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Roma teen brutally beaten in suspected vigilante attack in Paris (18 June 2014)

Date: 18/06/2014
Duncan Lewis, Immigration Solicitors, Roma teen brutally beaten in suspected vigilante attack in Paris

President Hollande has condemned a savage assault on a teenager from a Roma camp in a Paris suburb.

The 16-year-old called Darius was kidnapped from his Roma campsite by a gang of 20 youths from a nearby housing estate, who believed him to be a thief. The housing estate the gang comes from is described as being multiracial.

The Independent reports that the teenager had been arrested on suspicion of burglary several times during the last two weeks at Pierrefitte in Seine-Saint-Denis, an area north of Paris.

The youths who staged the attack on the Roma teenager left him in a shopping trolley with multiple fractures to his skull. It is believed he was unconscious when found by a passerby hours after the attack on Friday (13/06/14). The teenager was taken to hospital and placed in a coma – it is thought his condition remains life threatening.

The gang is reported to have worn masks and carried knuckle-dusters and clubs to carry out the attack – and members of the Roma community who tried to stop the violent assault were also reportedly attacked.

The attackers also contacted the teenager’s family and demanded a ransom of 15,000 euros – around £12,000. His parents had assumed he had been killed and only discovered days later that he was critically ill in hospital.

President Hollande has referred to the injuries inflicted on the Roma teenager as “unspeakable and unjustifiable actions, which strike against all the principles on which our Republic is founded”.

There are an estimated 20,000 Roma living in camps in France. Research by the University of Salford has estimated that there are around 200,000 Roma living from Central and Eastern Europe living in England.

In 2012, BBC Radio 4’s ‘Report’ programme investigated an increase in the number of Roma families in the UK who were coming into contact with social services.

The programme followed the revelation that Rotherham social services had removed two Roma children from foster parents who were allegedly members of UKIP.

A Roma migrant from the Czech Republic living in Rotherham, Jonas, told BBC News at the time:

“They've made me worry about my children. They think we're stupid and can't take care of ourselves... if social services knock at my door, I won't let them in.”

Jonas and his wife Yvetta have four children of their own. Yvetta said:

“It's because we're Roma. We can't speak English – we're an easy target."

After the attack on the Roma teenager in France, a social worker said:

“It is an explosive situation, which most well-off French people don’t know anything about.

“There is much talk of white or rightwing opposition to the presence of the Roma – the tensions between Roma camps and the multi-racial housing estates are often far worse.”

The vice-president of France’s National Front Party has also condemned the attack. Louis Aliot added, however, that it was “not surprising” members of the public defended themselves if they were under the impression that the state failed “to protect them”.

Police handling the case said that it was “too early” to link the attack on the Roma teenager to recent burglaries on the estate – and added that investigations were continuing.

It is reported that the gang who carried out the attack entered a Roma camp to select an individual to abduct – suggesting that the incident may be the work of vigilantes or intended as a “brutal warning” to the Roma community.

The Roma living on the campsite where Darius was abducted from have since cleared it.

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