Anti-gypsy view cruel (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Anti-gypsy view cruel

10:11am Friday 27th June 2008 in Letters

The coverage of the protests about the proposed gypsy sites makes very disturbing reading and I would appeal to everyone involved in this process to think very carefully and sincerely about what they are saying.

While I understand the worries of the protesters, I am very upset by the sentiments some have expressed. While it is entirely appropriate to say: "I am worried that having a site near my home/school might lead to problems with noise, I am afraid it will appear unsightly, and I am concerned the comings and goings might cause problems and disturbance" it is another matter entirely to say, as one Calne mother you quoted did: "I want the councillors to look into my baby's eyes and tell her she will be growing up next to gypsies."

The gypsies are an ethnic and cultural group. They are human beings and this attitude towards them is racist and very cruel. How would this quote read if the word Jews' or Somalis' replaced the word gypsy?

Half a million gypsies were slaughtered by Hitler during the Holocaust. We think it is appalling how one group of people could dehumanise another group in such a way that it extends to genocide - but consider how dehumanising this comment is? How would a gypsy child feel, reading that a mother wouldn't want her child to grow up alongside him or her? Are gypsies worth less than non-gypsies?

I trust the Gazette, as a bastion of fairness and a promoter of racial equality and human rights, will not let such views and expressions go unchallenged.

Sarah Singleton, Patterdown, Chippenham