Chronicles of ordinary racism 2011 - Cronache di ordinario razzismo

were deemed to be places where social segregation was perpetuated: they were not just
reception facilities, but proper “ghettos”.
Like all other ghettos in recent history, they gave rise to more “problems” than
“solutions”: for their inmates, forced or otherwise, and also for municipalities, local
politicians and the organisations running them. It soon became all too clear that the
decision to create settlements for (alleged) “nomads” would cause friction with local
residents (conflicts fuelled by local political “scare‐mongers”). A local administrator
building a “temporary stay centre” would lose consensus and, therefore, votes.
Thus the system of “provisioned camps” gradually died out and the municipalities’
management of the Roma issue began to revert to more conventional eviction methods:
forced evictions, bans on settlement, deportations and so forth. In recent years, from
2007 on, the increasingly aggressive style of the media’s public safety campaigns paved
the way for even more restrictive policies on the part of local mayors and
administrators: in a general climate of Roma and Sinti criminalization, evictions give the
greatest yeild, in terms of consensus, more so than building new accomodation facilities.
It can be said that Italy has passed from being a country of detention centres to a country of
forced evictions.
Evictions: number crunching.
The numbers – often released by independent bodies, occasionally “showcased” by
local administrators themselves – concerning forced evictions carried out in recent years
convey the idea of a proper persecution that can turn into a sort of “manhunt”. 91
For example, on 26th April 2011 Riccardo de Corato, the former deputy mayor of Milan,
announced that he had performed 500 evictions in under 4 years (an average of 10
evictions a month). 92 In yet another public statement, at the beginning of January, De
91 There are many eye-witness accounts of Roma groups repeatedly evicted and ‘chased’ by the police. In Milan, on
17 February 2010, the Comunità di Sant’Egidio claimed that one Roma community was evicted 5 times in one day
(P. Foschini, Roma evicted 5 times in one day - Rom sgomberati per cinque volte in un solo giorno, “Corriere della
Sera”, 17 febbraio 2010). Remaining in Milan, Anna Brambilla and Paolo Agnoletto’s lawyers spoke of awhat was
“effectively persecution, as the families were evicted many times in the space of a few years or a few months” (M.
Melley, Roma camp eviction: volunteers expose mayor and deputy mayor, in “Milano Today”, 9 November 2010,
milanotoday.it/cronaca/sgomberi-campi-rom-denunciati-moratti-de-corato.html).
In Genoa, a councillor in charge of issues of public safety wrote, regarding a group of Roma from Romania, that
“we have already evicted them more than once” (Redazionale, Roma, settlement on the river: “Immediate eviction”
“Il Giornale”, ed. Genoa, 7 July 2011).
On the subject of the death of Roma children in a fire in Rome, on 6 th February 2011 Carlo Stasolla of the “21
Luglio” organisation declared to the press that “in the past those families had been evicted a number of times,
without being offered […] any adequate housing alternative” (Press release,
21luglio.com/comunicati_stampa/com_06feb2011.htm).
In Pisa, Africa Insieme reports that “communities of Romanian Roma have been sent away wherever they went and
repeatedly evicted, using bulldozers to destroy their shelters and personal belongings” (Africa Insieme, Roma and
Sinti: the situation as it stands in Pisa, November 2009, in: osservazione.org/documenti/lettera_ong_pisa_it.pdf).
92 The original press release is published in ‘Roma, De Corato: “3 shantytowns shut down, more than 500 evictions.
Milan has reduced the number of squatters by 80% in 4 years. With Pisapia the city would plunge back into the
alarming state of 2007, from Riccardo de Corato’s blog, news dated 26 April 2011, on the web page
riccardodecoratoblog.net/2011/04/26/rom-de-corato-%E2%80%9Csmantellati-3-baraccopoli-superati-i-500-
sgomberi-milano-ha-ridotto-abusivi-dell%E2%80%9980-in-4-anni-con-pisapia-la-citta-tornerebbeall%E2%80%99emergenza-del-2007/.
The news was then reported by newspapers: cf. Zita Dazzi e Massimo Pisa,
De Corato’s 500 evictions, in “la Repubblica”, ed. Milano, 27 April 2011. The numbers refer to the period between
2007 and spring 2011.
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