhile denounced the WikiLeaks Party and in effect declared that she no longer politically supports her son. Julian Assange himself has lashed out digitally, in all directions. He has cursed those who resigned from the National Council and insisted (see the video embedded above) that all criticisms of his actions are 'simply false'.

When I had the privilege and pleasure of meeting Julian Assange in the Ecuador embassy in London, I was impressed by his daring technical skill, his bold courage, his raw resilience, his resourcefulness under intense political pressure. I still am, just as I continue to feel deep upset about the great injustice of his confinement and the organised smear campaigns against WikiLeaks as a publishing organisation; there are even days when I fear for his life.

Back then, I was struck as well by the way he lived the principle that there's only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. Nowadays, performing on a global public stage and trapped in a wretched prison, Julian Assange acts as if it is outrageous the way people go about saying things and revealing secrets behind his back, despite the fact that they're often painfully true. What a rotten twist of fate. So lamentable, so disappointing, so tragic ... so politically unnecessary.

This piece, originally published on The Conversation, was delivered as a speech at the recent Sydney public symposium Beyond Wikileaks.

John Keane is Director of the Institute for Democracy and Human Rights and Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney. Visit his website here. View his full profile here

WikiLeaks' rotten twist of fate - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Mohamed Morsi's Trial will reveal Documents that Could Put Barack Obama In Prison

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Eman Nabih

 

The Trial of ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi is set to begin on the 4th of November 2013.

Mohamed Morsi will be trialled for Ten serious Treason charges and crimes committed during his reign.

1. After 30th of June 2013 Revolution and Mohamed Morsi was ousted, The Egyptian Military discovered recordings and Original Documents signed by former Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi and his second in command Khairat Al-Shater,  linking Obama and his administration to illegal activities with Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian ousted President.

A list of Muslim Brotherhood officials received secret bribes paid in US Dollars by the US Consulate, amounting Millions of Dollars. Obama’s Half Brother, Malik Obama, was one of the engineers of that major bribes investments of Muslim Brotherhood.
It also involves the Muslim Brotherhood International Organization Finances Worldwide, which include 8 Billion Dollar Bribe to Muslim Brotherhood paid by Obama’s administration. That 8 Billion Dollar was a payment bribe to guarantee that the Sinai Peninsula, be turned over to the Muslim Brotherhood Sister, Group Hamas, in order to achieve peace with Israel and end the Palestinian cause by moving Palestinian of Gaza Strip to Sinai.

In an interview with the Anatolia News Agency, Saad Al-Shater, the son of a Muslim Brotherhood leader, the detained Khairat Al-Shater, said that his father had in his hand documents and recordings evidence that will land the head of United States of America, President Obama. The following video reveals further details.

New recordings and calls were revealed recently, exposing the dirty deals between the USA, Muslim Brotherhood Organization, Ousted President Morsi and Al-Qaeda Organization, for more details, click here The Dirty Deals Of The USA With Muslim Brotherhood And Al-Qaeda Terrorist Organization

InvestigativeProject.org reports, “Six American Islamist activists who work with the Obama administration are Muslim Brotherhood operatives who enjoy strong influence over U.S. policy.”

Arif Alikhan — assistant secretary for policy development for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Mohammed Elibiary — homeland security advisor.

Rashad Hussain — special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

Salam al-Marayati — Obama advisor, founder of Muslim Public Affairs Council and its current executive director.

Imam Mohamed Magid — Obama’s sharia czar, Islamic Society of North America.

Eboo Patel — advisory council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships.

Obama continued to support Mohamed Morsi and Muslim Brotherhood Regime, while Brotherhood regime was setting up torture chambers for their political enemies, and despite the several crimes and massacres committed by Muslim Brotherhood against the whole Egyptian community, since they got to power till after the 30th of June 2013 revolution and Brotherhood crimes and massacres against Christians and churches burnt!

2. Ousted Egyptian President cover up the killing of 16 Egyptian soldiers in Rafah, Sinai Broders 5/8/2012, assassins escaped through the borders to Gaza strip, after accomplishing the massacre. The Egyptian Military asked Hamas Organization to deliver the killers involved in that massacres, after investigations revealed they were from Hamas and Al-Qassam Groups in Gaza. Hamas refused to deliver the assassins to the Egyptian Authorities after Ousted President Morsi announced case closed on 7/6/2013, and announced publicly, knowing the truth about that case is not going to do the Egyptian people any good, on the contrary it will harm them!.

3. The kidnapping of 7 Egyptian soldiers in Sinai Borders on 16/5/2013, Egyptian Intelligence revealed the kidnappers from Hamas Group and Extremist Islamist  Gihadi Groups in Sinai. Mohamed Morsi ousted President, announced publicly that he cares for the safety and security of the kidnappers as well as the kidnapped soldiers. After negotiating with Kidnappers, the 7 soldiers were released. Mohamed Morsi ordered case closed and forbidden the Egyptian Authorities to follow on the case to arrest kidnappers!. (just between brackets, that kidnapping issue sounded and seemed exactly like Wag the Dog year 1997 Movie of Robert De Niro)

4. Treason charges for The Abdication of the Egyptian sovereignty on Halayeb and Shalateen, Egyptian Land on the border with Sudan. Three official Sudanese confirmed publicly that Ousted President Morsi promised Al-Bashir President of Sudan during their meeting  held on April 2013, that Egypt is going to waive Halayeb and Shalateen to Sudan in order to end up the crisis with Sudan. Later on after that promise from Ousted President, Muslim Brotherhood and Their political party published Egypt Map without Halayeb and Shalateen and removed Both Halayab & Shalateen from Geography School Books!.

18 Names of the most dangerous terrorists released by presidential general Pardon from Mohamed Morsi ousted President

5. Allowing and permitting foreign Terrorists bases existence in Sinai Egyptian territory, and effecting terror acts on Egyptian lands, ousted President was ordering the opening of borders between Egypt and Gaza, disregarding the National security and the Egyptian Intelligence reports of possible terror acts against Egypt. Including the misusing of full executive Authorities, in giving general Presidential pardon to more than 18 convicted Criminals and terrorists committed terror acts against Egyptian civilians, military and police individuals, Writers and famous public figures and also presidential Pardon included Terrorists who committed terror acts and massacres against tourists during the 90′s.

