‘See Naples and Die’ (Vedi Napoli e poi muori)
Corruption, forced evictions, and shady Mafia deals. Romani activist, Jonathan Lee, reports on Naples’ Roma families who are caught in the middle, and investigates the situation on the ground following the eviction of over a thousand Roma from their homes in Gianturco last year.
The ‘camp’, which was home to over a thousand Romani people, was demolished by Neapolitan authorities on the 7th April 2017. The move was an illegal pre-emptive strike, designed to see off attempts by the ERRC and other NGOs to secure an emergency intervention from the European Court of Human Rights, and halt the mass evictions scheduled for the 11th April. Police arrived with bulldozers at the crack of dawn on the day of the eviction. They ordered people from their homes and, while the demolition continued, organised them into groups, choosing 180 Roma to be placed in a new, segregated container camp located at Via Del Riposo, near the airport at the outskirts of the city. Our mission was to gain access to this government camp, assess the situation of the Roma there, investigate the fate of the 800 or so other Roma who were made homeless, and attempt to expose the whole dirty business of the eviction to the public, and to the European Commission.
Anyone who has been to Naples, will be familiar with the chaotic flavour of the city. Its reputation in the rest of the country notwithstanding, Naples is truly an island in mainland Italy. It is a city of eternal contradiction: opulent in its squalor, revelling in the midst of its own suffering, united in its apathy. Everything about the city asserts defiance, vitality and contrast whilst crumbling under its own heavy weight of decentralised authority, corruption, organised crime, and poverty. “She is like an old whore” my Italian friend told me when we were talking about my trip there. “You can glimpse her beauty, but she is worn out - drunk - and way too decadent”.
The port of Naples is vast, bustling and overlooked by the austere Castel Nuovo and grand Royal Palace of Naples. Refugees from North Africa and beyond, who have survived the perilous Mediterranean crossing in a dinghy, now man stalls that line the piazzas. Green space is confined to the distant hill of the Real Bosco, or the centre of small roundabouts shared with shrines to the Madonna. Further into the city, renaissance mansions are host to communities of the homeless in their arches, while many of the habitable upper floors have become mass squats for the underclass of Naples. Poor Italians, poor Arabs, poor Africans, poor Roma; all share buildings around the centre.
Wandering the streets around the old town and the Spaccanapoli, tourists walk past Red Cross workers handing out emergency food packages to the city’s hungry. Amongst them are Romanian Roma. Some from Gianturco, many from some other eviction elsewhere in the city, now forgotten. All are understandably wary of saying which camp they came from, or giving any information on where most of their friends and family members from Gianturco have moved to. After a camp is evicted in Campania, the Roma are dispersed amongst the city’s homeless population, but eventually many will move in with family in smaller camps around the city. The reluctance to say where they live is borne of experience. Every time a camp begins to grow in numbers, it’s not long before authorities turn up to harass and eventually evict the residents. One Romani woman, when asked where she and her children are sleeping now, told me ‘varokai’ – everywhere.
The general reluctance to speak with us (other than being a normal response when complete strangers ask for your address) was also rumoured to be down to threats made by the police. We had heard rumours before we even arrived in Naples that police had visited the Roma at Via del Riposo and elsewhere to warn them off speaking with activists. The cagey answers from Romani people we met, particularly relating to the conduct of the police, was the first alarm bell we got that these rumours might be true. So, with some trepidation we headed out one morning for the new camp at Via del Riposo, wondering if anyone there would speak with us at all.
Gaining access to an ethnically segregated, government run camp isn’t as easy as it sounds. The last we had heard was that Via del Riposo was a fenced off, gated and guarded container camp – purpose built to house the Roma evicted from Gianturco. Amnesty International had been denied entry to the camp around the time of the eviction, but a human rights photographer had managed to gain entry alongside municipality workers carrying out a survey. We opted for a similar approach, and used contacts in the municipality to gain permission to enter the camp.
(A boy pulls a wheelie on his bike at the open entrance to Via del Riposo shelter. © Alex Sturrock)
We arrived earlier than our appointed meeting time so we could take some pictures and see if we could meet any of the residents outside the camp walls. But when we got there, the gates were wide open. There were kids playing on bicycles outside, and a few people were coming and going from the camp. Scrawled across the walls on the roadside was anti-Roma graffiti and threats to burn the shelter to the ground. Instead of private security, a small group of young Romani men leaned against the wall at the entrance to the camp.
"Ame san katar o organizacija Romano, manges te keres vorba?"
We are from a Romani organisation, can I talk to you?
"O Capo si akai" - the captain is there - he replied, gesturing to an Italian man who was walking towards us from the road. Vincenso Esposito was in his fifties with grey hair, wearing a beige suit, a toothy smile, and a shirt open at the collar. He had the air of an estate agent about him, but informed us that he was in fact a Social Worker from the Office of Roma, Sinti & Caminanti (Travellers).
