Dozens protest policies in Italy on Roma Holocaust day

ROME – Dozens of activists have gathered outside Italy’s parliament on Roma Holocaust Memorial Day amid new concerns about discrimination against the minority community.

Waving Roma flags and displaying signs reading “Stop xenophobia” and “No to pogroms,” the activists gathered Thursday to remember past mistreatment and to protest current conditions in Italy.

Interior Minister Matteo Salvini called for a census of the Roma population in June, and police closed a Roma camp in the Italian capital last month.

In one of several recent attacks being investigated as possible acts of racism, a young Roma child was shot with an air gun in Rome and left partially paralyzed.

Some of the protesters at Thursday’s demonstration wore the brown, triangle-shaped badge that Germany’s Nazis forced Roma people to wear.