France: Romany child shot dead
01 September 1995
Border police opened fire on a convoy of four vehicles which they say failed to stop at passport control near Nice, shooting dead an 8-year-old child from the former Yugoslavia who was sleeping in the back of one of the cars. Close family members of the child were given a one-month residence permit, but 37 other Romanies in the convoy were escorted out of France six days later, after the French refugee agency OFPRA rejected their application for asylum. The reasoning was that the area of the former Yugoslavia from which the convoy came was not a war zone, and that as Gypsies the group were discriminated against not just there but in almost all countries of Europe. The justice ministry denied police misconduct, saying that what they did was "normal", but one police officer was later charged with "unintentional homicide" after an inspector admitted that "inopportune shots were fired".
Migration Newssheet September 1995.