Thousands protest at French gypsy crackdown

Thousands of people all over France marched to protest at expulsions of gypsies and other security measures adopted by President Nicolas Sarkozy's government.

Protesters blew whistles and beat drums in Paris, the largest demonstration among those in at least 135 cities and towns and elsewhere in Europe yesterday.

Human rights and anti-racism groups, unions and left-wing political parties were taking part in the protests.

They accuse Mr Sarkozy of stigmatising minority groups and seeking political gain with the security crackdown. They also say he is breaking French traditions of welcoming the oppressed, in a country that is one of the world's leading providers of political asylum.

The protests mark the first show of public discontent since the conservative Mr Sarkozy, a former hardline interior minister, announced new measures to fight crime in late July.

He said gypsy camps would be "systematically evacuated" and his interior minister and other officials said last week that about 1,000 Roma had been given small stipends and flown home since then.

For years Mr Sarkozy has used his image as a tough, law-and-order politician to win political support. He has linked Roma to crime, saying their camps are sources of prostitution and child exploitation.

The latest moves by Mr Sarkozy came after violence between police and youths in a suburban Grenoble housing project and other clashes in a travelling community in the Loire Valley.

Mr Sarkozy also said naturalised citizens who threatened the lives of police officers should lose their citizenship - a view slammed by critics as anti-constitutional and evocative of nationalist measures during France's collaborationist past in the Vichy regime during Second World War.

"Mr Sarkozy is there to stand for the constitution, not to trample it," said Jean-Pierre Dubois, president of France's Human Rights League. "So we consider this situation extremely dangerous, that's why we are here."

Paris police said about 12,000 people took part in the protest in the capital and that no violence took place. Organisers estimated 50,000 took part.

"It warms the heart to see so many people out here. Fortunately, there are nice people in the world," said Delia Romanes, walking behind a banner of a 17-year-old gypsy circus that she heads in north-eastern Paris. She said the government had recently sought to strip its performers of their work papers.

Other Roma without proper residency rights were more fearful.

"We are afraid. We aren't prepared for this," said David Anghel, a 24-year-old mason from Romania, who has lived in France for eight years.

Holding the banner of a gypsy-support association, he said his wife had been served with an order to leave their camp in Fleury-Merogis, south of Paris, about 10 days ago. They fear police will come to expel them in the next few days.

Similar peaceful protests took place outside French embassies elsewhere in Europe. In Belgrade, Serbia, dozens of gypsies chanted anti-racist slogans and held banners calling for an end to the expulsions from France.

In Rome, Marcello Zuinisi, a Tuscany-based gypsy leader, sought to remind the French about their "liberte, egalite, fraternite" motto. "We want those values to be respected today," he said.

In an open letter to Mr Sarkozy published in the Le Monde daily yesterday, celebrated French-Moroccan writer Tahar Ben Jelloun - whom Mr Sarkozy inducted into France's Legion d'Honneur in 2007 - said he felt the proposal about stripping citizenship had "threatened a little bit - or at least weakened - my French nationality".

Polls have shown the French are split about the policy of sending home gypsies to eastern Europe - mainly Romania - though slightly more favour it than oppose it.

France's recent and highly publicised crackdown has drawn criticism from the United Nations and the Vatican, among other institutions, and has exposed dissent within Mr Sarkozy's own government. Foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said he briefly considered resigning in the uproar over the policy.