Sunday, October 27, 2013

Roma – the unwanted Europeans...

Samuel lives in the derelict changing rooms of a disused university football pitch with his mother, father and eight brothers and sisters. He is one month old.

To visit Samuel, you pass through a jagged hole in a concrete wall. There is no electricity and no running water. Heating is provided by a wood stove made from an oil drum.

Four families, including eight adults and 20 children, live in, or around, the derelict changing cabin beside the weed-strewn pitch. Norica, aged 10, with blue eyes and light brown hair, proudly shows off her family's home: a hut the size of a small hen house constructed by her father from scavenged wood.

Below the lino floor is a thin sheet of board placed on the red gravel of the former penalty area. This is not a slum in Mumbai or Bucharest. The pitch is a few metres from the campus of the technical university of Le Havre in upper Normandy. The four families who live here are citizens of the European Union – Roma gypsies from Romania who arrived in France, legally, nine months ago.

Since they arrived, they have twice been ejected by French authorities from similar camps. Another Roma encampment near Le Havre was burnt this summer after its inhabitants were ordered to leave by a hooded gang. Norica's father, Sever Covaciu, 32, speaks only broken French. His daughter, who speaks the language remarkably well after a few months in French schools, translates for him. Full story...

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