ROME – Local police on Thursday at dawn began evicting hundreds of Roma from a gypsy camp on the bank of the river Tiber claiming that the shanty town is ‘insanitary’, leaving many homeless.

 The mayor of the city Virginia Raggi and Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini – the latter having recently denounced the Rom community as a ‘parasitic minority’ – said that they have answered all the questions on the eviction posed by the court and that alternative accommodation is being made available. This eviction follows a public warning by President Sergio Mattarella who declared in a speech that the country must not forget the persecution of Rom and Sinti carried out under Mussolini’s fascist racial laws.

 Policemen and social assistants are currently at the camp, which is on the brink of closure, where the evacuation procedure has just begun. The European court of human rights requested that the evacuation was postponed until Friday after the appeal of three people living in the camp, but this has not been met. At the moment, other than those that have already left the camp, another 20 people have accepted shelter offered by social services in the roman capital.

 “The evacuation is underway in the Rom camp in Rome. Legality, order and respect will be a priority,” Salvini reported on twitter.

 The police are also present in the camp which is located on the street Tenuta Piccirilli on the northern periphery of Rome. Workers from the social operations board are reportedly proposing solutions that will guarantee that immediate families stay together, whilst workers in the rom office are designing medium and long-term alternatives to the camp which could continue until Sep. 30.

 At the evacuation centre there is a signed decree by the mayor from mid-July that mentions “grave concerns surrounding the health condition of the area” on the basis of recent comments made by ARPA and ASL. It was deemed “essential to adopt necessary measures to tackle, in the immediate future, the hygiene-sanitary conditions and the health of the those still present in the settlement and those that live in the immediate area.”

 The first family, consisting of 5 people, are moving out of the camp and are reportedly being transferred to a shelter offered by the council. The people that have shown willingness to transfer themselves to said centres are 24. In the past few days the European court has highlighted how necessary it is to find alternative housing arrangements. In the past five days another 10 people (other than the 14 that have already left and the five that are about to) have accepted a voluntary assisted return to their places of origin.

 Meanwhile, residents in the camp say they were “evacuated like animals”.

“This morning they came to throw us out; they treated us like animals,” Florin, a 31-year-old resident, recounted. “There was violence, they pushed the women and used pepper spray on one. Someone left voluntarily, someone fainted, women were screaming. I was going to pick up my clothes and I don’t know where I will go.”

 Matteo Orfini, president of the Italian Democratic Party Pd, wrote on twitter that “they are evicting the camp at the river. Without saying anything to the families about alternative solutions, without a project. Without anything but the desire to win votes by humiliating the weak. This is what Raggi and Salvini are. They don’t want to resolve problems; they want to spread hate.”

 cb