Naga is a voluntary, lay, nonpartisan organization. It was founded in Milan in 1987, in order to promote and defend the rights of all foreigners and roma and sinti people, without discrimination of any kind. The daily direct contact makes it possible to interpret their needs and to find real answers, as well as to make suggestions, to help with requests and claims made to Healthcare or political institutions.
Over 300 Naga volunteers guarantee health care, free legal and social assistance to foreign citizens, roma citizens, sinti citizens, asylum seekers and torture victims. Volunteers also organise training and research activities and carry out lobbying with various Institutions. The organization is not meant to be an alternative nor a competitor to Public Healthcare Services, nor does it wish to receive any mandate within a sector that falls into the duties of a Welfare State. Its aim is to become redundant, as the public sector take responsibility of these "problems".
Yet, until such purpose is achieved, the association has decided to concentrate on the PROTECTION of roma and sinti citizens as one of the uncovered areas where it has already worked, although not in a systematic way.
We will do it within the "Roma Legale Aid,. Monitoring and Advocacy", a project funded by Foundation Open Society Institute.
Naga is in contact with roma and sinti citizens who live in Milan, and it brings health assistance in some non-authorized camps, through an activity group called Street Medicine.
It is thanks to this group, that Naga Legal Service has often been called in with its resources (including volunteer operators and lawyers).
Naga considers it indispensable to carry on with this experience of Legal Protection in a more systematic, widespread and continuous way.
The requests for legal support from roma and sinti people and the opportunity our association has to assist roma and sinti citizens who live either in authorized or non-authorized camps, without constraints of any kind, outline a context within which theassociation considers operating indispensable.
The project thus provides a website dedicated to Street Medicine's and Legale Service's activities, related to the protection of roma and sinti people; legal actions against discrimination; a daily press review focused on how the press talks about roma and sinti people; public events promoting a debate on the protection of roma and sinti people, as the one held on the 26th of May 2012 at Palazzina Liberty.
The clichés concerning the Roma are the most diverse and varied: they are nomads, they do not work, they own expensive cars but live like poor, they send their children to beg… Like all the clichés, they are applied indiscriminately, linked to the sole reason to be a Roma.
Medicina di strada (=Street Medicine), mobile unit of the Naga which has been offering for 10 years sanitary assistance to those migrants who live in abandoned areas, in the last years mainly Roma people, decided to publish the data collected during its activity, in order to dispel these myths, and to let know a bit better the reality of the people that it meets.
From 2009 to 2010, Medicina di Strada visited 1142 people living in unauthorized settlements in the Municipality of Milan, almost all of them Romanian Roma. Within the activity of the mobile medical clinic, they were asked information about their education, work, years of stay in Italy, number of children…
In the present section, we will publish in instalments the collected data, analyzed in anonymous, in order to provide a photograph of their health and life conditions, from the Naga point of view.
Education
One of the clichés which affects the Roma is that they do not want to send their children to school.
Instead, during its activity Medicina di Strada met a large number of Roma students. Some of them had to stop attending school after being evicted from the camp. Others continued attending school. During the visits of the mobile units, people were asked how many years they attended school, in Italy or in Romania: 900 people aged 6 years or more, visited in the last 2 years, attended school on average for 5 years. Few more than one fourth of them, mainly women, never attended school.
One third of the women (159 out of 497 visited women), and one fifth of the men (75 out of 404 visited men) are illiterate.
113 children aged 6-14 years attended school on average for 3.5 years. One fifth of them (22 children) never attended school. These data concern only children visited by the Medicina di Strada mobile unit: not knowing the exact number of children living in settlements, it is not possible to know whether the average number of years of school attendance and the percentage of children who never attended school in the interviewed sample reflects the universe of Roma children aged 6-14 living in these areas.
Though, the data is important, because it adds a tile to the mosaic of the limited data available on the subject, and it seems to point out that children and young people go to school more than adults.
Thieves of children
Roma and Sinti criminalized by the newspaper "Il Giornale": complaint of the associations
November 16th 2012
Mantua, Rome, Milan, November 15th 2012 – the following associations: “Articolo 3”, “21 Luglio” and Naga, which have been dealing for years with fight against discrimination and racism, also monitoring the press, sent yesterday a complaint, together with a request for verification, to the Lombardia Council of the Journalists’ Association, in order to point out some articles published in the newspaper 'Il Giornale'.
