But also live in the ghetto Ukrainian carers who do not want to leave the house. "We have not been advised by anyone" they say while the bulldozers were in action. And Collatina there is another circle of the damned. Physicians for Human Rights: "We need a transit center for the Eritreans traveling to Northern Europe."
Google translation
RAFFAELLA of COSENTINO
12/05/2015
http://roma.repubblica.it/cronaca/2015/05/11/news/l_inferno_degli_eritrei_a_roma_sgomberata_la_baraccopoli_di_ponte_mammolo-114092380/
While the Eternal City is preparing for the jubilee of Mercy next year, the Capitol shows muscles to Eritrean refugees and homeless people who for years have lived in shacks behind the subway station Ponte Mammolo. This morning, around 9.30 came the bulldozers, along with the municipal police and security forces in riot gear, to proceed with the forced eviction. Just before we entered inside the settlement and we have experienced the wait and escape with its occupants, while the city police sealed the exits. Hundreds of Eritreans sticking out from every corner, behind the ravines of sheet metal through the narrow tunnels, the mattresses in the mud and bags of clothing. To land in the rooms even numbered thermal blankets landings. At 9 there were those who still took a shower in bathrooms makeshift and who grew hair straightener hairdresser, a sign that not everyone knew of the impending eviction.
But if the first few rows of barracks, torn down by the bulldozer, the ghetto are Eritrea, located behind a small Ukrainian district, inhabited by dozens of women, domestic workers and caregivers, with a valid residence permit. Among them is Olha who is 67 years old and shows the documents: a national Italian and is on the list for public housing. Olha's heart problem, do not know what to do. "We were given a notice of fifteen minutes," he says. Trembles, weeps, it collapsed in a chair, while the noise of the bulldozer demolishing shacks within walking distance is getting stronger. Another Ukrainian lady desperately trying to salvage what can be saved and sprouting crates and crates of books. "The books first," says a man who helps her. She's beside herself. He did not know the evacuation and each time coming out of the ghetto to leave a suitcase the police try to hold it and keep it from returning. But she, who has lived for years in this house, does not want to lose all his possessions. They had tried to make the decent houses, with flowers and plants, and with embroidered curtains on the windows.
The eviction. Forced eviction envisages that notice is given to the squatters so that they can take away their belongings. No one has received a piece of paper, a written notice from the City. "The intention is to break down the ghetto, people should rest assured that we should settle all, there is a center that will welcome the moment, I know there's been a painstaking job to warn the parish - says councilor Social Policies for Roma Capitale Francesca Danish - The police did not give a chance to enter the unity of social operations room ". On the contrary, everyone we spoke to claim that he had not been notified of a date for the eviction. Outside, there were also moments of tension between police and the Eritreans, who are now scattered with mattresses and suitcases on the parking lot underground.
Only after the intervention of Alberto Barbieri of Doctors for Human Rights, who has barricaded himself inside along with Ukrainian women, some operators of the trading desk entering social and agree to talk to people who are about to be razed to the ground 'home. There are still ongoing negotiations. "The bulldozers are here to five meters - says Barbieri - it is essential to adequate reception centers and found that they can take away the personal effects of ten years of life, otherwise how are refugees of war"?
Stories. A boy of sixteen, thin and frightened, you point the finger and thumb to the right temple mimicking the firing of a gun. He repeats the gesture three times. That's how they killed his brother in Libya, said in broken English. He adds: "Libya no good, Italy good". Were his only words to the team of Physicians for Human Rights that we have followed in recent days. At the foot he has yet sandals which has landed in Sicily. The scene takes place in the parking lot of the subway station Ponte Mammolo in front of the camper of Doctors for Human Rights, came, like every week, to provide health care to those who, defying fear, springing off the island of misery. So Medu has renamed the shantytown that stands in the shadow of the meter. There, in the middle is also Seliom that has less than two years and the curly head, with the slightly older sister and mother very young. The bush where they are holed emerge with difficulty scores of children alone, children with mothers, whole families. They came out in dribs and drabs to be examined by medical volunteers on the mobile clinic or to take meals brought from a parish in the area.
