Italy's beleaguered Roma population on Monday announced the creation of its first Italian federation in a bid to give an official voice to the country's gypsies.
The Roma and Sinti Together Federation will act as an umbrella organisation uniting 19 associations in eight Italian regions including Lombardy, Tuscany, Abruzzo, Lazio and Emilia Romagna and will represent an estimated 15,000 gypsies.
Federation president Nazzareno Guarnieri said the move was necessary in light of rapidly souring relations between Italians and the Roma population, which came to a head last week as Naples residents forced many gypsies to flee the city and burnt their camps to the ground.
The wave of violence was sparked after a 17-year-old Roma girl was caught trying to steal a baby from a nearby apartment.
The first action of the federation will be to request an urgent meeting with Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, who is set to present a new security package that includes tough immigrant crime measures at the government's first cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
''We don't intend to march against or ride the wave of the trouble, we want to sit down and talk about it in order to help improve the conditions of the lives of the Roma, of the Sinti and of residents,'' Guarnieri said.
He also criticised president of the Roma rights group Opera Nomadi, Massimo Converso, for acting as the official spokesperson of the minority in recent weeks.
''He's not a Roma, but he continues to go on television to talk about our needs and our future despite the fact that most of my people do not recognise him,'' Guarnieri added.
According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), there are an estimated 170,000 gypsies living in Italy, of whom 136,000 are originally from Romania and 34,000 from the Balkans.