On the 30th October, on the internet and in the paper edition of "Il Giornale", two articles were published about a fact of crime in which, without any proof, is declared that the alleged aggressor ethnicity is "roma", and is asserted that he "would try" to kidnap a child. The association between this description of supposed facts and the legend that describes Roma people as children kidnappers is immediate (original sentence: The association between the supposed ethnic membership and the alleged attempted kidnapping with the legend that describes Roma people as children kidnappers is immediate).
Both the articles, instead of presenting the plain facts which happened (original version of the events), insist on the supposed ethnicity of the attacker, going so far as to attribute many cases of abduction of children - some of them known to the public and therefore of easy emotional impact – to a kind of typical behaviour of a minority, helping to increase the prejudice against Roma and Sinti people. This stereotype, as a matter of fact, feeds on the dangerous generalization that led to the practice of the “offense ethnicization”, even though it is only presumed.
At least ten other articles, related to Roma and Sinti people, are characterized by the deliberate connection of a criminal offense not with the individual offender, but with the group (real or presumed), by the presence of stereotypes and slanderous prejudices, and by random accusations and discriminatory conjectures on the ground of an ethnic basis.
"The spread of this kind of articles – as the associations say - conveys a criminal image of an entire group of people and is detrimental to the dignity of Sinti and Roma people. In these articles, much room has been let, in an uncritical way, to the violent statements and conjectural generalization of the respondents, without highlighting them as mere suppositions or keeping a distance from any defamatory content - and thus contributing to the spread of social alarm based on assumptions, prejudices, and, in some cases, resentment of the victims of crimes, real or imagined."
Articolo 3, 21 Luglio and Naga, therefore, asked the Lombardia Council of the Journalists’ Association to check for any unlawful conduct and to ensure that the articles brought to their attention are examined in the light of legislation on incitement to violence, anti-discrimination and/or any other breach that will be held accountable. The associations also asked to judge the omitted control, by the editor of “Il Giornale”, professional journalist Alexander Sallusti, of the titles, of the anonymous publication appeared on the website of the newspaper, and of the paper edition of the articles reported.
"With deep concern - conclude the associations - we continue to detect cases which seem at odds with the ethics regulating the profession of journalism, and which become amplifiers, because of their spread, of prejudice and discriminatory stereotypes that, in some cases, may lead to hatred and violence. Against these behaviours and against these forms of discrimination we will continue to fight. "
INFO AND CONTACT:
Articolo 3: 338.5256898 - www.articolo3.org
Associazione 21 Luglio: 329.7922222 - www.21luglio.org
Naga: naga@naga.it - 02.58102599 - 349.1603305 - www.naga.it
Roma people: the TAR (Regional Administrative Court) of Lazio suspends the eviction order of the Roma camp of Tor de Cenci
August 30th 2012
from the site of ASGI (Association for Legal Studies on Immigration):
The Municipality must "restore, at least temporarily, proper sanitary conditions in the Roma camp and in the surrounding areas".
By order issued on August 27th 2012, the TAR (Regional Administrative Court) of Lazio accepted the request for an injunction filed by a few Roma families living in the camp of Tor de Cenci, defended by lawyers Nicolò and Natalia Paoletti, and suspended the execution of the order, signed by the Mayor of Rome, to remove "people and things" from the equipped area by August 28th.
On August 2nd, after "moving" some of the inhabitants and demolishing the trailers with excavators, the Municipality had served the remaining inhabitants with eviction order.
The Sant’Egidio Community had been pointing out for a long time and in several contexts that improving the equipped camp of Tor de Cenci would be more useful and less expensive than removing it and destroying the facilities within, first of all in order to safeguard the integration efforts done by more than 150 children and young people attending the territory schools (from kindergarten up to high-school).
The decision taken by the TAR demonstrates that some beliefs are based on understanding the reality, on common sense and on a culture seeking the common good instead of an easy consensus, and that they are neither "lies and political attacks", nor "unrealistic positions", as recently stated by the leaders of the City Council of Rome.
On the contrary, such ideas are so accurate and practical that the TAR, in addition to the suspension of the eviction order, stressed the "duty of the Municipality to take all the necessary measures to restore, at least temporarily, proper sanitary conditions in the Roma camp and in the surrounding areas".
