Italy | Roma Perception
by Alex bi.

With no doubts 31st October 2007, the day of Miss Reggiani assassination, has marked the beginning of the “Roma emergency” status in Rome and throughout Italy. In the sake of security the answer of the then mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, arrives promptly. After years of indifference, the Italian capital launches a wave of evacuation measures that force thousands of people out of the city.

But Veltroni’s iron hand seems not be enough: TV and newspapers nourish the feeling of fear denouncing the presence of thousands of non UE citizens striving for life in wooden and plastic shacks located along the Tiber embankments. Last but not least, in May 2008 the election pools bring the center-right wing candidate Alemanno to the Capitoline Hill.

The newly established government declares the emergency state for the presence of nomadic communities, sets up censuses and the booking of every community and fingerprints all of them, children included.
The Prefect of Rome refuses to follow the steps taken by his colleagues in Naples and Milan, but the Police decides to go ahead. The European Community calls for explanations and reports the limited progress achieved in Italy for the protection of the Roma and Sinti human rights.

The Italian Red Cross is instructed to carry out the census of the Roma population with the help of the police. In Rome prevails a “soft” version of the census, seen as a registration tool to enable the Roma people to benefit from the access to the basic health system. But whereas the Red Cross visits both the authorized and “unlicensed” camps, the police, supported by the Folgore Parachute Brigade in camouflage battledress, starts to evacuate the still existing shantytowns, including those where the census was carried out.
The northern Tiber had already been “evacuated” by the police at the end of 2007.

With the exception of the first day when all the media were present for the usual filming, not only the Police of Rome has “kindly” denied me – at least so far - the authorization to follow the evacuations, but the facts have been totally ignored by the media since then.
The only remaining proofs are the declarations of the associations that work on a daily basis in both the unlicensed and authorized camps. The associations denounces a “crescendo of tension, threats and fear. Unnecessary violence against people and objects: they tore curtains and mattresses, threw away blankets, beat men up…men, women and children – including a woman who had given birth to a girl just 10 days before – obliged to wake up and leave their shelters in order to queue to show their documents. Once again for yet another useless inspection.

At the end of October 2008 the International Red Cross in Geneva accuses the Italian Red Cross of “lack of independence and neutrality in its management, of subordination and dependence from the Italian political authorities and calls for a revision of the statute for failing the minimal necessary conditions required by the Movement”!

In November the negotiating Prefect of Rome Carlo Mosca was removed from his office.

Meanwhile in Rome, always considered one of the safest cities in the world, only 4,904 people out of 3 million Roma people have been registered. Instead thousands of people have been “invited” to leave. They have simply hid somewhere else and it is more likely that they will come back. Voters can sleep tight. At least until the next election pools.