We entered the camp as his entourage, while he called to the kids nearby, ruffling hair, patting heads and play-wrestling with the boys. "Look at this one!" he would exclaim, "you're so cute, I might have to take you away with me!” His faux-paternalistic demeanour amongst the kids took on a more sinister, threatening element when he spoke with the adults. He inquired about progress made in their lives, and took it upon himself to speak on their behalf when our questions strayed near the topics of their welfare, the new camp, racism or the eviction. Nervous smiles stretched from person to person all around us.
We decided to split up so as to avoid the attentions of L'Esposito. We encountered a strange reticence from the residents, and there was a nervous tension which followed the social worker around the camp. He always seemed to be hovering nearby when someone began talking at length with us. I even found myself writing in Romani to stop his peering over my notebook, and his mild-mannered jokey warnings about removing their children (something well within his power) continued throughout our visit. I decided to interview him directly, seeing as he was so keen to be heard.
How are the relations between the locals and the Roma here?
There have been almost no complaints from the local people here, it is very peaceful, it’s not at all like the old camp. There were many complaints about the rubbish before, but now it’s not the case.
There are about 180 Roma here, relocated after the Gianturco eviction -
There was no eviction, there was no eviction. No. They left on their own, we did not evict them. You should not say this, the Roma left of their own [free will].
Police turned up in the early morning with bulldozers and forced the remaining Roma to leave their homes, the other thousand had already left after a campaign of harassment from police for months before.
No, whoever has told you this is lying, these things are not true. They were informed of the day that they would have to leave. And there were not a thousand, no, only a few hundred were ever there.
And 180 of these were moved to here?
Yes, not only from there but also from elsewhere. This is a social shelter for vulnerable people.
This is a social shelter for vulnerable people, are there any non-Roma in the camp?
No. There are over a hundred people here but all are Roma from Romania.
And there is a waiting list to get in here?
Yes, we have more than ten families.
Are any of them non-Roma?
No they are also Roma families from Romania.
And the authorities decide who gets on this list and who gets a place in the camp? Who decides this?
I do.
So why are you only placing Roma here Vincenso?
The non-Roma, they do not want to be put in this camp.
That's not what I've seen, we've seen lots and lots of very poor people in the city, homeless Italians, homeless African migrants – do they refuse to live in this shelter too?
This is a social shelter for vulnerable people, it is not a Roma-only policy like that.
But the fact remains, that this is a 100% Roma-only camp. Have you seen the graffiti outside on the walls? It specifically threatens these Roma with death and firebombing their houses.
Yes, this is terrible – it is old though, from 3 years ago when the old informal camp was here and there were problems.
I was told that it was since the eviction from Gianturco.
No, this is old stuff, please it was not an eviction I told you.
Why is it still there after 3 years? Why has the municipality not removed hate speech from the walls of its own shelter?
(Before and after showing when ‘No Roma’ was graffitied outside the shelter at Via del Riposo. © Google, Alex Sturrock)
The town councillor has proposed a mural be painted over it, to go on all the walls around, the children from the camp would help with this, but unfortunately this has not been done yet. This is not my office, it is the…I don’t know in English [urban sanitation department].
We soon discovered that some of Esposito’s claims were in fact plain lies. Firstly, the eviction of Gianturco was carried out earlier than the court order, and therefore illegally. His claim that Roma left voluntarily is just rubbish, and is like the volunteerism of soldiers picked by a sergeant from a line-up. The graffiti outside was in fact recent, as Amnesty had told us, evidenced by Google Imaging. We learned from local activists that in the preceding months, the police had set up cars to blockade the entrance to Gianturco camp and regularly stopped people from coming and going, particularly on market days when they could get work. Parents had also been threatened by police or local authorities that they would come one day and take away their children, leading many to stop sending their kids to school for fear that they would lose them. The campaign of daily harassment from the authorities meant that most of the 1000+ residents of the camp had already left by the time the eviction day came. One activist told us that he had been lifted from the area after Esposito pointed him out and told police to remove him. He describes the social worker breezing through Gianturco calling “Today is the day everyone!” with the same paternalistic menace he exhibited at Via del Riposo. The same activist also claims that Esposito uses a combination of bribes and threats of eviction or removing children, to shortlist which families are in, and which are out of the new social shelter.
(The grownups play dominoes while the kids play with the photographer’s camera. © Alex Sturrock)
We left the camp (escorted by Esposito), hoping to find some local racists to ask what they think about the new shelter. Our first stop was about 100m away, in a local shop and bar. "They come in here and they buy coffee, so they are good for business. They don't cause any problems, things are calm and everyone gets on with his own business." says shopkeeper Jordano Salvatore. “Of course some of them were even born here, they speak Neapolitan just like us. The problem is Italians in Naples are not ready to integrate them. Naples has many problems, we have high unemployment, poverty and criminality already [opens paper and gestures to crimes committed 'Jail guard murdered, prisoners escape etc.']." Contrary to Esposito's claims, many in the shop agree that there are many Neapolitans who would jump at the chance to be in the shelter, where they have heard the Roma are paid €30 a day by the European Union. The feeling was shared by people we met at the local pizzeria. "Napoli is too poor" explains a man there. "We cannot look after Italians, migrants, and Roma" he says. "We are more worried about the Roma than Vesuvio erupting!" he jokes with the volcano looming in the near distance.
