Monday, June 29, 2009

A Baby as a Weapon

Cultural Enrichment News

Here’s another cultural enrichment story from France, a very bizarre one involving Romany immigrants. Our French correspondent Robert Marchenoir has translated an article from Nord-éclair, and includes this prefatory note:

Note the mix of factual reporting and naive, personal, unbridled opinion, typical of local reporting in the French regional press.

It might strike an American reader as rather non-professional. However, the advantage of such reporting, often done by poorly-paid part-timers, is the lack of political correctness. A full-time professional journalist would probably have whitewashed the facts. He would certainly not have genuinely reflected the feelings of the general population, the way it is done here.

The translated article:

A Gypsy hits a policeman using a baby as a weapon

Robin, France, June 27, 2009 — Nord-éclair — The presence of Gypsies from Romania in the Roubaix area [north of France] has always brought its load of problems, but a new threshold was reached when a difficult arrest was made last Thursday: a young woman grabbed a baby by its foot and used it as a weapon to hit a policeman.

Last Thursday, around 6.30 p.m., a police patrol stops a young man driving without a licence or insurance. [A common practice, it seems, among Gypsies.] […] Tempers flare. Extra police are summoned to the place. Around ten of them are present when the exchange takes an astonishing turn. A young Gypsy grabs a one-year old baby from the arms of a man belonging to the camp. She steps in front of the policemen. The police think she is trying to prevent the arrest by acting as a human shield. Far from it.

First, she grabs the baby by an arm and a leg, and hits a policeman with it. Then, she grabs it by one foot only, and hits again. What’s happening is awful. The baby cries. The police try to hinder this explosion of violence. This baby used as a weapon; it’s unbearable. Then the woman tries to throw the baby on the ground. Policemen manage to catch it before it falls. They rush it away to the hospital, far from this scene of hysteria.
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But wait. Other women bare their breasts, and splatter the police with their own milk. One Gypsy man mutilates himself: he slashes his belly with a 20-cm wound. The police provide him with emergency care and press the wound in order to keep the blood from flowing. The baby-swinging woman, who is not the baby’s mother, is brought to the police station. The baby is in a state of shock. An inquest is begun. The baby might be put under the care of a foster family. Legal proceedings have been started for violence and rebellion.

Why such violence? At the football club next door, people are waiting eagerly for the Gypsies’ departure. The situation has been very tense for the last month: “They steal our footballs, they send their children to relieve themselves on the football ground right while we’re training,” says the coach Hassen Hamidi. [Note how the Arab coach complains about Gypsies in a way that would be deemed “racist” if it came from an aboriginal French. Arabs and Gypsies are notoriously at odds with each other in France, and violent incidents often occur between them. — translator]

People from the neighbourhood have been helpful to Gypsies. But [the Gypsies’] aggressiveness and lack of respect are unbearable.

4 comments:

Zenster said...

At the football club next door, people are waiting eagerly for the Gypsies’ departure. The situation has been very tense for the last month: “They steal our footballs, they send their children to relieve themselves on the football ground right while we’re training,” says the coach Hassen Hamidi. [Note how the Arab coach complains about Gypsies in a way that would be deemed “racist” if it came from an aboriginal French. Arabs and Gypsies are notoriously at odds with each other in France, and violent incidents often occur between them. — translator].

How to say it?

CULTURAL ENRICHMENT KNOWS NO BOUNDS

Suck it down, all of you idiots, until you strangle upon the privilege and favoritism so favored by yourselves.

Afonso Henriques said...

Wow, this is shocking. Gypsies are really mad.

And aloud me to expose a little of my anti-Gypsism:

Some months ago, a family of Romanian Gypsies rent one house in the same floor as mine. They are thirteen living in a two bedroom 60 to 80 m2 house.

"Last Thursday, around 6.30 p.m., a police patrol stops a young man driving without a licence or insurance. [A common practice, it seems, among Gypsies.]"

Indeed. The Gypsies are illegal, meaning that they have no papers. However, they have a car (they don't really work. The boys sell papers and the patriarch has some businesses with the local Gypsy comunity. The women must sell things like other Gypsies but they definetly do not manufacture nothing. Also, they are helped by charities, the church (I am not sure about the church though) and have 2 or 3 small children to feed).

Well, they are illegal but still have a car(!!!), they drive the car (!!!) and sometimes are cought by the police. Then they will look like they are suffering a lor for two days and then, THEY ARE DRIVING THE SAME CAR!!!

I live in an urban area. 3 million inhabitants or so. How can this happen?

I know that in rural areas they aloud the Gypsies to drive without license for some (somewhat fair) reasons but here!??

heroyalwhyness said...

Afonso Henriques said... "The women must sell things like other Gypsies but they definetly do not manufacture nothing."

Gypsy (Roma) camps can be characterized as "Mobile Pawn Shops".


My father retells a story of his childhood when his widowed mother struggled to make ends meet by offering laundering/pressing services in Pest during WWII. His mom was delivering a freshly pressed/crisply starched shirt and was enjoying a cup of tea which was interrupted by a child's terrifying cry outside. While checking on the commotion, the shirt, the teapot/cups and silverware all disappeared courtesy of the local gypsy population which was notorious for setting up such events.

RIP Nagymama 1912-2009

Afonso Henriques said...

Actually, when I get out early (7:00, 8:00) there are always some gypsy women carriying big black bags full of clothes and other things.
These women usually "work" and I'd say they "work" hard.

But nowadays there are small plazzas around where tens of Gypsies gather (especially the ones from Romania) and spend all day long. Literally, all day long without doing nothing.