Hell of Eritreans in Rome is not only among the tin shacks on the Tiburtina. There is also the circle of the damned in a garage on the way Collatina. Between 200 and 400 neo-landed live crammed in the basement of an occupation "historical" of Eritrean capital. Hells temporary swell when they increase landings and deflate just as quickly when the occupants glean the 500 € we need to continue the journey. Usually they send them to relatives already living in other European countries. On the route from Sicily to northern Europe, Rome is the way station and sorting, in which this humanity on the run stops no more than two weeks. Shacks and overcrowded rolling in the mud when it rains in Ponte Mammolo. A dark and dirty basement on Collatina without bathrooms, with mattresses piled or where you sleep well on the cartons, with a single fountain of water for hundreds of people. These steps are part of the "package" travel provided by traffickers.
In building on Collatina living for years in a fairly stable around 500 Eritrean refugees. The upper floors are decent, clean and well-appointed. As the room of Sara, an elderly man in a wheelchair, which has walls plastered with posters of saints: St. Anthony, St. Joseph with the Child Jesus, the angel Gabriel and several Popes. Sara prepares a great zighinì for its next-door neighbor, who are other women of different ages and a senior Eritrean blue-eyed. "We're all eritreani" says one of them, mixing Italian and English. On the ground floor it goes down to purgatory, with restaurants and shops self-organized. The place reserved for newcomers, however, is the abyss. Behind a gate facing the street and that usually is closed, one can see mattresses and blankets piled on the descent leading down to the garage. Even from a distance you feel a strong smell of urine and other foul smells coming from the bunker. 400 other people living in the garage, "landed" in Rome immediately after the landing in Sicily. Having fled the dictatorship and Libya, now run away from European regulation of Dublin. They do not want to be intercepted as not to be forced to stay in Italy. They are terrified, so much not even go to the hospital for severe cases. Injuries leading to the heart are unspeakable. Although it is almost impossible to communicate. They speak only Tigrinya.
Still they are smiling, because hell Roman, seen from their perspective, is also a paradise. After living imprisonment, torture, abuse, violence, rapes at the hands of the regime, or at the hands of traffickers, now they feel safe. "In recent weeks, our doctors have visited dozens of Eritrean refugees literally exhausted, covered with sores and wounds, among them pregnant women and young children," says the health care team of Doctors for Human Rights.
Yacoub arrives on the mobile clinic because tormented by a skin infection that he contracted in Libya, a disease that becomes obvious in the devastating indecent hygienic conditions in which he is forced to live. Mirhet was raped in Libya and would abort. Awet was shipwrecked in the Mediterranean and has seen dozens of his comrades die, can not sleep every night and has nightmares that remind him of the tragedy and torture in Libya. Winta has just over 18 years old and a one year old son with fever and respiratory problems. Dalak arrived in Italy for three days with three children, 9, 7 and 5 years. Keeps in arm the smallest, not budge because it has not grown because of a heart problem, which has also deformed face. The little family sleeps in the basement via Collatina. But Dalak and her daughters smile. Libya is now far away.
Even a 19 year old girl, exhausted from the trip to the seventh month of pregnancy, finally relaxes. Never did an ultrasound and no longer felt the baby move in her belly, she was terrified from going to the hospital. But the mobile clinic fear dissolves. So the baby starts kicking again.
Medu appeals to pass by the islands of misery to the islands of solidarity, asking the Capitol to set up transit centers as it has done for a long time the city administration of Milan for the Syrians, taking note of the fact that it is thousands of people who do not want to stay in Italy. Would not accept a stable and accommodation they will always find a way to continue the journey to Holland or Germany. According to Physicians for Human Rights have transit centers, for refreshment without being identified,
It would be the most civilized. This would allow a greater contrast to the network of human trafficking, subtracting these people, women and children, the total control of who manages their journey. A recent survey has revealed that traffickers were hiding in the reception center of Mineo, a governmental structure. Even easier is to keep migrants in check or organize traffic in slums and basements inaccessible.