October 11, 2008

Urgent appeal to the Spanish (and European) authorities

EveryOne Group has sent an urgent appeal to His Majesty King Juan Carlos I; to the President of the Spanish Government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero; and to the Ministers and Spanish Members of Parliament, asking them to provide – by way of exception and given the gravity of the situation – humanitarian protection on Spanish soil for a small community of Romanian Roma which is about to be evicted from a derelict building in the city of Pesaro after suffering long and terrible persecution in Italy. The clearance would cause a humanitarian tragedy.

The appeal however is addressed to all European Member States. In recent years we have witnessed a return of racist and xenophobic ideologies and medieval prejudice towards Roma citizens who in Italy are denied even basic human rights. Taking in these refugees would be a mark of civilization in a period of darkness: for this reason we are hoping the addressees of this appeal will make sure our request does not fall on deaf years - thus helping our group and the Roma of Pesaro, and preventing the imminent decimation of weak and innocent human beings. Roberto Malini, Matteo Pegoraro, Dario Picciau - EveryOne Group


Spanish authorities: grant humanitarian protection to a group of Romanian Roma families being persecuted in Pesaro (Italy)

EveryOne Group is asking the Spanish Government to grant humanitarian protection to several Romanian Roma families who have been subjected to serious abuse by the Italian institutions over recent years. In Milan and in the north of Italy they have been subjected to camp clearances without an offer of alternative lodgings or inclusion in programmes of integration and social assistance.

They have been ill-treated on several occasions by police officers, refused help by the social services and hospitals and become the victims of racist campaigns (also through the media). They are forced to live in conditions of poverty, isolation and marginalization intolerable for a civil society. The Roma are now living in a situation of even more tragic persecution in the city of Pesaro, where they have often been expelled (illegitimately) over the regional boundaries. They are being hounded daily and controlled by the police force in a brutal fashion, attacked, threatened, insulted by citizens and exponents of racist groups like “naziskins” or Forza Nuova.

In the chief town of the Marche region, the Roma families have encountered only intolerance, while every opportunity of integration or social support has been denied them. Some of the family members suffer from serious illnesses, including untreatable malignant tumours, diseases caused by hardship and physical handicaps. Others are suffering from alcoholism and depression. In June 2008, at the request of our group, the Mayor of Pesaro and other local authorities publicly agreed - also through interviews with the local press - to allow the Roma community that had taken refuge in the city to benefit, starting from September 2008 (according to the UE directives, the international laws and the Italian Constitution) from special humanitarian assistance programmes with housing solutions. This was an urgent project given the intolerable health, social and human conditions they are living in. The authorities also promised programmes of integration into the workforce.

This commitment would have meant protecting the families, as after living for long periods in the city’s parks without any assistance, they are now living in straitened circumstances inside cold, damp and unhealthy derelict buildings.
In spite of the desperate appeals from EveryOne, neither the local authorities nor the social services have supplied the families with running water or electricity. “They’re like animals and we have no intention of taking care of them”, replied a social worker when we protested. “We don’t want these fish in our waters”, the social services councillor Marco Savelli said in an interview to a local paper, “so we will convince them to leave. The Spanish are not wrong when they claim we are racists”.

Faced with the drama of sick people and newborn babies, the mayor Luigi Ceriscioli gave an ironic smile and said: “We are merely carrying out what the people of Pesaro want.” This said, and in spite of the work of our group, the cold weather is now upon us. Annamaria Petrici, a little girl of 5, caught pneumonia and only survived thanks to a local doctor, attentive to children’s rights, and a salvage operation that took Annamaria and her family to a small town in the south of Italy (Tramutola, Potenza). Here she was offered hospitality and is presently being helped by a priest and a family with anti-racist traditions. “Without a heated house, blankets and decent food she would have died”, commented a doctor with relief.
Young Ciprian Danila, aged 14, wasn’t as fortunate. He was to join his fiancée in September according to an integration programme initiated by the mayor, but instead he died in an accidental fire that broke out in the derelict building he was living in in Sesto San Giovanni (Milan).

Another family member, Soltir Danila, aged 55, who was to receive treatment at Pesaro Hospital after joining her family, died of cancer in Romania, a country that offers no medical assistance to those who are poor. The Pesaro institutions were informed of these deaths and the serious conditions some members of the Roma community live in: but they have showed no sympathy or offered their condolences to the families hit by these tragedies.

It is hard to believe, but the suffering, the terrible plight, the deaths of Roma citizens does not arouse any sympathy from the local authorities - from the mayor to the councillors, (both local and regional); from the police prefect to the police chief; from the social workers to the priests. As though the Roma were not human beings. Not even after the various episodes of violence perpetrated by Italian citizens against the Roma people did the authorities show any solidarity, while the local press passionately defended the actions of the authors of these violent acts. The activists of EveryOne have received serious threats from racists and intimidation from the police force. The human cases are very serious and only recently did the Hospital of Pesaro, on the request of our group, agree to treat Roma patients in the same way as everyone else, (according to the law) particularly the more serious illnesses.
Until that moment even cancer patients had been turned away. Mia Copalea, the “oldest” member of the Roma community suffers from breast cancer with metastasis in the brain, she trembles and is in constant pain. She was turned away from the hospital without even being examined or receiving a prescription for medicine.
There are many other serious cases in Pesaro and the harsh cold of winter, as well as the institutional neglect the Roma find themselves in will soon lead to serious humanitarian tragedies - despite the commitment of several private citizens. Several members of the Roma community in Pesaro recently met with the Euro MP Viktoria Mohacsi, and were able to give her an account of the persecution they are subjected to.

As well as the racial hatred they have always been the targets of in Italy, the Roma community of Pesaro was charged by the police on October 3rd, 2008 and accused of the “crime” of squatting in a private home (we are talking about a derelict and abandoned house they took shelter in two months ago out of desperation).The police threatened them using harsh words and ordered them to leave the building and the city immediately, saying they would be arrested, sentenced after a summary trial and their children taken from them by the social services.

We asked the Roma families to hold out (in spite of the panic and desperation that had gripped them) and not set out walking in the cold without a precise destination. But now we have to find a humanitarian solution because the authorities are determined to hit out at them. Over the last few months the Spanish Government and the Spanish citizens have taken in a few thousand Romanian Roma families who had fled from the ethnic purges and the persecution being carried out by the Italian institutions. EveryOne Group is in contact with some of them and they speak of receiving humane treatment and great solidarity. This is why our group, after observing the loss of the last glimmer of humanity and civil values in the Italian authorities and the majority of Italian citizens, is imploring the Spanish authorities to show another act of brotherhood and antiracism and grant humanitarian protection to the members of the Caldarar, Ciuraru, Grancea and Danila families (about 35 people in all, including several children), thus avoiding further suffering, inhumane treatment, injustice, and loss of life.

Hoping in your understanding and help in this matter,
Yours Sincerely,
Roberto Malini, Matteo Pegoraro, Dario Picciau – EveryOne Group.

For further information:
EveryOne Group
www.everyonegroup.com ::  info@everyonegroup.com