6. Incitement of Presidential Elections forgery,  threatens and forbidden Christians voters from voting and threatens of burning the whole country in Case Mohamed Morsi Brotherhood Candidate loses presidential Elections.

7. Insulting the Egyptian judiciary through Direct accusations announced publicly by ousted President Mohamed Morsi against the Egyptian symbols of judicial, and the deliberate non-implementation of the provisions by direct orders from ousted Morsi through his appointed General Attorney, illegally appointed By Ousted President, and the misuse of ousted President and Muslim Brotherhood leaders of full executive authorities acting above Egyptian laws and Constitution. Ousted President and Brotherhood leaders incitement to their supporters of attacking and assassination Judiciary symbols of the Egyptian Superior Constitutional Court.

8. Ousted President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood members are charged with inciting, the killing and torture of protesters in front of the Etihadeya presidential palace, which took place on 5/12/2012. Charges relate to the death of about a dozen people and many got seriously injured in violent clashes outside the presidential palace after ousted President enraged protesters with a decree expanding his powers.

9. Treason and espionage with foreign countries and foreign intelligence committed by Mohamed Morsi ousted President and escaping Wadi El-Natron Prison in Egypt. Morsi was arrested along with 24 other Muslim Brotherhood leaders on 28 January 2011. He was released from prison on 30/1/2011, through The break of Wadi el-Natroun Prison by Hamas organization Militants, who broke Egyptian Prisons, killed Police individuals and released many terrorists from jails including Mohamed Morsi, ousted President.

10. Ousted President Mohamed Morsi and Muslim Brotherhood leaders are also facing serious charges of corruption, treason and responsibility for the killing and incitement of committing terror acts starting from the 4th of July 2013 till after 14/8/2013 the disengagement of Rabaa & Nahda Sit-In.

Mohamed Morsi's Trial will reveal Documents Could Put Barack Obama In Prison | Eman Nabih

Saudi Arabia warns women against driving days before planned protest

 

Women in Saudi Arabia must cover themselves from head to toe and need permission from a male guardian to travel.

Saudi Arabia is warning it will take measures against activists who go ahead with a planned weekend campaign to defy a ban on women drivers in the conservative Muslim kingdom.

"It is known that women in Saudi are banned from driving, and laws will be applied against violators and those who demonstrate in support" of this cause, interior ministry spokesman General Mansur al-Turki said.

Activists have called on social networks for Saudi women to go behind the wheel on Saturday, in a campaign in the world's only country that bans women from driving.

On Wednesday, the interior ministry issued a statement saying it would crack down against anyone who attempts to "disturb public peace" by congregating or marching "under the pretext of an alleged day of female driving".

"The laws of the kingdom prohibit activities disturbing the public peace and opening venues to sedition which only serve the senseless, the ill-intentioned, intruders, and opportunity hunters," said the statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

It added that the interior ministry "will fully and firmly enforce the laws against violators".

Mr Turki insisted that "all gatherings are prohibited" in Saudi Arabia.

Amnesty criticises 'demeaning' driving ban

Rights watchdog Amnesty International urged the Saudi authorities not to thwart the women's right to drive, saying the ban was "demeaning".

"It is astonishing that in the 21st century the Saudi Arabian authorities continue to deny women the right to legally drive a car," said Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa programme head, Philip Luther.

"The driving ban is inherently discriminatory and demeaning to women and must be overturned immediately. It is completely unacceptable for the authorities to stand in the way of activists planning to campaign against it," he said.

"Instead of repressing the initiative, the authorities must immediately lift the ban to ensure that women are never again arrested or punished simply for being behind the wheel of a car."

Authorities halted previous driving protests

Women who defied the law in the past ran into trouble with the authorities and were harassed by compatriots.

In 1990, authorities stopped 47 women who got behind the wheel in a demonstration against the driving ban

In 2011, activist Manal al-Sharif, one of the organisers of this Saturday's campaign, was arrested and held nine days for posting online a video of herself behind the wheel.

That year Saudi police arrested a number of women who defied the driving ban and forced them to sign a pledge not to drive again.

Activists have repeatedly insisted throughout their campaign that no demonstrations will be held.

"October 26 is a day on which women in Saudi Arabia will say they are serious about driving and that this matter must be resolved," the Dubai-based Ms Sharif has said about the weekend protest.

She said women have begun responding to the call and over the past two weeks have posted videos online showing women already driving in Saudi Arabia.

With the exception of two women who were briefly stopped by police, authorities have so far not intervened to halt any of the female motorists.

Amnesty quoted one woman involved in the campaign as saying: "This is a natural right for us, a most simple and basic right, it relates to our freedom of movement... and give us a sense of control over our lives."

Saudi women are forced to cover themselves from head to toe and need permission from a male guardian to travel, work and marry.

AFP

Saudi Arabia warns women against driving days before planned protest - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Call for Irish ombudsman to investigate Roma family removals

Henry McDonald in Dublin

theguardian.com, Friday 25 October 2013

Rights group demands independent inquiry into why boy and girl were taken away by police and health authorities

Alan Shatter, Ireland's justice minister, said the officers involved in removing the children had acted in good faith. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA

Ireland's ombudsman should investigate how the police and health authorities mistakenly took two children from two Roma families because they wrongly believed the boy and girl were victims of trafficking, a human rights organisation has demanded.

Pavee Point, the main advocacy group for the Roma community in Ireland, said an independent inquiry was needed rather than "self-investigation" by the Garda Síochána and the Heath Service Executive.

The seven-year-old girl and two-year-old boy were returned to their families on Wednesday after DNA tests proved their familial relationship.

The father of the boy, who was taken from his home in the Irish Midlands by officers on Tuesday, produced a photograph showing that his blond son shared the fair colouring of his maternal grandfather in Romania.

