Milan, Stelian Covaciu, a Roma and Christian Evangelical missionary, was the victim of a violent beating with racist insults and threats from two uniformed policemen. He was admitted to hospital where he was placed under observation.
EveryOne Group: “Racial hatred has now contaminated the institutions and authorities. We call on the Italian and EU antiracist and antifascist representatives to work together to prevent the barbarization of our society”.
Milan, June 20th, 2008. Once again the city of Milan became the stage for a cowardly and brutal punitive expedition against a Romanian of the Roma ethnic group. This time the violence was carried out by uniformed police officers. After the assault on June 17th on Rebecca Covaciu (the child who was awarded the 2008 Unicef Prize for her artistic talent), on June 19th her father, Stelian Covaciu (a missionary of the Christian Pentecostal Church) was also beaten up, in even more brutal and disturbing circumstances.
After the first dramatic racist attack, EveryOne Group sounded the alarm on an international level, contacting the media and numerous representatives of culture and politics. At the same time the Radical Party – Pd MPs put an urgent question to the Ministry of the Interior.
Immediately after the assault, Stelian’s wife Gina phoned Roberto Malini of EveryOne Group, who, with a representative from the Milanese association Naga, called an ambulance and the police who rushed to the scene of the attack and took the man (covered in bruises and internal injuries, in pain and in a state of mental confusion) to San Paolo Hospital, where he underwent tests and was kept in for observation. He was put on the danger list. After alerting the Radical Party, that collected all the information of the episode in order to act on behalf of the victims on a political level, EveryOne Group contacted police headquarters to ensure that the authorities recorded the complaint and carried out a scrupulous inquiry. “When Gina called us,” say the leaders of EveryOne, Roberto Malini, Matteo Pegoraro and Dario Picciau, “she was so agitated and desperate that it was hard to work out what she was saying. Next to her Stelian was groaning and uttering disjointed words. When the woman finally calmed down she told us what had happened. The brutes who had beaten, insulted and threatened the Covacius were still standing in front of them. This time, however, they had stepped out of a police car, in uniform and armed with truncheons. After the first assault, young Rebecca, who is a bright and intelligent girl, had told us that the men who attacked her family were wearing gloves similar to the kind issued to the police. We suspected she was right (also because a growing number of Roma citizens have been reporting violent and threatening behaviour from police officers) but we’d hoped we were mistaken. But this grave suspicion was confirmed when the racist police officers struck a second time.”
This time the violence of the uniformed police was centred on Stelian. The brutal attack took place in Piazza Tirana, near San Cristoforo Station, where the family lives in a makeshift shelter, made from canvas sheets and cardboard. “The police officers approached Stelian”, continue the leaders of EveryOne, “and in a threatening tone asked: ‘Do you remember us? It was a mistake to talk to the press, don’t make that mistake again’. Then they started hitting out at him wildly, both with their fists and truncheons, reducing him to a pitiful state. Then while Stelian lay on the ground they insulted and threatened him again. ‘Don’t tell anyone about this or you will be in even bigger trouble’. When the two thugs walked away, Gina, their children and some of Stelian’s fellow citizens went to his aid. He was groaning and in a visible state of shock. In the meantime an activist joined them and listened to the testimonies of some Roma who live in the area around San Cristoforo station. They confirmed Gina Covaciu’s story that two policemen who got out of a police car were responsible for the violent beating.
The police have returned to Piazza Tirana near San Cristoforo Station several times since the beating, both to look for the Covaciu family and to send the Roma away from the small settlement they have set up in the area. Stelian Covaciu has reported the incident to the police with the help of lawyers from Naga and Asgi, as well as EveryOne group.
As usual, and as reported by Amnesty International in its 2008 Report on Human Rights in Italy, Police Headquarters has denied the assault took place, claiming that they had sent the Covacius away from their makeshift shelter and that Stelian had accidently hurt himself in the process. His hospital medical report, however, speaks clearly of “injuries caused by assault”.
After the assault on Stelian, EveryOne Group received numerous reports of Romanian Roma being beaten up by members of the police force in several areas of Milan. In the meantime the Italian institutions have approved the security laws which transform the Italian police force into “street judges”: their testimony is sufficient to ensure that any citizen (particularly Roma and immigrants) can “summarily” be sent to prison, without even the right to a defence.
“Italy has to put an end to this persecution”, say the activists, “because the spread of racial hatred, aided by politicians and the media has triggered off an appalling sequence of violent acts against Roma citizens. We are well aware that the police force is made up for the most part of police officers who operate according to the European Code of Ethics. We appeal to them too to make sure racists and people carrying out violent acts are isolated and sent to justice, and the Roma families (who represent the most vulnerable members of society) are protected.
The violence against Roma citizens and intimidation towards the activists fighting for the rights of “nomadic peoples” is increasing in Italy every day that goes by. Entire families are hunted down under bridges, in abandoned houses, in parks. The police force, mayors, “councillor-sheriffs”, fascist action squads and people taking justice into their own hands have triggered off a manhunt that is as ruthless as it is irrational. The Roma are being forced to flee from one place to the next, deprived of any form of sustenance – from begging to small services – hungry, desperate and often sick fugitives without any rights. Nedo Fiano, Piero Terracina, Goffredo Bezzechi, Tamara Deuel, Mirjam Pinkhof, all Holocaust survivors, are alerting European citizens of their worry that Italy and Europe will be seduced by racism, and have compared the persecution of the Roma to the years of the Shoah, and the camp clearances and punitive expeditions to the pogroms.
Rebecca, Stelian’s 12-year-old daughter is a talented artist, whom Unicef awarded with the 2008 prize, while Italy punishes her every day with the poison of marginalization, poverty, hatred and violence. A country guilty of such injustice, a country that accepts such violence and cruelty towards an entire ethnic group is a country that is turning savage, a country that has strayed from the path of human rights and is sinking into such a crisis of values that it has been compared to the Italy of the racial laws, with its truncheons, black shirts and trains headed for Auschwitz”.
For further information:
EveryOne Group
Tel: (+ 39) 334-8429527
