Roma kids to get citizenship

All children born in Italy's gypsy camps will be given 'humanitarian' citizenship, Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said Monday.

Maroni, who has launched a controversial scheme to fingerprint camp occupants, said ''it is the primary right of a kid, any kid, to have an identity''.

Many of the children in the camps have never been registered as citizens even though they were born in Italy, he noted.

Maroni, a leading member of the rightwing Northern League, defended himself from charges of discriminating against Roma.

''We have to safeguard (the children). What we are doing is right and fair. There are people living in sub-human conditions in these camps''.

Maroni said the fate of the children in the camps was often ''tragic'' and ''some of them are used in organ trafficking''.

The minister reiterated that the census of camps was not aimed against any specific ethnic group or spurred by a wave of crime-linked anti-immigrant feeling.

''It was the previous government that started talking about a 'Roma emergency','' he claimed.

The fingerprinting campaign has been slammed by the European parliament, human rights groups and the Romanian government.

In the face of protests, Italy agreed with the European Union to make sure the scheme complies with human rights norms. Italy is set to answer EU inquiries by the end of the month.

It also announced it would require all citizens to have their prints put on ID cards starting in 2010.

The Council of Europe (CE), Europe's rights body, on Monday said Italian politicians had lacked ''the moral leadership'' to face down the kind of anti-gypsy sentiment that led to incidents such as the torching of camps in Naples a month ago.

CE Human Rights Commissioner Thomas Hammarberg said ''the entire Roma community was turned into a scapegoat for crimes committed by very few people''.

Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi has defended the scheme as a means of helping Roma integrate as well as stopping gypsies forcing their children to beg and steal.