Council of Europe: “Italy needs a specific national law to protect the Roma from discrimination”
July 16th 2012
The recommendation is included in a resolution of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe aiming to implement a Framework Convention for the protection of National Minorities.
Italy needs a “specific legislative framework” at national level to protect the Roma from discrimination and to promote social integration. This is one of the recommendations included in the resolution approved last July 4th by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, following the monitoring by the European institutions on the fulfilment of the commitments assumed by Italy with the ratification of the Framework Convention for the protection of national minorities.
The resolution states that: “despite the fact that the Italian Government supports the Roma and Sinti population through a national strategy of integration and specific measures, the adoption of a specific legislative framework at national level for the protection of the Roma and Sinti living in Italy is still needed”.
The resolution text can be downloaded from the Council of Europe website
Source: ASGI (Association for Legal Studies on Immigration)
Istat (*): Migrants seen by residents in Italy
July 11th 2012
According to the report "Migrants seen by the Citizens", presented by Istat last July 11th, Roma and Sinti citizens are not really welcomed by Italians. As a matter of fact, if the majority of the interviewed wouldn’t consider a problem to have a foreigner as a neighbour, the 68.4% wouldn’t want it to be a Roma/Sinti.
At the 2nd and 3rd place among the worst-welcomed neighbours, we find the Rumanians (25.6%) and the Albanians (24.8%),
Also when speaking of marriage, Roma and Sinti are not among the favourite: according to the report, having a Roma/Sinti son-in-law would cause trouble to 84.6% of the respondents ("much trouble" for 59.2%, "a little trouble" for 25.4%). In case of a Rumanian son-in-law, more than 1/3 of the interviewed (37.2%) would get "much trouble", and almost as much (31.7%) "a little trouble".
Next in the ranking list, we find the Albanians ("much trouble" 33.8%,"a little trouble" 34%), followed by the Moroccans ("much trouble" 27.9%,"a little trouble" 39.6%), the Chinese ("much trouble" 28.6%,"a little trouble" 35%), the Nigerians ("much trouble" 26.2%,"a little trouble" 37.7%) and, lastly, the Peruvians ("much trouble" 19.9%,"a little trouble" 37.4%).
Download the report from the Istat website
Download a summary of the report here
* Istat: National Institute of Statistics
Lega Nord and PDL sentenced for “Zingaropoli” *
June 13th 2012
“The seriously offensive and humiliating meaning of such statement appears to be clear, with the result that it does not only violate the dignity of Sinti and Roma ethnic groups, but also promotes a threatening and hostile attitude towards them”.
These are the words used by Dr. Orietta Miccichè, Judge of the Milano Court, in delivering the verdict for the anti-discrimination civil lawsuit won by Naga against Lega Nord and PDL.
Object of the lawsuit were the posters posted on the city walls, and the statements made by Silvio Berlusconi and Umberto Bossi, during the last political campaign for the election of the city mayor, where they expressed the fear that the town would become a “Zingaropoli” in case of success of the candidate Pisapia, and warned the citizens against it.
“For the fist time in Italy, a judgement is recorded, which condemns a political party for discrimination”, says Lawyer Pietro Massarotto, President of Naga, “this is a huge success for us, and we would like it to be understood as a very clear message against considering marginalization and social alienation, which have sadly become familiar to us, normal practices”.
The appeal claims that it is not possible, nor legitimate, for a political party, to use slogans and statements which are openly discriminatory against communities and social groups – specifically a protected “ex lege” minority (the Roma) – exploiting the very existence of such groups to arouse social fear, and using openly disparaging and offensive terms, like “Zingaropoli”.
The Judge accepted this position.
On the other hand, the Human Rights Commissioner of the European Council, Thomas Hammarberg, following his visit of Italy during last year Milan political campaign, had expressed his shock at the sight of the posters, noticing how they actually affected the rights of the Roma and Sinti people, and their chance to get integrated in the society and interact with it.
Lastly, Massarotto says: “Let’s hope that this represents a step forward the effective safeguard of minorities in our country, but what we hope most is that we need not act anymore, in the future, against this kind of ‘institutional’ acts of discrimination”.
* The literal translation of the word, a neologism, is “city of gypsies”
Download the Judge order of the Milano Court
Introduction
Overview of the planned activities of the project, their context and their usefulness
Roma People, the known ones
Updates
