PARIS (AFP) – France on Thursday deported hundreds more Roma in defiance of growing domestic and international criticism of its crackdown on travelling minorities.

Two specially chartered planes carrying Roma men, women and children left Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport and Lyon in east-central France and touched down in Bucharest mid-afternoon.
""The police told us we could choose between leaving now, on our own accord, or be expelled by force later,"" said one young Roma man, who declined to be identified. ""So we agreed to leave.""
""For three months I could find no job, so I decided to come back to Romania,"" another man arriving in Bucharest, Ion Stancu, 52, told AFP.
""But, my God, what will I do for a living now, with eight grandsons to feed?"" he added, tears in his eyes.
Amid a country-wide crackdown that began this month after Gypsies attacked a police station, police in the northern French city of Lille also moved in at dawn to dismantle a Roma tent camp set up under an overhead railway line.
The French government said 283 Roma were being sent back Thursday, bringing the total number of Romanian and Bulgarian Roma deported so far this year to 8,313, against 7,875 expelled throughout last year.
President Nicolas Sarkozy, citing concerns about crime, began the crackdown this month on Roma and other itinerant groups known as Gypsies and travelers which has seen police rounding up foreign Roma and tearing down illegal camps.
Forty-eight percent of French people support the government's campaign, an opinion poll showed on Thursday.
But critics accuse the right-wing president, whose popularity is at its lowest since he came to power in 2007, of trying to regain the political initiative with a populist and racially tinged law and order message.
The crackdown has sparked fierce criticism at home and abroad, with French former prime minister Dominique de Villepin saying Sarkozy's policies had left a ""stain of shame"" on the French flag and were a ""national indignity.""
A United Nations panel this month warned of mounting racism and xenophobia in France, citing the Roma evictions, and the European Union is reviewing whether the crackdown is legal. The Vatican has also criticized it.
Human rights body Amnesty International joined the international condemnation on Thursday, saying Sarkozy risked fuelling stigmatization of the minority group.
""French officials should be working to fight discrimination, rather than making inflammatory statements linking entire communities to alleged criminality,"" the organization said in a statement.
The French government insists it is simply clamping down on illegal immigration and trying to protect its citizens from crime, saying Roma camps are sources of people-trafficking and prostitution.
Ministers say most of the deported Romanians and Bulgarians leave voluntarily after accepting a payment of 300 euros (382 dollars) per adult and 100 euros per child.
They insist their policies comply with EU law and call on the European Union to do more to help Romania and Bulgaria integrate their large Roma populations, who face poverty and discrimination in their native lands.
European Affairs Minister Pierre Lellouche met Thursday with two Romanian ministers who travelled to Paris for talks on closer cooperation on the Roma issue.
Valentin Mocanum, Romania's junior minister for Roma integration, called on the French government to better inform the public about the Roma issue to prevent ""racism and xenophobia.""
The crackdown targets France's population of Roma, mostly from Romania and Bulgaria, estimated at around 15,000, plus French Gypsies and travelling people whose total numbers are estimated at 350,000.
Citizens of Romania and Bulgaria, both EU member states since 2007, benefit from free movement within the bloc. But the French labor market is not fully open to them and if they do not find a job and lodging within three months, they must leave the country.
France's Prime Minister Francois Fillon said he talked on Thursday with the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, and said that ministers would hold a meeting with the commission on the issue ""in a few days.""