Local activists, whether they are working on homelessness, Roma rights, migrants’ rights or anti-corruption, all point towards the same underlying element as the root of many of the city’s problems. Criminal syndicates; combined with a pervading climate of corruption in Neapolitan society and governance. “There is nothing that moves in that city without the Camorra’s say” an Italian activist told me. We heard much the same from some Roma in the streets about how this affects them and their families.
Unlike migrants from Africa and the Middle East, arriving Roma are less vulnerable to exploitation through drugs and trafficking, according to some local activists. The Roma, many of whom come from Romania, arrive in relatively large, tightly knit family groups who are not as easy to control as individuals and small families coming across the Mediterranean. They present something of a problem for the Camorra clans who rule over Campania, and you are less likely to find Roma involved in organised crime activities in Naples for this reason. The Roma who live in camps pose no threat nor competition to Camorra business, but they often find themselves in the way of their expansions.
An anti-corruption and Roma rights activist we spoke to in the city explained how Roma can find themselves on the wrong side of the Camorra when they build camps on land that has been earmarked for development. Particularly in relation to alleged siphoning of EU structural funds designated for regenerating areas of Naples. According to our source, the gentrification of the centre of the city and the redevelopment of neighbouring areas is a guise for corruption of funds and further criminality in Naples.
In 2008, Roma moved onto an area of wasteland in Ponticelli and began collecting plastics and scrap metal, supposedly in competition with Camorra-run waste management businesses on the outskirts of the city. The Roma camp was situated at Via Provinciale delle Brecce, around 5km away from the Gianturco camp and within the ‘East Port Area’ designated for EU regeneration funds. Unfounded accusations were made by the wife of a Camorra clan-leader that a Romani girl had broken into their house and attempted to steal their six-month-old baby (the oldest trick in the book). In less than 24 hours, an angry mob had formed and was advancing on the camp. Later, Molotov cocktails were thrown at the makeshift homes by youths, allegedly following Camorra orders. The pogrom was completed in less than two days and was overseen by Neapolitan police, who played a limited role in keeping the mob at bay whilst the Roma fled their homes.
Our local activist claimed that the eviction at Gianturco was also motivated by Camorra interests, and hinted that strong-men had leaned on local authorities to effect the eviction in order for regeneration to continue, and thus funds to be stolen. The money in question comes from the “Urban Redevelopment of Naples East Port Area” project which has funding of €206 million, of which the EU’s European Regional Development Fund is contributing €155 million. It focusses on the areas around eight streets in the East Port area in particular: Galileo Ferraris, Brecce a San Erasmo, Ferante Imparato, Benedetto Brin, Emanuele Gianturco, Nuova Brecce, Provinciale delle Brecce, Carlo di Tocco. On three of these eight streets, Roma have been forcefully evicted from camps in recent years (Provinciale delle Brecce, Galileo Ferraris, Brecce a San Erasmo) – at least twice with strong suspicion of Camorra involvement. The nature of the area, and the camps, often means that they intersect more than one road. When viewed on the map it is clear that the removal of a camp can free up land around several of these key roads targeted for redevelopment.
[SATELLITE IMAGE OF EAST DOCK SHOWING LOCATIONS OF 8 STREETS]
Resources are only provided based on progress of work, and the project has been famously delayed, with most of the work going unfinished, loans unpaid, appeals lodged and tenders not completed. Those responsible for administering the work and contracts say it is the fault of bureaucracy and legal disputes. There is a clear motive for Romani camps to be cleared urgently in the redevelopment areas in order for EU funds to start flowing again.
(Roma and non-Roma play football on a traffic island while old men coach from the side-line. © Alex Sturrock)
On our last evening in Naples, we returned to a sandwich shop near Via del Riposo shelter where 27-year-old local father, Ciro Tammaro, had invited us to meet. He organises football games for the kids in the neighbourhood, both the local ones and the Romani ones from the new shelter. We text him and he directs us to a patch of bare dirt and grass with goalposts at each end, in the centre of an island on a junction between three main roads. A scattering of people come to watch the mixed teams play as the sun sets and the Neapolitan traffic blares around us.
“The main problem is the state, not the Roma. My children play football with Romani children every week and there is no problem.” says Ciro. “The Italian state is acting shamefully. If you have a guest in your house, you make them feel welcome – you offer them your hospitality – but instead the state is putting them in awful conditions.”
Later on, before we say goodbye and leave the pitch, I ask him: “Are they any good? At football?”
“Si, si of course” he says with a serious expression, “they are Italian.” I am left wondering which he kids he means.
by Jonathan Lee