Italy Scales Back Gypsy Fingerprinting

(AP)  Italian officials carrying out a survey of the country's Gypsy population will only fingerprint those who don't have a valid ID, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday, apparently dropping plans to fingerprint all Gypsies after critics called it discriminatory.

The ministry said the new guidelines were sent to local authorities in Rome, Milan and Naples, where tens of thousands of Gypsies live in hundreds of shabby encampments built on the cities' outskirts.

Officials in the cities had already begun taking information from the inhabitants with varying methods after the government ordered the census as part of a crack down on street crime, which Italians blame mostly on foreigners.

Government officials had said the census would include fingerprinting those living in camps, adults and children alike.

That plan provoked a storm of criticism from center-left opposition as well as from the European Union and human rights groups. Opponents say the campaign is a discriminatory measure that singles out a minority.

More than 700 encampments have been built, mainly around Rome, Milan and Naples, populated almost entirely by Gypsies, also known as Roma.

The conservative government of Premier Silvio Berlusconi maintains the census is needed to establish who is living in the country illegally, and to spur efforts to get Gypsy children to attend school.

The ministry guidelines issued Tuesday say fingerprints will be taken from adults and children above 14 only if they don't have a valid ID.