Iancu Muntean was able to speak about the case because a judicial order that barred the other Roma family in Dublin from revealing their names does not apply to the Athlone family.

Muntean, having protested unsuccessfully to garda officers who arrived to take the child, said he told them: "You have the power. I don't have power. What can I do? I don't make trouble."

As his child was being driven away, he told the officers: "Please don't make him cry, please don't make him upset … Please bring my son home, I'll just give you whatever you want, just take me, not my son." He said his wife and four-year-old daughter were extremely distressed and had been unable to sleep while his son was in the care of the HSE.

The 22-year-old Roma man, who has lived in Ireland since 2005, said he willingly offered DNA samples to prove the child was his son.

Alan Shatter, the Irish justice minister, has asked for a report on the incidents from Martin Callinan, the police commissioner, but said the officers involved had acted in good faith.

Pavee Point, however, stressed the need for a fully independent inquiry into what they described as "two state abductions".

Aisling Twomey, Pavee Point's spokeswoman, said: "We believe that this inquiry needs to go to the office of the ombudsman for complete independence and an entire review of the events of the past few days. The framework of that inquiry must take into account the actions of all state authorities to consider how these events came about and what could have, or should have, been done differently. We are pushing for this full and complete independence and anything less is insufficient."

Twomey said the Roma families had received a mixture of "support, concern and vitriol in relation to these cases" through her organisation.

She added: "Racism and discrimination against the Roma have been significant problems long before this news coverage started."

Iancu Muntean senior said he hoped what had happened to his son never happened to another family.

Call for Irish ombudsman to investigate Roma family removals | World news | theguardian.com

Irish police return blonde girl to Roma family

Henry McDonald in Dublin

theguardian.com, Thursday 24 October 2013

Embarrassing U-turn comes after DNA tests prove that girl put into care, 7, is biological daughter of Dublin couple

Tallaght Garda station, where the seven-year-old girl was taken before being put into care. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA

Ireland's police force and health service have been forced into an embarrassing U-turn over the seizure of a young Roma girl from her family because she had blue eyes and blonde hair.

The Irish justice minister, Alan Shatter, has asked the head of the Irish police force, the Garda Síochána, to report on this case and another one involving a two-year-old Roma boy also taken from his family by the authorities.

The seven-year-old was handed back to her Roma parents this evening after DNA results showed that she was in fact their child.

After a family court hearing in central Dublin, the family issued a statement stating that there was never "any proper or sufficient basis to take their daughter away from them".

The two-year-old boy was removed on Tuesday night from a family living in Athlone, Co Westmeath, in the Irish midlands. DNA samples were taken from the child as well as the Roma couple who are the child's parents.

Police officers then returned the boy to the family this morning. It is not clear if they did so following the results of any DNA tests.

The girl had been held in care by the health service after the police raided the family's home in Tallaght, Dublin, on Monday afternoon. Garda officers refused to believe the child's parents, who protested that she was their daughter. But the parents and their other children always insisted that the child was their daughter and said tonight that had been verified.

In a reference to the case in Greece of the girl known as Maria, where it has been established that a blonde child was not the daughter of a Roma couple who were looking after her, the Dublin family criticised those who tried to falsely link the two cases. The family said tonight, via their solicitor Waheed Mudah, that their ordeal had "nothing to do" with events elsewhere.

As the family prepared to welcome their daughter back home, a veteran human rights campaigner for Irish Travellers and the Roma community demanded an inquiry into how the authorities had treated the two families.

Martin Collins, of the lobby group Pavee Point, described the way that the children were taken into care as "abductions".

Collins said: "We are extremely concerned and worried about these developments. We hope it is not the beginning of some sort of pattern where children of Roma parents who are not dark-skinned and have brown eyes are taken away one after the other for DNA test after DNA test."

Shatter said the police had acted in good faith in removing the children from their families. "The law provides clear powers for An Garda Siochana where it is believed that a child may be in danger. The Health Service Executive and the courts are involved in making the appropriate decisions.

"Urgent procedures are available to ensure that the safety of a child can be assured while necessary inquiries are being made. While such procedures can be understandably distressing for parents, the reality is that not invoking the procedures can involve taking a risk with the safety of a child if you don't act on the basis of the information that is available at the time."

From early on Wednesday morning, the sisters of the girl Gardai seized from the family in Dublin insisted that they were always confident that she would be handed back to them.

They said that the family were all traumatised by the ordeal, including the child at the centre of the controversy.

Their parents, who are in their 30s, had maintained it was their child, born in Dublin in 2006. It is understood the family have been in Ireland for more than seven years.

They live in a quiet suburban street with neatly kept gardens and a mixture of privately owned and rented terraces and semi-detached houses.

The sisters said their house has been the target of repeated attacks from local youths in the recent past. In response, the family had installed a CCTV camera trained on the front garden and pathway up to the door as well as fitting perspex glass bolted on to the living room window to protect them from missiles.

It also emerged yesterday that the controversy in Tallaght was sparked by an anonymous posting on Facebook. An unnamed female member of the public tipped off television channel TV3 about the presence of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed child at the house on Monday morning.

A researcher at the station passed on the Facebook message to an investigative TV3 reporter, who then contacted the gardai at the station in Tallaght.

Meanwhile, the Roma father of a two year-old-boy has expressed relief after his son was returned to his family.

The father of two said his wife, originally from Bucharest in Romania, had been extremely distressed and unable to sleep after their son was kept overnight. He said that when the gardai arrived at the house, he challenged them to take a sample of his own blood to prove the child belonged to the family.

He said the Health Services Executive informed him that he could pick up the child at a HSE centre around midday on Wednesday.

Irish police return blonde girl to Roma family | World news | theguardian.com

Roma: myth, suspicion and prejudice

By Peter Stanford 23 Oct 2013

As Roma families are accused of abducting children in Greece and Ireland, we should beware of persecuting an ancient people

A Roma girl at a migrants’ encampment near Paris. The Third Reich regarded Roma as racially impure; an estimated one million died in concentration camps Photo: Reuters

It is a measure of the sensitivity of a topic that any nomenclature you use risks causing offence. So, in writing about the two cases of alleged child abduction in Greece and Ireland that have made headlines this week, should I revert to childhood and say gipsies, a word used back then only with negative overtones by my parents and in story books? Or do I say travellers, imitating the young, radical curate in our Catholic parish who brought a group of families, whose caravans were parked nearby, to join us for Mass (and who was pilloried for his trouble)?

