Vienna  - Human rights groups and Roma activists criticized Italy Friday for recent policies targeting the Roma minority, such as fingerprinting and forced evictions.

The criticism was levelled at a conference of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE).

Since the election of the new Italian government in April, "expressions of racism and xenophobia have translated into policy and legal acts targeting Roma only," said a report by five NGOs, including the Open Society Institute founded by US investor George Soros.

The civic organizations presented their report on the human rights situation of Roma in Italy to an OSCE conference on the integration of Roma in Europe.

Since June, local Italian authorities have subjected Roma living in informal settlements to identification by fingerprinting. In addition, several Roma camps have been cleared and destroyed this year.

The fingerprinting brought back memories of Roma persecutions in the 1930s and 1940s, activists said.

Italian authorities say the measure will help to assess the size of the Roma population in order to allocate funds for social measures. Identification by fingerprinting is also supposed to help fight crime.

"Fingerprinting is racial profiling and we urge the government to stop it right now," said Isabela Mihalache of the Open Society Institute in Budapest.

For Roma, the measures brought back memories of the 1930s and 1940s, when their people were persecuted and murdered by the Nazi and Fascist regimes, several activists at the conference said.

No matter how well-intended the government's motives were, "in people's minds it goes back to the Second World War, when people were fingerprinted and even more than that," Mihalache said.

The report established a link between the political outlook of the current Italian government that includes the xenophobic Northern League, and policies targeting Roma.

"The worst thing is that racism and xenophobia are made respectable by local authorities and the Italian government," Mihalache told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Around 150,000 Roma, also known under the pejorative name "gypsies", are estimated to live in Italy.

For the report, NGOs conducted interviews with 100 Roma living in camps in large Italian cities.

Almost all interviewed Roma indicated that there had been an increase in police harassment in recent months, as officers raided homes and subjected individuals to questioning, the report said.

The European Commission, the EU parliament, the OSCE and other institutions have criticized Italy for its Roma policies. (dpa)