RIGHT TO ROMA

Currently the world’s oldest settlement of Roma people, dating back to the 1600s, is under threat of being destroyed for an upmarket development, and the communities made homeless.

Roma people settled in the Anatolia region after coming across from India in the 10th century, and the site at Sulukule, Istanbul, dates back to the Byzantine period and is now a World Heritage Site. The plan is to raze the ancient buildings to the ground; turfing the Roma people out. But this is just one of many situations across Europe where Roma and Sinti people are being ethnically cleansed, in circumstances that echo the Roma deaths during the holocaust.

This racism extends to Britain, as SchNEWS has covered for years, with violent evictions of Gypsy sites and the imminently pending threat to Dale Farm, a site in Essex of 1000 people (See SchNEWS 669). Similar or worse plights face groups in Italy, Greece, Romania, Czech Rep, Russia, France, Serbia and Slovakia where local authorities are performing violent expulsions on communities who have nowhere else to go.

The situation in Italy is particularly harsh for Roma and Sinti people, where it is estimated by the EveryOne Group that the Roma population has been lowered from 160,000 to 60,000 in recent years – and that around 2,000 are currently dying each year due to child mortality and an average life expectancy of just 40.

In the area of Pescara, recently hit by the catastrophic earthquake, all the makeshift accommodation and aid being offered to homeless victims was denied to Roma people, with the authorities calling them ‘vultures’ and putting up checkpoints to keep them out.

* See www.everyonegroup.com