The 2th of August we aregoing to protes in front of the headquarters of the Italian Parlament

The 2th of August 2018, from 12 p.m. until 5 p.m., we are going to demonstrate in the Montecitorio square, in Rome, where the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Republic is located. And we are going to protest there to remember the 2.897 Roma women, men and children killed during the night of the 2th of August 1944 in the Zigeunerlager of Auschwitz-Birkenau. We won’t neither forget more the over half million of brothers and sisters killed in the other extermination camps in Europe.     

By commemorating that day, we remember, learn and act in a present difficult situation. We are sons and grand-sons of those martyrs and we have learned in our skin that racism does not provide a better future, but just a repetition of a vicious and devastating history.

This is why the Italian Roma community -and along with them all of us- expressed the determination to act with all our strength against this wave of racism that is coming. We do it not only for us and our children, but in defense of all citizens, in defense of our civilization and in defense of our democracy.

The Roma associations of Italy raise their voices to denounce that in Europe, in recent times, our communities in Ukraine, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania live with worry and fear the racist and neo-Nazi movements that attack us, burn our houses and even kill us, as happened in Hungary and Ukraine.

We are afraid of the current government of Italy

In their call to protest the 2th of August in front of the Parliament, the Italian Roma people highlight that the feeling of hatred and discrimination comes in the form of new threats pronounced by the government, such as the creation of an ethnic census and the expulsion of Roma and Sinti communities that are not Italian. The fact that the Italian Roma people were told that “unfortunately” they will not be expelled, does not reduce the concern of a community with centuries of discrimination and persecution history and that, nowadays, suffers violent attacks, at a higher and at a lower extent.

Cirasela, a little Roma baby of only 15 months shot in the back

      It happened last Tuesday, July 17, at 6 PM in Rome. A group of Roma was coming back from the playground of Via Togliatti when a pistol shot exploded against them. The impact injured the back of Cirasela, a 15-month-old baby, who was in her mother’s arms and now in hospital: the bullet damaged her small backbone, which now risks to remain paralyzed.

      And the Roma people wonder, and the family cries out to Heaven because they cannot find an answer to so much evil. Why does someone want to destroy the life of an innocent baby? Why should a poor and helpless family fall into despair when they see how they destroy their most precious and unique asset, their children? Why can exist someone so cowardly to shoot

The Italian Roma people are right when they say that it is not be by censorship or dismantling the camps that the problems will be solved. We will continue to be absolutely determined, they say with conviction, to assume our share of responsibility in the search for solutions for the benefit of Italy and its citizens of Roma and Sinti origin.

Anger and resentment, they add, towards those who are weaker have never resolved the difficulties. For years, governments have not taken the necessary actions to solve the real problems that afflict us and we have seen spending money of Italian and European taxpayers with a focus on assistance and internment in the fields. An ineffective solution that has produced more degradation and marginalization, but so far, we have not received credible alternatives.

For all this, we renew the request to the government to share our determination to approach the problems together, not against us, to work for a real change that makes people not feel fear and anger, but courage and hope.

From the Spanish Romani Union we said, in the wake of Interior Minister Matteo Salvini’s statements, that a large demonstration should be called in Rome to show our repulsion for the attacks we were receiving from a part of the government. Therefore, on August 2 we will be in Rome, in Piazza Montecitorio, and we invite all citizens, artists, intellectuals, political and social forces to show a sign of solidarity in a battle that is not only ours, but of all those people who want the Roma, the Sinti and all the Italians to have a better life.

Juan de Dios Ramírez-Heredia
Lawyer and journalist
President of Spanish Romani Union