Or is it better – as I did earlier this year on a trip to Romania for the Telegraph to investigate the imminent removal of migration restrictions on that country – to opt for Roma, the politically correct collective noun I had gleaned from the EU’s current “Decade of Roma Inclusion” initiative? “Will you stop using that word,” my translator rebuked me. “That’s why the whole of Europe thinks all Romanians are gipsies.”

Roma make up fewer than 10 per cent of Romanians and face, as I observed, pretty naked prejudice and hostility in that country. A borderless Europe should, in theory, favour their itinerant lifestyle, yet it seems there are few places that offer any sort of welcome. After another allegation of child abduction levelled against Roma in Naples in 2008, their camps were attacked by a mob. Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, responded by announcing all 150,000 Roma in Italy had to be fingerprinted.

Europe’s estimated 10 million Roma are so called because of their shared Romani language (with many regional and national dialects). “That the history of our people must be sought in our language has become something of a cliché, but to a great extent it holds true,” writes Ian Hancock (Romani name Yanko le Redzosko), a British-born academic who is director of Romani Studies at the University of Texas.

In Germany and many parts of central Europe, the Roma population is known as Sinti. In France, it’s Manush or Manouche. In Britain, some, such as the writer and educationalist Robert Dawson, still prefer gipsy (a word said to derive from a misunderstanding that identified them as Egyptians). Others go for Romanichal gipsies. And then there are the travellers, mainly of Irish origin, who insistently see themselves as a separate group. But this, says the novelist Louise Doughty, herself of Romani ancestry, can be “an artificial distinction” used by those far-Right groups who target Roma.

Related Articles

• Roma 'living in fear of having light skinned children taken away'

  24 Oct 2013

• Ion Jinga: What the Romanians can do for Britain

  23 Oct 2013

• Romanians plead gulity to multi-million pound art heist

  22 Oct 2013

• Migrants admit they sometimes rely on benefits

  20 Oct 2013

• The foreign beggars that Britain cannot stop

  27 Sep 2013

• Romanian police start to patrol London's streets ahead of lifting of border controls

  23 Oct 2013

Even the origins of the Roma are hotly disputed. The standard line is that they are the descendants of a group of nomadic Indians (some say musicians) who travelled to Persia in the fifth century, and thereafter spread out across the lands of the Byzantine empire and into what is now eastern Europe. There are numerous sightings in early texts – the Irish friar Simon Fitzsimons, travelling round the eastern Mediterranean in 1332, writes of a people he calls “Indians… all of whom have much in common with crows and charcoal”. Already, it seems, the Roma were not getting a good press.

The Indian connection, though, is not accepted by all. The overlap between Romani and Indian dialects has been picked away at by Romani academics and often rejected in favour of a more tenuous connection with the East. It is, arguably, precisely such vagueness that has allowed outsiders – gadje, as non-Roma are called in Romani – to project their own stories and stereotypes on to the Roma and, in the process, often demonise a way of life.

“If the words gipsy or traveller were replaced with Muslim, gay, lesbian, Asian or Jew, most decent citizens would not talk in such negative terms,” says Isaac Blake, director of the Cardiff-based Romani Cultural and Arts Company. “We need to respect a long-standing heritage and culture. We need to learn more about marginalised groups, reach out and accept, not base our judgments on ignorance and fear. If we condemn Roma, gipsies and travellers, we are simply keeping the doors open for wider prejudice.”

In a world that penalises discrimination of almost every type, his argument is that society makes a special exemption for the Roma and drags its feet in shaking off the baggage of the past. Friar Fitzsimons writing 700 years ago of Roma as crows (collective name: “a murder”) is hardly a positive image, while his mention of charcoal sets up a colour contrast with white Europeans that resonates to this day. The Greek press has labelled Maria – the young girl “rescued” from Christos Salis and Eleftheria Dimopoulou, the gipsy couple who had claimed her as their own – as “the blonde angel”.

It was the blonde hair and blue eyes of the seven-year-old taken by police from a traveller family at Tallaght, west of Dublin, that caused anonymous callers to the Irish police to suspect she had been kidnapped. Geneticists are clear that two parents with jet-black hair are able to produce a blond child, if they have blond ancestors. How else to explain the number of blond, blue-eyed Sicilians?

The “blood libel” of medieval times – when Christians believed that Jews in their midst were kidnapping young children and sacrificing them so as to eat and drink their blood at Passover – caused pogroms and may ultimately have fed into the Holocaust. Yet it has been shown to have had no basis in fact. Anyone suggesting it today would be ridiculed – even arrested.

Similar myths were told of the Roma for centuries in the same Church-dominated society. They, too, were routinely accused of child kidnap – even though, as Thomas Acton, not Roma but Britain’s first professor of Romani Studies, based at Greenwich University, has argued emphatically: “I know of no documented case of Roma/gipsy/travellers stealing a non-gipsy child anywhere.” And the Roma community, too, suffered appallingly at the hands of the Nazis, with an estimated one million being murdered in concentration camps.

Isaac Blake puts the re-emergence of child-stealing allegations in Greece and Ireland down to both countries’ perilous economic situation. “The revival of the medieval myth around gipsy child-stealing comes when Greece is going through its worst crisis since the Fifties. Ireland’s economy has collapsed utterly. The old, tried and trusted ways of distracting anger, frustration and attention are being rolled out again.”

It may be that this is a European phenomenon, where old suspicions are never quite extinguished. In America, the estimated one million Roma have been largely assimilated into a society that doesn’t carry with it such long memories.Others prefer simpler, more practical explanations for the spectre that has reappeared this week closer to home. Apparently damning evidence in both current cases should be seen in context, according to one British-based Roma writer, who prefers not to be named. He points to his community’s tradition of children living in extended families when mothers and fathers had to travel in search of work; of taking in waifs and strays and giving them a home without asking for formal adoption paperwork; and of Roma women falling in love with blond, blue-eyed gadje. “But we are passionate about our children,” he insists.

