Romanian Gypsy Gangs and Child Slavery

Europe needs to step up and address this. The question is how.

In Europe’s capitals the site of beggars and homeless children has become all too familiar in the last few years. As European economies constrict more and more people have been reduced to scavenging for a meagre life on increasingly tough streets. With increased competition for hand-outs and people prepared to give less and less to the less fortunate the underworld that controls street crime has begun to stoop to new lows. We are all used to being approached at bars and restaurants by people selling roses for a Euro or a dollar. As annoying as it is to be interrupted multiple times during the course of a night out by an adult selling innocuous flowers or asking for spare change the apparition of a small child who should be in bed approaching your table is disturbing to say the least.

The BBC has recently screened a documentary on Britain’s Child Beggars (see below). The documentary exposes the tawdry web of child slavery that some Romanian gypsy gangs have instituted all over the continent. Their criminal activities earn millions for the gangsters that control these children and have largely built the hundreds of sumptuous palaces at the seat of the gangsters in Tanderei Romania – the Gypsy Beverly Hills. The documentary shows how young children trafficked to the UK and are trained from an early age to beg and steal and grow up thinking that this is just how things are. They have no chance of getting a proper education or ever aspiring to anything other than a thief.

 Britain’s Child Beggars

 Following the fall of communism millions of Eastern Europeans went west in search of better lives in rich Western Europe. Along with those who genuinely wanted to work honestly for better lives came the gangsters who run the sex, drug and slave industries in Europe’s capital cities. It is estimated that a child can earn up to £120,000 annually beggaring and stealing on London’s streets. The children are sometimes kidnapped from other families or are the children of the gangsters. They are sent out on the streets using threats and force to swindle, steal and beg for whatever they can get. It’s tragic but so far authorities seem reluctant or incapable to counteract it.

The response to the influx of Romanian Gypsies in Western Europe has largely been criticised for being misguided and racist.France’s Sarkozy government offered money to the Gypsies to go home to Romania. Italy’s Northern League demolished their make shift camps. Spanish police are left impotent by their child protection laws which prevent them from arresting or detaining the child thieves.

 A lot has been made of the Romanian Gypsies in the Tabloid press. Frequently they are compared to a plague and it’s not unheard of for commentators to infer that Gypsies are innately thieves. This unfair characterisation of Europe’s largest minority group ignores the reality that Gypsies come from all over Europe and not just Romania. Gypsy rights groups frequently defend their community by pointing out that Slovak, Czech and Polish gypsies are usually not involved in this sort of crime in Western Europe - largely because they are entitled to work in Western Europe under European law, without a special visa, whereas Romanian Gypsies are not. On the other hand millions of Czech, Polish and Slovak Gypsies were murdered by the Nazis during WW2 so their numbers are a lot smaller than in Romania which has the largest population of Gypsies in the world (estimated to be 2 million). Whatever the case there is no denying that Europe’s Gypsies have been tortured and discriminated against since they first arrived in the continent form Northern India 1500 years ago. The level of poverty and abuse inflicted on Gypsies clearly plays a part in their association with the criminal world.

As mentioned earlier, competition is getting tougher on the streets of Europe. The gangsters place inordinate amounts of pressure on the children to bring back more and more money to finance their extravagant lives in Tanderei and elsewhere. As a result new methods of stealing are being noticed around the continent. The following clip shows Gypsy children stealing form ATM machines and boldly pilfering from people walking down the street.  

 Gypsy Child Thieves

Human trafficking is a huge problem in our modern world. Trafficking of young children and dragging them into the dark world of organised crime is abhorrent in the extreme. It’s Dickensian and a huge problem that needs to be addressed. While it is important not to label an entire ethnic group as being involved in this murky world, the issue of large numbers of Gypsies making a living in the underworld is unavoidable. Europe needs to step up and address this. The question is how.