Let us not forget the violence the women of the Roma ethnic group are subjected to.
On November 25th we celebrate the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. We are talking about one of the most cowardly and brutal violations of human rights that affects millions of women every year. Last year Amnesty International promoted an important campaign to remind people that the majority of cases of rape and violence against women take place within the home.
Again, last year, the UN Security Council voted unanimously in favour of Resolution 1820, in which rape was condemned as a “weapon of war”. It is important to combat violence against women where it takes place, and not exploit it as politicians and the intolerant press (particularly in Italy) often do. Like in the Medieval period, violence against women is often blamed on the foreigner, the Roma, the tramp. TV reports, electoral posters, articles in the national press are constantly spreading this dangerous lie.
In this way the institutions distract resources and attention from the real environments these hateful crimes take place in - they deceive the population that they are intervening on behalf of women, and at the same time spread racist and xenophobic propaganda. We are talking about yet another kind of abuse: the rape of the truth, civility and female dignity. On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, EveryOne Group also wishes to report the tragedy of the violence directed at the women from the Roma ethnic group after they have been deprived of a roof over their heads during the camp clearances.
The women are thrown into the street, often without their fathers and husbands who have been arrested without a plausible reason and accused of the usual offences attributed to the Roma people: occupying derelict buildings, begging, resisting a public official, disturbing the peace, etc.
Over the last few years EveryOne activists have received numerous reports of violence being used against Roma women, some of them very young. The woman are always too ashamed to report their assailants to the police. Often, for the same reason, they refuse to be taken to hospital for treatment. As well as the cases of rape, Roma women often become the victims of racist attacks and ill-treatment, sometimes by men in uniform.
Typical cases are the murder of little Lenuca Carolea and Eva Clopotar, (aged six and eleven) who were burnt alive in their makeshift shelter in Livorno by a gang of racists; the beating up of a pregnant 16-year-old, Neli Grancea, in front of a dozen or so indifferent passers-by in Rimini last June; the tragic miscarriages suffered by Veta and Elena, during a frightening clearance from an abandoned building by the Pesaro authorities on February 25th, 2009. This list of brutal and violent crimes - which always go unpunished - runs to hundreds of cases.
