ROME, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Italian President Sergio Mattarella warned against discrimination of Roma people on Wednesday, in the date that marked the 80th anniversary of the approval of racial laws under Fascism in the country.

The "Manifesto of the Race" -- published in July 1938, and laying the groundwork for racial policies passed by Fascism later that year -- was "a shameful page" in Italian history, the head of state wrote in a statement.

"Signed by professors, physicians, intellectuals, it remains the most serious offence the Italian culture and science have made to the cause of humanity," Mattarella said.

"The aim was to provide racism with a scientific basis, with an act of servility (by the signers) towards the regime that represented a reversal of human ethics."

In his long statement, the president recalled those racial laws brought about a ferocious persecution of Jewish people, the "premise of what would soon become the Holocaust."

At the same time, Mattarella stressed, the racial laws "persecuted Roma and Sinti populations, and those horrific discriminations led to the extermination of the Gipsies."

"The poison of racism continues to penetrate the rifts of society and those between peoples," the president warned.

In mid-June, soon after being formed, Italy's right-wing cabinet led by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte showed the intention of carrying out a "census" on the large Roma population living in the country, and of deporting those without regular documents.

Interior Minister Matteo Salvini -- who also serves as deputy PM, and is the leader of anti-immigrant far-right League -- declared he had tasked ministerial officers with preparing "a dossier on the Roma question."

The goal of the announced step was to get to know "who they are, where they live, and how many of them are here."

"As far as Roma people with Italian citizenship are concerned, unfortunately we will have to keep them, because we cannot expel them," Salvini said at the time.

His announcement sparked outcry from human rights groups, associations working with the Roma, the Italian Jewish community, and opposition figures.

It also led to a confrontation with the other party forming the coalition government, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), which took a clear stance against the proposal.

M5S leader Luigi Di Maio -- Labor Minister and Deputy PM in the cabinet -- warned the major ally that the idea of a Roma census was "unconstitutional."

According to the Community of Sant'Egidio -- one key group long working with Roma and Sinti -- the Roma minority's roots in Italy dated back to the 15th century. Currently, they were estimated between 120,000 and 140,000, and some 70,000 of them were Italian citizens.

A previous attempt to make a census of the Roma was launched by the interior minister of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's center-right government in 2008, and declared illegal by a regional court. Enditem

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