ITALY’S hardline interior minister, who sparked a multi-nation showdown by refusing entry to a Mediterranean Sea rescue boat packed with 630 migrants, is now taking aim at Italy’s minority Roma community.

Matteo Salvini has said he wants to conduct a census or “registry” of Roma in Italy.

Salvini, the leader of Italy’s right-wing League party, insisted later the project’s purpose was not to identify individual Roma.

“I’ve asked the ministry to prepare a dossier on the Roma question in Italy,” he said, adding that the current situation of Roma was “chaos” several years after a crackdown.

Italy has a sizeable Roma community that includes people originally from Romania and the former Yugoslavia. Authorities periodically clear out the camps where many live on the outskirts of big cities.

Salvini’s remarks sparked immediate denunciation from centre-left politicians, who warned that Italy had a “terrible” history with its Fascist-era census of Jews.

“You can work for security and respect for rules without becoming fascist,” tweeted Democratic legislator Ettore Rosato. “The announced census of Roma is vulgar and demagogical.”

Salvini stressed in a follow-up statement that he had no intention of taking digital fingerprints or making index cards of individual Roma. He claimed he wants a study of the overall situation.