Day of mourning

The Community of Sant'Egidio in Rome on Wednesday held a prayer vigil to remember Sebastian, Patrick, Raul and Fernando, the four Roma children who burnt to death last Sunday.

The children, aged between three and eleven, died as they slept in their makeshift shack in an illegal camp on the edge of Rome.

Some 150,000 Roma live in Italy, with a reported 100 camps in Rome province.

Wednesday was also declared a day of mourning for the city because this grief is the grief of the whole city but – Sant’ Egidio says - also a sign of welcome to the many Roma families who do not feel welcome here.

Meanwhile Sant’Egidio is calling on State and local governments to begin a long-term policy to find decent places and ways of life for the Roma. It is asking for the launch of an extraordinary and exemplary plan – possibly with the support of the European Union - to create a model for municipal housing areas with public or private resources.

Mario Marazziti, spokesperson for the Community of Sant’Egidio in Rome, says that dismantling the settlements, both legal and illegal (including those that had been equipped and paid for by the community, as happened again recently), leads to the dispersing of Roma families and groups across the territory. This makes it increasingly difficult for children to attend school, and complicates the work of security forces that monitor Roma presences at known sites. This is how – Marazziti points out “spontaneous settlements and small fragments of urban decay are reborn, the huts, the cellophane homes, the areas where no one wants to live and where people die easily burned because of a heater, or victims of respiratory sicknesses from childhood.
Listen to Linda Bordoni’s full interview with Mario Marazziti…