Politicians would dispute such claims. Claude Guéant, the former French interior minister, claimed last year that 10 per cent of all crime in France could be attributed to the country’s 150,000-strong Roma community, with half of that being carried out by children who were exploited by adults.

Others argue there is a wider context to the stereotype of Roma as beggars. Roma communities in today’s Europe are at the very bottom of the economic tree, just as they have been for centuries. Around 84 per cent live below the poverty line. EU statistics show that Roma children are over-represented in the various care systems of the continent; the Irish travellers’ rights group, Pavee Point, responds that “the main underlying reasons are poverty and discrimination”.

“Roma, gipsies and travellers are very proud people,” insists Isaac Blake. “They have immaculate homes with cultural rules on cleanliness and propriety. In many communities, traditional courting rules still apply and families bring up their children with a clear moral code. We ask ourselves if mainstream society has something to learn.”

Roma: myth, suspicion and prejudice - Telegraph

More Roma arrests in Greece over suspected abduction of baby

 

Photo: A Roma couple was charged last week with the abduction of blonde girl Maria. (Reuters: Greek Police)

Related Story: Irish Roma child found in similar case to Greece's Maria

Related Story: Greek Roma couple held on abduction charges

Related Story: Roma couple say mother gave up mystery girl to them

A Roma couple is being questioned by police on the Greek island of Lesbos on suspicion of kidnapping a baby, just a week after the discovery of a girl dubbed the "blonde angel" made headlines around the world.

A 21-year-old man and a 19-year-old woman were detained for questioning, along with the man's 51-year-old mother, according to Panagiotis Kordonouris, police chief for the North Aegean region.

"They were arrested as they were trying to register the child with fake documents," he said.

The couple reportedly tried to obtain a birth certificate for the baby only with a signed statement, as is possible in Greece, instead of producing hospital records, which made municipal employees suspicious.

Mr Kordonouris said the trio eventually admitted the child was not theirs and said the baby was given to them in central Athens at the end of July by another Roma woman.

The Supreme Court has ordered prosecutors across the country to be alert for any discrepancies in birth certificates going back six years after blonde, blue-eyed Maria was found during a raid on a Roma camp in central Greece last week.

Police say there is evidence a 40-year-old woman and 39-year-old man used false IDs to register Maria as their own, saying she was born at home.

DNA tests have shown they are not her biological parents.

The couple, who say the girl was given to them by her mother who could not look after her, has been charged with abducting a minor and detained pending trial.

A separate case emerged this week involving a blonde, blue-eyed girl living with a Roma family in Dublin, Ireland.

That girl, aged 7, was removed from the Roma family's custody after police became concerned she was not related to them.

Interpol assisting in Maria investigation

Maria's case led to thousands of calls to police from people around the world, including Australia, trying to identify her or search for their own missing children.

At the request of the Greek authorities, Interpol has issued a so-called "yellow notice" with the picture of the girl and has urged its 190 member countries to test her DNA profile against their own national database.

"Interpol will make its DNA Gateway available to any member country whose law enforcement agency has been provided with the profile of someone claiming to be a blood relative of the unknown child," the agency said in a statement.

The Greek charity Smile of the Child has been looking after Maria since she was found by police last week.

"She is much better. Day after day, she is adapting to the new environment," charity head Costas Giannopoulos said.

In a parallel case in Ireland, police took a 7-year-old blonde girl living with a Roma family into care on Monday after suspicions she was not a blood relative, a senior police source said.

However, the BBC is reporting that DNA tests have now established that the girl is a biological member of the Roma family, who are based in Dublin.

AFP/Reuters

More Roma arrests in Greece over suspected abduction of baby - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi facing new corruption trial over alleged bribery

By Europe correspondent Barbara Miller, wires

Photo: Mr Berlusconi has faced a string of legal troubles in recent times. (AFP Photo: Tiziana Fabi)

Related Story: Silvio Berlusconi banned from Italian politics for two years

Related Story: Berlusconi faces senate expulsion after vote

Related Story: Italy's top court upholds Berlusconi prison sentence

Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has been ordered to stand trial on corruption charges for allegedly bribing a senator.

Prosecutors in Naples allege the embattled tycoon paid senator Sergio De Gregorio more than $4.2 million to switch allegiances to his People of Freedom Party.

The move helped destabilise the government of then-prime minister Romano Prodi, which eventually collapsed.

Berlusconi was returned to power in 2008 elections that followed.

The development is the latest embarrassment for Berlusconi, who is appealing against several other convictions, including for having sex with an underage prostitute.

He is also facing expulsion from parliament over a tax fraud conviction which has been upheld.

Senator admits to being bribed

The senator himself helped investigators and was granted a 20-month sentence under a plea bargain by the hearing in Naples.

"I now believe I behaved in an absolutely reprehensible way and was aiming to bring down the Prodi government as part of a sort of holy war being waged by Berlusconi," Mr De Gregorio said.

"I have said sorry like no one does in Italy."

Mr Berlusconi's trial in Naples is due to start on February 11, 2014.

"I urge Silvio Berlusconi to leave the political scene, which would free Italy from a lot of dirt," Mr De Gregorio said.

The former prime minister was formally charged along with his former associate, Valter Lavitola, who is accused of acting as an intermediary in the bribe, lawyers said.

Mr Lavitola told the hearing that even if he had handled the money as alleged "there is no proof that I could have known that it was money for a bribe, I would have been simply a conduit".

But Mr De Gregorio says Mr Lavitola acted as the intermediary in the bribe.

Mr Lavitola was first placed under investigation in 2011 and fled the country for South America.

He returned after eight months on the run in April 2012 and was arrested at the airport.

'The encirclement of Berlusconi is continuing'

Supporters of 77-year-old Berlusconi immediately rallied around the three-time former prime minister, accusing prosecutors of bias.

