Europe's Second-class citizens

It has been announced that workers from Romania and Bulgaria will not have an automatic right to work elsewhere in the EC, when the two countries join next year.

Why have they been allowed to join so, if their citizens are to be effectively second-class citizens of the European Union? I feel that this is a violation of a fundamental, and I mean fundamental tenet of the EU. It makes a mockery of one of the four factor freedoms which were at the heart of the European Union's foundation: the free movement of labour.

This has been done to please racist, diseased filth like Toby - insecure little people leading shitty little lives and doing shitty little jobs which, however, they are so fearful might be taken by "foreigners".

But there is a far more insidious reasoning behind the decision, which displays a form of racism which the European Commissioners are afraid to admit to. It is designed not to thwart labour from Romania and Bulgaria in its entirety. Both countries have large communities of Roma who are the subject in both countries of frightful discrimination. I have heard them described as "black Romanian bastards". In Romania, Ceausescu may be long dead but the hatred of the Roma continues and is, in many aspects of life, institutionalised. Roma are frequently targeted for assault which are hardly ever investigated by the police who are, in most instances, sympathetic to the assailants - if not actually committing them themselves.

Some time ago a really horrible local councillor from Belturbet commented that Belturbet was in danger of being turned into Bucharest. Apart from being impressed that he knew the capital of Romania I was compelled to make the following comment, which I have had no reason to alter since. I believe that such a transformation would be an unqualified improvement for Belturbet, especially since Bucharest has been cleared of its feral dog problem.

In Bulgaria the Roma face an even worse time. An organisation called Attaka sits in the Bulgarian parliament. It makes blood-curdling statements about Roma and members have been implicated in arson attacks on Roma homes. A sickening psychotic thug named Volen Siderov, backed by Attaka, won over 21 per cent of the vote in the recent Bulgarian presidential elections, forcing incumbent president (and former historian - we have to stick together you know) Georgi Parvanov into a run-off, which he is thankfully assured of winning.

So when the regulations were announced that Romanians and Bulgarians would have to get permits to work in Ireland, but that people from these two countries would be given preferential treatment, the sub-text was clear enough: preferential treatment would indeed be given to non-Roma from these two countries.

The Roma aren't good at telling their story. It would shock too many. Nobody is quite sure how many Roma were murdered by the Nazis; a conservative estimate says half a million. It is known that over 23,000 - yes twenty-three thousand, were killed in Auschwitz alone. Along with the Jews, the Roma were targeted for extermination as part of the final solution, but unlike the Jews they did not have rich cousins in America prepared to tell in technicolor detail of their sufferings. No doubt there are those who say that, like the Jewish holocaust, the Roma holocaust never happened; that it was all part of a "holo-hoax".

I was once outraged by the ignorance and stupidity of an Irish racist who, when talking of the Roma described them as "Dirty, black, Romanian bastards." Dirty!?! How dare he say such a thing. The Roma subscribe to a very strict regime of personal and ritual cleanliness, perhaps originating in India. They will only eat certain foods (amongst them, traditionally hedgehog). They will not allow cats and dogs to share their living space. This is because both animals habitually lick their genitals while washing, and thus are unclean to the Roma. Indeed in their eyes, we, western Caucasian Europeans, are the dirty ones.


A British newspaper carried a headline that "illegal immigrants" would be fined £1.000 This reminded me of a film I saw recently with Rosie, called Children of Men - a beautiful film but very disturbing. It is set in a nightmarish world in the future where women have lost the ability to conceive, and where the radio carries messages warning people that sheltering "illegal immigrants" is a crime. The fate of those caught by the immigration police is to be caged up in concentration camps. A surreal glimpse into the future? It's already happening.


Irish minister Micheal Martin, in defending this racist move, did say something which should be remembered. Tens of thousands of workers have come into Ireland in the past number of years, and it would be difficult to perceive of a "Celtic tiger economy" without them Difficult? Impossible! If it wasn't for these people what we'd have would be a Celtic kitten, a wan, sickly, yet vastly obese creature who would never catch mice on a Monday because it was too wrecked after the weekend; which wouldn't catch mice on a Friday afternoon either; which would be "under the vet" for the rest of the week, unable and unwilling to do anything; which would respond to any attempts to move it by pissing over everything; which wouldn't even consider licking its arse after it crapped itself without a sufficiently large cash inducement; and which would defend its antipathy to catching mice (or anything else) with reference to a lack of adequate resources.