ALBUCCIONE, Italy (CN) — The mob came at the Roma with baseball bats, threw stones and bottles, broke windows and shouted frightening cries: “Kill them all!” “Burn them alive!” “Send them all away!”
This, according to witnesses who spoke to Courthouse News, was the scene last week when a mob of more than 100 people living in a rundown housing estate outside of Rome descended on an adjacent community of Roma, the historically nomadic peoples also known as gypsies.
A series of tragic and violent events erupted Wednesday afternoon, July 17, according to witness accounts and news reports.
First, at around noon, a 13-year-old Roma girl was struck by a vehicle on a nearby highway and suffered near-fatal injuries. The Roma community gathered at the scene on the highway.
Around the same time a group of men kicked in the door of a Roma family living in an apartment inside the Albuccione housing estate and accused it of stealing items from a car. The group of men assaulted the Roma, according to news reports, and demanded they pay $220. Two men were arrested in connection with this assault.
Then a group of Albuccione residents gathered and marched to the adjacent Roma village, allegedly carrying baseball bats and bottles. They assaulted a home near the entrance to the village by throwing stones and bottles, according to witnesses and news reports. Two windows on the home, two gates and two car windows were broken, witnesses said.
As the attack on the Roma home began, the Roma who had gathered on the highway returned to their settlement and faced off with the mob, witnesses said.
The Roma called the police, who showed up and kept the two sides from hurting each other. Some Albuccione residents remained for hours at the entrance to the settlement and hurled insults at the Roma until 2 a.m., according to witnesses. They allegedly shouted such things as “Kill them all!” “Burn them alive!” “Send them all away!”
Police at Carabinieri headquarters in nearby Tivoli declined to speak with Courthouse News about the incident and did not return messages seeking comment.
This was the third “pogrom-like attack” on the outskirts of Italy's capital Rome in the past three months against Roma, according to Marcello Zuinisi, a lawyer with the National Association of Roma in Italy.
The other two incidents involved neo-Fascists violently protesting the granting of public housing to Roma families.
“These pogroms have been happening for years in Italy,” Zuinisi said in a telephone interview.
But he said the attacks on Roma have gotten worse since Italy's far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, took office in June 2018 and fomented hatred against Roma.
This month Salvini issued orders to conduct a census of Roma, an act reminiscent of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini who rounded up Roma in Italy and sent them to German extermination camps.
“In Italy there is a very heavy atmosphere,” Zuinisi said. “It's a very heavy atmosphere like 1930. Italy is the most racist country in Europe.”
In Albuccione, the attack on the Roma encampment, where about 20 families live, was sparked by allegations that Roma were responsible for thefts at a local school and from a car parked inside the housing estate. Police have not arrested anyone for the alleged thefts, according to residents and news reports.