"Has Amnesty International been informed does anyone know?"
There is talk about involving the European Courts, but whether the hand-to-mouth Traveller organisations can manage it is another matter - there isn't the groundswell of support here that there used to be in Britain - students, sympathetic solicitors, Councillors - dislike of the Travellers here is fairly widespread.
A few years ago a Traveller was 'executed' by a farmer who suspected him of intending to burgle his property.
The farmer shot the man, beat him with a stick while he lay on the ground, went in and reloaded, came out and administered the coupe-de-grace - shot him dead.
The farmer never denied it, fully expected to be sent to prison - the jury thought it was a reasonable thing to do and acquitted him.
It really doesn't get plainer than that.
"Sorrowfully they are a sector of society which has just run out of road."
That is one of the arguments used to excuse what if happening here - it is also rife in Britain.
They haven't "run out of road" - the road deliberately.
It really does't help to reminisce about the "old ways" and the horse-drawn caravans - it's not like that anymore - some of these romances are a fantasy anyway - George Borrow's pipe-dream.
The irony of all this is that millions are being spent to provide a few Travellers housing (that most of them don't want anyway) while it would be far more economical to provide reasonably equipped halting sites where they can stay or go - the ones we visited in Britain, like the one in Winterbourne, outside Bristol, or the huge one outside Swindon, worked perfectly and the Travellers responded well to it.
The Traveller dedicated housing units here are little more than walled, cramped, expensive to build concrete ghettos shielded from the public gaze.
The spite shown towards Travellers is typified by the action of Louth Council in driving the families off, destroying the facilities and leaving the site empty for as long as they did - not as if the land was needed - pretty much the same as the scrap yard that became The Dale Farm site.
Jim Carroll