"I can't believe it," said Daniele Capezzone, a lawmaker from Berlusconi's People of Freedom party.

"I think Italians fully understand that what has been happening in the past few years is an attack against a political leader who was freely and democratically chosen by millions," he said.

Another ally, senator Renato Schifani, said: "The encirclement of Berlusconi is continuing with a few extra knocks. The aim will not be achieved."

Berlusconi has often been accused by opponents of buying votes, but this is the first time he has officially been charged of corrupting a politician.

ABC/Reuters

Former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi facing new corruption trial over alleged bribery - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Forget Free Trade. Try Free Immigration.

 By Pankaj Mishra Oct 22, 2013

Hundreds of destitute migrants from Africa and the Middle East died in two shipwrecks this month while attempting to reach the shores of Italy. In the meantime, wealthy Chinese, Indians, Russians and South Africans continue to glide serenely to their favored European destinations as they flee their increasingly unstable countries.

Nations damaged by the euro crisis -- Cyprus, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Portugal, Spain -- seem to have entered a race to sell the right to reside in Europe. Malta offers the cheapest path to eventual citizenship: just 260,000 euros. The small conditions -- no criminal record, for instance -- are hardly onerous. Even U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne promised, while visiting Beijing last week with London Mayor Boris Johnson, to expedite visas for China’s businessmen and tourists, and to open all doors to Chinese students.

This eager courtship by Western politicians and businessmen of deep-pocketed and well-educated foreigners can mislead one into thinking that globalization encourages free and open movements of peoples. In actuality, the shutters are coming down, and walls are going up, everywhere.

Fresh Hurdles

Even Indian software engineers face fresh hurdles to entering the U.S. today; they seem pampered compared with their fellow citizens toiling on construction sites in Dubai, who in turn enjoy privileges undreamt of by the Mexicans, described in a shocking new book, “The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging the Narcos on the Migrant Trail” by Oscar Martinez, who risk everything to get to the U.S.

The “open for business” banner unfurled by Osborne and Johnson in Beijing seems no more than a fig leaf for hard-line immigration policies. The same week that they were in China, the British government introduced a new immigration bill remarkable for its ill-concealed xenophobia. The Conservative Party is being pushed further to the right by the recent electoral successes of the stridently anti-immigrant UK Independence Party.

In France, the extreme-right Front National led by Marine Le Pen is gaining ground among voters. A member of the Socialist government, French Interior Minister Manuel Valls, has affirmed the general rightward shift by openly calling for the expulsion of the country’s Roma population and arguing for the extension of the French ban on Islamic headgear. Last week, stalwarts of the French Left cried out in anguish as Valls deported a Roma teenager while she was on a school trip.

Greece confronts, in addition to a failing economy, the viciousness of the anti-immigrant party Golden Dawn. After an election campaign marked by competing promises to thwart immigration, Australia has a conservative prime minister determined to send boats carrying asylum seekers back to where they come from.

Even countries that host the international diaspora of the rich are inwardly seething. This month in Hong Kong I was amazed to hear, in several different conversations, a word now commonly used by local residents to describe mainland Chinese in their midst: “locusts.” Singapore, the new magnet for the plutocracy of China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines, may be set to replace Switzerland as the capital of wealth management with its deregulated banking system. But it will have to reckon with rising local protests against steeply growing inequality, rising prices and visceral loathing of flashy Chinese in Ferraris.

Given the darkening anti-foreigner climate in Europe, the Chinese and Indian plutocrats furiously buying villas, palazzos, chateaus, haciendas and apartments in London’s Mayfair cannot feel certain that their arrival won’t provoke their rich neighbors to mutter, “There goes the neighborhoud.”

Unreasoned Hostility

When even itinerant individuals with ample skills and wealth provoke racial anxiety, less fortunate migrants cannot help but incite wholly unreasoned hostility. This politically volatile distrust of foreigners in high-income countries is another side of the problem of unregulated mobility I discussed in my last column. While still-developing nation-states such as India and China hemorrhage wealth and talent, politicians in advanced economies seem far from honestly accepting their need for migrants of all kinds, and the related imperative to fight blind prejudices and ill-informed notions about migration.

One well-sourced analysis after another has disproved popular ideas about immigration as a further drain on public resources during a time of fiscal austerity. Foreign arrivals contribute about as much in tax revenue as they receive in benefits, according to a report in June from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The economic rationale for migration is further underscored by the changing profile of high-income countries: high wages; slowly growing, if not declining, populations; and shortages of domestic talent. Some of the walled-off countries are slowly seeing the light. South Korea, for instance, has started to open its doors to immigrants. On the other hand, Japan, with its severely restrictive immigration policies, continues to suffer conspicuously from a shortage of unskilled workers in the construction, medical, social welfare and other service sectors.

Indeed, as the OECD report warns, countries that fail to understand the effects of immigration may end up crafting policies that make it harder for them to deal with demographic changes. Yet cynical domestic politicians, in the U.K. as well as in France, have stolen the initiative in defining the costs and benefits of migration.

Their opportunistic demagoguery relies upon a lack of enlightened global consensus about the subject. What defines globalization today is the mobility of human beings as much as that of capital and goods. But there is no sustained attempt to draw up a global or regional framework of principles governing cross-border flows of people, even by institutions such as the World Trade Organization, which lays down the rules governing the international trade of goods and services, or the International Monetary Fund, which concerns itself with the stability of the international monetary system and global capital markets.

Globalization Paradox

At present, individual countries that receive (and send) migrants make policies in response to local needs and sentiments (xenophobia prominent among them). There is no multilateral process that subjects migration flows to global rules and standards. In his recent book “The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy,” the economist Dani Rodrik writes that leaders seriously committed to boosting incomes equitably around the world should “focus single-mindedly on reforming the rules that govern labor mobility.”

Rodrik proposes a “temporary work visa scheme” in rich countries that could generate $360 billion annually for the world economy. Its potential benefits are greater than all the gains from removing tariffs and subsidies (what the negotiators at the Beckettian Doha Round of trade talks endlessly toil over), and would go directly to the poorest people on earth, skipping altogether the arduous and plainly inefficient process of trickle-down.

