Her name’s Rebecca Covaciu, and she’s a 12-year-old Roma child. She has a life of hardship, marginalization and suffering behind her.
The newspapers have described her the “little Anne Frank of the Roma people”.
The Covacius abandoned Arad in Romania to flee from poverty and discrimination. But in Italy they have been subjected to the devastating effects of racial hatred. They were almost lynched by a group of racists in Milan and the police have destroyed the makeshift shelters built by Rebecca’s father Stelian several times, leaving the family homeless. Only the help offered to them by members of EveryOne Group prevented Stelian, his wife and their four children succumbing to a tragic fate. Rebecca is not only a promising European artist (a promise that will only be kept if the racist persecution in Italy does not take her life) she is also an angel of sensitivity, altruism and kindness. She has now set off with her loved ones on a “march of death” towards nowhere.
In the spring of 2007, the Covaciu family met the activists of EveryOne Group who took on the responsibility of providing their basic needs.
On April 24th, 2008, in Milan, on the orders of Gianvalerio Lombardi, a “protection squad” made up of police officers in anti-riot uniform carried out a camp clearance of the community of Romanian Roma from Timisoara who had taken refuge in a camp in the Giambellino district. The camp was “illegal”: several families in conditions of terrible hardship had taken shelter there in an attempt to avoid starving to death or dying of disease in their city of origin. They were living in a situation of segregation and unbearable discrimination. The police officers carried out the clearance using brutal methods. Men, women and swarms of children were forced to come out of their makeshift shelters, lined up like the Jews were in the Nazi roundups during the Holocaust, and forced to watch the destruction of their small, miserable world.
The shelters were bulldozed and set on fire without the occupants being allowed to recover what few possessions they owned. One mother begged the uniformed men: “Please, let me get some blankets for my children”. And a police officer replied: “You don’t need them because now with this new government we will be sending you all back to Romania”.
The children cried as the police pushed them around and frightened them with harsh, offensive words, filled with racial hatred. One of the families kicked out of the camp was the Covaciu family, whose breadwinner is a church missionary, well known among the Roma in Milan for his countless gestures of altruism towards the other persecuted families.
His wife speaks five languages: Romanian, “Romanes”, French, Spanish and Italian. They have four children, including 12-year-old Rebecca who is a talented artist in the field of plastic arts – some of her drawings, which depict the life of the Roma in Italy – were exhibited in Naples on Holocaust Memorial Day 2008 in the rooms of the Historical Archives, and are now on permanent display.
Rebecca learnt to draw and paint in the makeshift shelters where she was living and under bridges, developing a talent that led to her winning the 2008 UNICEF Prize. Her work was chosen from the drawings of hundreds of children of all nationalities who sent in work with the theme of children’s rights. She has already exhibited her work in art exhibitions with drawings that depict the persecution of the “gypsies” in Italy. The prize was awarded to her in Genoa on the occasion of the “Caffè Shakerato” Festival of Interculture.
Rebecca’s drawings are on show in the Contemporary Art Museum of Hilo (Hawaii, U.S.A.) representing Roma art in Europe and showing the conditions of segregation the Roma are forced to live in. The Museum’s director wrote: “Rebecca's art portrays a childlike innocence, rare in an art world mean to impress. This is not art for the sake of art, but instead, art as the true voice of the soul. The Hilo Art Museum supports art that speaks from the soul, as this is the message of our Polynesian heritage. As early Hawaiian Monarchs traveled the world at great risk to be a part of world culture, we are proud to support this wonderful art from the other side of the World”
Rebecca’s work has also taken part in the exhibitions organized by the group of international artists of “Watching the Sky” - including the “Psyche in Chains” exhibition held on Holocaust Memorial Day 2008 in the prestigious halls of the Historical Archives in Naples Town Hall. Genoa has awarded the important recognition “Art and Interculture – Caffè Shakerato” to the docu-drawings of this young artist. Her series of drawings “The Mice and the Stars” (some of them can be seen here) inspired by her life in the “illegal” settlements will soon be on show in Rome, Naples and Genoa in a travelling exhibition devoted to Art, Childhood and People’s Rights.
In spite of her gifts and virtues, in spite of the efforts of her father Stelian to find a job in Italy (even a very humble one) the Covaciu family was forced to live in a makeshift shelter among mice and parasites without drinking water or electricity.
They have been kicked out from abandoned buildings and even from under bridges. “They treat us like animals because they don’t know us”, Rebecca said after receiving the UNICEF Prize. “They don’t know what it means to live among mice and refuse, in the freezing cold and without food. When we children go out begging they say our parents are wicked because they don’t know that if we don’t all help out, we will die of hunger. It is a terrible world for us gypsies”.
Around the Covaciu family in Italy, a terrible ethnic purge is underway, in every city. Communities and families are being hunted out both by patrols of “justice-seekers” and the police who bulldoze their makeshift shelters, burn their few possessions and throw them out onto the street without food and assistance.
EveryOne Group has listened to the stories of hundreds of people, among them children and women who have been subjected to all kinds of abuse and violence after being deprived of an abandoned building or a shelter built from cardboard, wood and corrugated iron. “We had two small, very beautiful children,” two young Romanian Roma girls told us, “but when they kicked us out of our shelter we had nothing to give them to eat. The children fell sick and they coughed all night long. They needed antibiotics, but no one would help us. They died that same night.” These are not isolated cases, it is the reality of the Roma community living in Italy, from the north to the south.
The average life span of the “gypsies” in Italy has fallen to 35, while the infant mortality rate is 15 times higher than that of Italian children. These are tragic figures, identical to those that characterized the condition of the Jews segregated in the Warsaw ghetto, the symbol of the Holocaust.
Piero Terracina, the Holocaust survivor, before the tragedy of the Roma people in Italy, recently said in a broken voice and with tears in his eyes: “I feel I have gone back in time. The racial laws and the atrocities the Roma are being subjected to are very similar to the situation we Jews found ourselves in during the Nazi-Fascist persecution”.
It is all taking place among general indifference, and the racist press campaign is offering once more the lies that have allowed many pogroms, persecutions and massacres throughout history to take place: gypsies rape Italian women, gypsies don’t want to work because they prefer to resort to crime, gypsies steal children.
EveryOne Group has shown that the accusations of kidnapping spread by racist politicians and the press were set-ups, and has published the figures from a careful analysis of state archives: from 1899 to the present day, no Roma citizen has ever been sentenced for abducting a minor. But even that is not enough because the Roma have been picked on to become the scapegoats of an Italy that has abandoned the path of solidarity, tolerance and human rights.
“ When I am painting, I think of the colours of a better world, where we too can be happy. When I grow up I want to help the poor, and if I become a famous artist, I want to paint the world of the “gypsies”, then everyone will see the truth. I want to speak to adults, to those in power and those who can help my people. I want to ask you to help us, because our lives really are too sad".
Rebecca reminds us of Anne Frank, a young girl incapable of losing her smile and faith in human beings despite the ruthless persecution her people are being subjected to here in Italy.
The video-appeal “Dear Europe” is the answer to a request from Rebecca to launch an appeal to Europe, an appeal against the discrimination taking place towards her people. It is a testimony of the persecution of the Roma in Italy and it will be presented at the plenary assembly of the European Parliament and Unicef thanks to an initiative promoted by EveryOne Group.
The video-appeal “Dear Europe” was filmed in the Sala Rossa of Pesaro Town Hall.
Nota: to watch the video click on the top poster image “Dear Europe”. Apple QuickTime 7 required.
