Crackdown on Roma: President Nicolas Sarkozy has ordered a nationwide crackdown on the makeshift camps in which many Roma, or Gypsies, live. The camps are “sources of illegal trafficking, of profoundly shocking living standards, of exploitation of children for begging, of prostitution and crime,” Sarkozy said. Some 300 camps will be dismantled, and Roma found to be in the country illegally will be deported to Romania and Bulgaria. The order was a response to recent riots in the Loire Valley, in which Roma attacked police after a youth was shot dead. The new policy prompted an outcry from human-rights groups, which called it racist. Some French commentators said it was particularly troubling given France’s history during World War II, when Vichy authorities rounded up Roma and sent them to Nazi concentration camps.
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