Rodrik is, of course, aware of potential objections and hurdles to his idea, and carefully pre-empts them with an additional set of suggested policies. Immigration, he also knows, lacks a large domestic political constituency. But, as he argues correctly, so did trade liberalization, which was pushed through by a combination of political leadership, lobbying by business groups and activist economists.

A global institutional framework for migration could regulate low-cost labor as well as the so-called “talent elites” while ensuring the rights of irregular migrants. It is simply astonishing the degree to which we have ignored the patterns of international migration, despite their deep links with human welfare and political stability everywhere. We urgently need a global set of rules for migration. Certainly, the incentives for it have never been clearer, as awful human tragedies occur off the coast of Europe, and right-wing nastiness spreads across the continent.

(Pankaj Mishra is the author of “From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia” and a Bloomberg View columnist. This is the second of two essays about brain drain in Asia. Read Part 1.)

Forget Free Trade. Try Free Immigration. - Bloomberg

Greek Abduction Case Highlights Roma Tensions

By NIKI KITSANTONIS and DAN BILEFSKY

Published: October 21, 2013

ATHENS — A Roma couple were ordered jailed on Monday over the alleged abduction of a child who was found during a police raid on an encampment in central Greece last week. The case has fueled speculation about human trafficking and illegal adoption rackets, and heightened scrutiny of Roma populations across Europe.

Eleftheria Dimopoulou, left, and Christos Salis, who are facing charges of abduction, insisted they adopted a child who was found during a police raid on an encampment. Greek Police, via Reuters

The couple, identified by the police as Christos Salis, 39, and Eleftheria Dimopoulou, 40, insisted during five hours of testimony that they adopted the child from a Bulgarian woman. Ms. Dimopoulou had a second identification card giving her name as Selini Sali with a different date and place of birth. They will stand trial on charges of abducting a minor and forging official documents.

The Greek police have appealed for Interpol’s help in tracing the girl’s biological parents. The girl, who has been nicknamed Maria and is thought to be about 5 or 6 years old, was spotted by the Greek police last Wednesday during a search for drugs and weapons at a Roma camp in Farsala, near the city of Larissa in central Greece.

The case comes amid an increasingly acrimonious debate in Europe over how to integrate the Roma, a nomadic people who came to the Continent centuries ago from India, and who are also widely known as Gypsies.

In France, President François Hollande intervened over the weekend after a 15-year-old Roma girl was removed from a school bus and expelled to Kosovo, along with her parents and five siblings who had been living illegally in France for five years. After the case led to protests by student groups across the country, Mr. Hollande said that the girl, Leonarda Dibrani, could return to France to finish her studies, but that her family would not be able to join her.

At a time of grinding austerity and persistent unemployment across Europe, minorities and migrants are facing a growing political and economic backlash. The Roma, blighted by poverty and living in squalid housing on the outskirts of some European cities, have been singled out for attention. An estimated 11 million Roma are scattered across Europe.

In Greece, officers’ suspicions were raised when they spotted the girl, who has light blond hair, pale skin and green eyes and bore no resemblance to the other camp residents. Subsequent DNA tests proved that she was not related to the Roma couple who were harboring her, the police said.

A police official said parents with missing children “from several countries” had contacted Greek authorities asking for their DNA to be checked against that of Maria.

A charity that has taken the girl into its care said it has received thousands of calls from Greece and abroad after issuing an appeal for information.

The Roma couple had given conflicting explanations to the police about how they acquired the girl — including that they had found her outside a supermarket when she was infant. Ultimately, they said they had adopted her after she was abandoned by her birth mother, a Bulgarian national.

Panagiotis Tziovaras, the head of the Larissa police department, said Monday that it was possible the Roma couple were involved in human trafficking; state records showed them to have a total of 14 children registered in different parts of Greece. But he emphasized that it was too early to draw any firm conclusions.

“It could be an abduction, an illegal abduction, she could be a trafficking victim,” he said in a telephone interview. “We’re looking at all these options.”

Documents found in the couple’s possession suggested that Ms. Dimopoulou had given birth to 6 of the 14 children within a 10-month period, the police official said, adding that Ms. Dimopoulou also had two police identity cards with different details and that Mr. Salis had been arrested over armed robbery in the past.

In comments on Greek television, one of the couple’s lawyers, Marietta Palavra, said that the pair may have sought benefits illegally but that they had not abducted the child. “They felt sorry for her and adopted her from the birth mother,” she said.

Since leaving the Roma camp, Maria has been in the care of an Athens charity called The Smile of the Child; officials there said she was “calm” after a traumatic transition. “She was terrified on the first day after leaving the camp but now she seems happy, she’s been playing with dolls and drawing,” the charity’s director, Costas Yiannopoulos, said by telephone.

He said Maria’s case had “opened a Pandora’s box about what’s happening with the Roma and the exploitation of children in Greece but also in Europe.” He said there were no statistics to indicate how many children were victims of such rackets “because the authorities have not tackled the issue for fear of being accused of racism.”

Representatives of the Roma community in Farsala appeared on several Greek television channels on Monday, asserting that Maria had received good care at the camp. The head of the Farsala Roma community, Babis Dimitriou, said that the biological parents of the child were a Bulgarian Roma couple who had been at the camp last week during the police raid but had left. He expressed fears that the case would fuel discrimination against Roma in Greece and beyond.

Niki Kitsantonis reported from Athens, and Dan Bilefsky from Paris.

Greek Abduction Case Highlights Roma Tensions - NYTimes.com

Court jails Roma couple accused of abducting 'Maria'

Helena Smith in Athens theguardian.com, Tuesday 22 October 2013

Lawyer representing the couple tells Larissa court it was an adoption, but 'not exactly legal'

The couple said they took the girl under their wing because her real mother could not care for her. Photograph: Greek Police handout/Athena Pictures/Dimitris Legakis

Five days after a blonde, blue-eyed girl was found living in a Roma camp in Greece, the couple accused of abducting her were imprisoned on Monday pending trial, as police released a picture of the child seated between the couple.

