Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive, but it seems a bit much when Human Rights within the EU are being abused as we speak: From what position of moral authority are we telling other States how to behave?

Last week in the very heart of Bureacratic Europe, 500 mass "preventative" or "administrative" arrests were made during the No Borders Camp.( It didn't escape the participants notice that whilst protesting the lack of freedom of movement granted to Non-EU citizens, their freedom of movement was temporarily suspended, even with the view of the European Parliament. Of course, whilst in some way the detention was a reminder to those participating in the mobilisation what they were doing their in the first place, those who have been involved in similar events would need no reminding. In fact, it wasn't simply arbitraty detention that those in brusells faced, but systematic abuse as well. One account is particularly disturbing:

"Marianne, Having just entered Belgium, some two hours earlier, she witnessed violent arrests on the street. When Marianne began taking pictures, she was arrested. She was taken into police custody where she was violently dragged by her hair, chained to a radiator, hit, kicked, spat upon, called a whore, and threatened with sexual assault by the police. She also witnessed the torture of another prisoner also chained to a radiator." Others (Female) prisoners were stripped of their clothes by male officers and also threatened.

Example 2.

Abuse and Persecution of Roma in Italy has been increasing under Belusconi for years, having been cleared by the EU that he was not discriminating against an ethnic group just because he sytematically fingerprinted them all ( http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4674724.ece) it was no suprise that Sakozy thought he was safe to start mass deportation of France's Roma population. The outraged reaction of the EU's political establishment, perhaps surprised him - and why not? An ever increasing militarized EU border policy has hardly caused a stir in the Bunderstag, Congreso de los diputados, and certainly not Westminster. If we are happy to pay Gadaffi and Libya billions in Euros to keep African migrants from reaching the shores of Fortress Europe, what's wrong with throwing them out (even if some of them have EU citizenship)?

Example 3.

Whilst happily continuing both mass deportation and detention of migrants, the British State is preparing the beginning of itown war with Gypsies. All legal hurdles have now been cleared for the Eviction of a Irish Traveller and Roma Community in Dale Farm, Essex. The Community own the land themselves, but despite it being on the site of a former scrapyard, on the intersection of a busy road the pretext that the land is designated "green belt" is being used against them. But this is just the start: Laws allowing immediate eviction without a court hearing are being prepared, as are the scrapping of the provision of legal sites by local authorities - the unhappy coupling of these two pieces of legislation leaves travellers, whether Roma, Irish or those who have more recently taken to the road, literally nowhere to go.