The Church of England is to give more support to tackling racism and discrimination directed towards the travelling community, with a bishop declaring it is “still tolerated”.

The church’s governing body, the General Synod, voted in favour of a motion on Saturday to speak out publicly against racism and hate crimes directed against Gypsies, Irish Travellers and Roma.

The Synod voted overwhelmingly in favour of the motion, with 265 supporting it and one voting against.

The Bishop of Chelmsford, Stephen Cottrell – who put forward the motion, told the synod: “If one of us in any situation was to use racist language about some other person or group, it is very likely in today’s society that we would, and rightly so, be immediately called out.

“Racism against Travellers and Roma and Gypsies is still tolerated.

“The Equality and Human Rights Commission have found that discrimination and racism towards Gypsies and Travellers is common, frequently overt and seen as justified.

“The police have said that a prejudice against Gypsies and Travellers in endemic in our society, and often fuelled by stereotypes in the media.”

A report by Anglia Ruskin University was cited, which found that nine out of every 10 Traveller children had experienced racist abuse.

He then added: “Sorrowfully, we, the church of God are no exception, there are examples of the racist hostility and exclusion meted out by the church.

“Gypsy, Traveller and Roma people deserve particular support, hence the motions call to the leadership of the church to speak on these issues for every diocese to think about appointing a chaplain.”

The motion would call for each diocese to be encouraged to appoint a chaplain to Travellers, to help the potential for church growth, and work to combat racism in the church and wider community.

The Synod then discussed instigating a commission on sites for Gypsies and Travellers to encourage the local and national church to make land available for new sites managed by Housing Associations.

Mary Durlacher, a parishioner in the north of Chelmsford diocese, spoke in opposition and said: “Being near to the A12, we found one day, that one of our two churches had a car park completely full of Travellers.

“Police advice was, don’t go there, let us deal with it, in the meantime it meant no services, and on a Friday of a bank holiday, the church was inaccessible.

“People wanting to visit their relatives or their families buried in the churchyard couldn’t, there was a lot of upset and there was fear because there is a link with a rise in petty crime – I don’t know the exact figures, but there is a correlation.

“They did leave, but they left on the Saturday, about three o’clock and we had quite a job.

“There was the issue of excrement and my husband and I got on our gloves because the smell was quite interesting. They hadn’t done too much damage but they might be back said the police”.

Italy’s new government plans to carry out a census of the Roma community with an eye to kicking out anyone staying in the country illegally, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said on Monday.

“Unfortunately we will have to keep the Italian Roma because we can’t expel them,” Salvini, who is head of the far-right League, told television station Telelombardia.

Salvini set off a storm in Europe last week when he refused to let a charity ship carrying more than 600 mainly African migrants dock in Italy.

Spain eventually took in the boat, with Salvini saying Italy would no longer automatically take in boat migrants, who have used Libya as a springboard in recent years to seek a richer, safer life in Europe.

Turning his attention to another group that has often been the target of League ire, Salvini said his ministry was looking at “the Roma question” and wanted to see “who, and how many” there were.

Tens of thousands of Roma, also known as “gypsies” and “nomads”, live across Italy, many in squalid shantytowns on the outskirts of major cities and on the fringes of society.

Salvini’s comments drew an immediate barrage of criticism, with the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) saying his call revived memories of “ethnic cleansing”.

In a subsequent statement, Salvini said the government had no intention of setting up a separate archive for the Roma or taking finger prints, but wanted to protect Roma children who were barred from going to local schools by their parents.

He added that he wanted to check how European Union funds aimed at helping marginalised communities were being spent.

Around 300 of Croatia’s Jewish population held a vigil outside the country’s most notorious concentration camp in protest at the government’s alleged failure to challenge rising neo-Nazi sentiment in the country.

Part of this failure concerns the downplaying of the crimes of Croatia’s pro-Nazi regime. The ultra-nationalist and antisemitic Ustaša regime took power on August 10, 1941, after Axis forces had invaded Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941.

Concentration camps were built nationwide to ‘purge’ Croatian society of ‘foreign elements’. This extended to Jews, Serbs, Roma and non-Catholic minorities.

Ustaša fascists exterminated over 500,000 Serbs. They forced 250,000 into exile and made 250,000 more Serbs convert to Catholicism under pain of death, according to Yad Vashem.

The fascist regime murdered  75 per cent of Croatia’s pre-war Jewish population of 40,000. Jews in Croatia now make up 1 per cent of the general population.

Between 15,000 and 20,000 Roma were also murdered by the Ustaša regime, as were between 5,000 and 12,000 ethnic Croats and Muslims.

Croatia’s largest concentration camp was the Jasenovac complex, a string of five camps along the Sava River, east of Zagreb. Close to 100,000 people were murdered in this camp between 1941 and 1945.

Prisoners at the Jasenovac camp received little food. Shelter and sanitary conditions were minimal at best. Guards tortured, assaulted and murdered prisoners with impunity.

The tools of murder included hammers, knives, bars and axes. They also used blowtorches and welding rods to torture prisoners.

Eduard Sajer, a survivor of the Jasenovac concentration camp, recalled how guards had segregated barracks for Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews and Serbs. When not working as an electrician in the camp, Sajer had to dig graves for individuals murdered by a blow to the head from a mallet. He bore witness to the murder of his brother and lost his parents and other siblings in the camp. He watched others being burnt alive.

Granik and Gradina also served as local killing fields.

Croatia’s surviving Jews were deported to Auschwitz between 1942 and 1943.

According to Marko Attila Hoare, an expert on genocides the region “the Ustasha  extermination  of  Serbs  provided  a  catalyst  for  Chetnik  massacres  of  Croat  and  Muslim  civilians“.

Dinko Sakic, commander of the Jasenovac camp, had fled to Argentina after the war and was eventually found guilty of crimes against humanity in 1999. Sakic was responsible for the murder of more than 2,000 Serbs, Jews and Roma. He ordered executions, refused to treat the sick, worked people to death and tortured some with a blowtorch. The courts found that Sakic had personally shot dead two prisoners for smiling.

Croatia’s independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, saw attempts to rehabilitate the image of the Ustaša. Fascists veterans received benefits from government officials. The  late president Franjo Tudjman, who died in 1999, was often accused of Holocaust revisionism.

The funeral of Dinko Sakic proved a lavish affair in 2008. According to local media, he  was buried in the Ustasha uniform and described by the priest at the funeral as “a person Croats must be proud of”. Israel’s former ambassador, Shmuel Meirom, condemned the funeral.

Now in 2016, there is a sense of a neo-Nazi revival. Ultra-nationalists shouted pro-Nazi slogans at a rally attended by thousands of people, including Deputy Parliamentary Speaker Ivan Tepes in January.

Similar chants were heard during a recent football match between Israel and Croatia.

The Croatian government is now taking steps to allay fears. President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic met representatives of Jews, Serbs, Gypsies and anti-fascists. Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic issued a statement condemning the Ustashe regime.a

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