As representatives from Greece's Roma community gathered outside the courthouse in Larissa, central Greece, specialists continued the painstaking business of trying to identify the girl known only as Maria.

"From medical examinations conducted by a forensic pathologist we now know that she is older than we thought and is probably five or six," said Panaghiotis Partelis at Smile of the Child, the charity tasked with looking after her. "She is still in hospital but she seems to be happy and playing with her toys, doing what all girls of her age do."

The philanthropic organisation was still receiving thousands of calls from around the world, often from people whose children had gone missing, as part of a wider campaign to trace the girl's real parents, he said.

Authorities released the photograph, which portrays the pale-skinned child wedged between the couple and clasping a water bottle, after a court announced there was enough evidence to suggest she had been kidnapped.

DNA tests have proved conclusively that the girl bears no relation to either the 40-year-old woman or 39-year-old man. But the pair, arrested when police conducted a wider crackdown on illegal activities in the Roma community and raided the camp outside Larissa, continued to deny allegations that they had abducted her.

They told a magistrate on Monday they took the girl under their wing within days of her birth because her real mother had been unable to take care of the baby. "It was an adoption that was not exactly legal but took place with the mother's consent," said Constantinos Katsavos, a lawyer representing the couple.

A senior Roma representative supported that claim, telling reporters the girl's biological mother was Bulgarian. "This family got the child from Bulgarians. I know them personally. All the rest they are saying, that they snatched her because she is blonde and blue eyed to beg on the streets, are lies," said Manolis Sainopoulos, the deputy head of the Panhellenic Federation of Roma. "Right now she is in hospital and suffering because she misses the woman she regards as her mother."

With the discovery of the little girl gripping the country, the case has highlighted the profound mistrust between the Roma community and Greeks. In a society that takes pride in its homogeneity, Roma are among Greece's most marginalised minorities.

But sources insisted on Monday that court officials were not persuaded by the couple's assertions. The father, who has a criminal record, has given conflicting accounts of how the pair, who have 14 offspring, came to possess the child. The mother, who was found to have two identities, raised further suspicions when it was discovered she had claimed to have given birth to six of her children in the space of 10 months. Panayiotis Beis, Athens's deputy mayor, said: "This is a clear-cut example of people exploiting a gap in the law to obtain falsified birth certificates." Municipal officials say the couple could have claimed up to €2,700 (£2,290) in welfare benefits for the children.

Police are also investigating whether the girl, who speaks almost no Greek and converses in the Roma dialect, ended up in the couple's hands as a result of a child-trafficking network in the Balkans. Bulgarian women have been targeted as part of a wider operation of children being stolen to order. Greeks are known to have procured such babies for about €25,000.

The girl, who has come to embody the plight of missing children internationally, is expected to remain in hospital until experts, including an anthropologist, conduct further tests to determine her origins. Although there are lingering doubts, officials say her features suggest she is northern European.

"At first she was in shock and very reluctant to even smile," said Maria Petropoulou, a psychologist with Smile of the Child. "It has taken time for her to gain our trust as it will take time for her to adapt to her new surroundings."

Court jails Roma couple accused of abducting 'Maria' | World news | theguardian.com

Silvio Berlusconi banned from Italian politics for two years

 

An Italian court has ordered a two-year ban from parliament and elections for scandal-tainted former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi in the latest twist in his legal saga.

Photo: Controversial figure: former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi. (AFP Photo: Tiziana Fabi)

The ruling is part of the tax fraud case against the billionaire tycoon - his first ever definitive criminal conviction - in which he faces a year of community service or house arrest.

The 77-year-old Berlusconi was not present at Saturday's hearing and his defence lawyers have the right to appeal the verdict, although it was not immediately clear whether they would.

"This is the latest piece in a mosaic that aims to eliminate the leader of 10 million Italians from the political scene and is destined to fail," said Renato Schifani, the chief senator from Berlusconi's People of Freedom party.

In order for the ban to come into force, it has to be approved by the Senate parliamentary chamber where Berlusconi, who has repeatedly protested his innocence in all the cases against him, has a seat.

Banishment would be a humiliation for Berlusconi, who has been in parliament ever since the media and construction magnate first entered politics in 1994 and became a headline act.

His ejection from parliament is in any case already under discussion because of a new law approved last year against parliamentarians with criminal sentences of more than two years.

That law would also ban Berlusconi from running for office for six years, although a senate vote is also required in that case and his lawyers have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights over the law, even though lawmakers from Berlusconi's own party had approved it.

The supreme court on August 1 turned down Berlusconi's second and final appeal in the case but said another court should decide on a ban from parliament of between one and three years.

Prosecutors at Saturday's hearing had requested a two-year ban while Berlusconi's lawyers had asked for the minimum one year.

There is concern that the ruling could re-stoke political tensions in Italy's uneasy right-left coalition that had abated since prime minister Enrico Letta won a confidence vote in parliament against a challenge from Berlusconi on October 2.

'Italy needs stability'

"I think this country needs anything but political instability," Giorgio Squinzi, leader of the Confindustria employers' association, said at a conference after Saturday's ruling.

"The markets react immediately and we have seen that in the past few weeks," he said.

Italy is struggling to shake off a two-year recession that has pushed unemployment to record-high levels, forced thousands of businesses to shut and led to steep budget cuts.

The case revolved around Berlusconi's media empire and included a prison sentence of four years that was immediately commuted to one year because of an amnesty rule in place and will be served as house arrest or community service because of his age.

Berlusconi has applied for community service in Rome where he is resident, but a formal decision on whether and where he will do it requires two further court hearings which have not yet been set.

Berlusconi is also appealing a seven-year sentence for having sex with an underage 17-year-old prostitute and abuse of office when he was prime minister.

He is also appealing a one-year sentence for leaking a secret police wiretap in a newspaper owned by his family to damage a political rival.

AFP

Silvio Berlusconi banned from Italian politics for two years - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)