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For a few days, the national newspapers and television stations have been dealing a lot with the situation in Campobasso, Molise, where after a prolonged and limited increase in cases of COVID-19 infection, more than seventy new cases have been detected in a few hours. among people belonging to the local Roma community (Roma). The alleged cause of this increase in infections would be the participation of at least thirty people in a funeral ceremony, which took place on April 30. A little of all intervened in the story: the region’s president, the mayor, the prefecture, the police headquarters and various politicians, including Silvio Berlusconi, with mutual accusations about their respective shortcomings and responsibilities.
The data
Currently in Molise, the data is on Tuesday, May 12, the total number of officially registered coronavirus infections is 390 and currently positive is 226, the highest number since the beginning of the epidemic. From April 10 to May 7, the increase in new infections did not exceed ten units per day; on May 8 there was an increase of 22 compared to the previous day and on May 9, 33. Before that, the most significant increase, 31, had occurred on March 26.
The increase occurred in Campobasso, a city that has always had the highest number of cases since the start of the pandemic, while in Isernia and the other provinces of the region, the number of people who tested positive continued to be constant. In Campobasso, on May 7, the total number of infected people was 229, on May 8 it was 251, from 9 to 284, from 10 to 295, from 11 to 307 and from 12 to 314.
Among the new infected people, 77 belong to the Roma community of Campobasso, while 4 belong to the Carabinieri school, so much so that there are two new groups in the region.
The funeral procession
The new infections among the Roma community were immediately attributed to the participation of dozens of people, on April 30 in via Liguria, to the greeting of the body of a member of the community. The moment of the departure of the body from the house of the deceased was taken from a video filmed from above by a resident and shows at least thirty people grouped in the square, very close and without masks.
As of April 30, “phase 2” had not yet started and the strictest rules on confinement were still in effect. The brother of the deceased, after apologizing for what happened, explained that “when the body fell from the house, a few more people approached us to give us our condolences. We were not expecting it.”
Local newspapers write that, after April 30, the first Roma woman to test positive for COVID-19 is a girl in her 25s, but no newspaper specifies whether the woman was present at the funeral or not. It is not even clear if before April 30 there were contagions within the community, given that (and at least until a few days ago) data had not been collected for ethnic reasons. Finally, it should be noted that since May 4, also in Molise, restrictions have been relaxed, with the possibility, for example, of visiting relatives.
Yesterday, the tests administered in the condominiums of the building where the crowded ceremony was held (in which people from outside the municipality would also have participated) were negative, but the result of other tampons made within the Roma community is expected. and it is widely believed that the number of positives could increase further.
Politics
Campobasso Mayor Roberto Gravina of the 5 Star Movement had initially stated that no more than a dozen were present at the April 30 salute, but the videos broadcast actually show more massive participation. The police headquarters have so far identified thirty people.
The mayor was also accused of having authorized the funeral, but he himself specified that the funeral of April 30 did not require any authorization from the municipality or another authority because, as required by the DPCM of these months, burials have always been allowed. He said the April 30 meeting on via Liguria had nothing to do with the funeral or burial: Outside the cemetery, where the police were present, there was a minimum number of people allowed, as the photos attest. Finally, Gravina attacked the police headquarters and the prefecture saying that the controls on April 30 “depended on them.”
The oppositions, with the League at the forefront, continued to attack the mayor for the “superficiality” with which he would face the situation and for the “tendency to minimize”, and also said that the municipal administration “had a duty to supervise the Roma community of Campobasso, who has his own lifestyle and his own rules that often do not coincide with those of other Campobasso citizens. ”Center-right regional councilor Andrea Di Lucente suggested to the mayor to step aside or call the army, and Last night, host of Rete 4 in the broadcast made by Mario Giordano, Silvio Berlusconi also spoke about the matter, referring “to the negligence of a mayor who forgot to apply the law.”
On May 9, Gravina issued an order to intensify control activities in some areas of the city, specifying that investigations into how the virus has spread among the Roma community are still ongoing: being carried out by the Health Authority. Regional of Molise regarding the reconstruction of the epidemiological chain, and by the police headquarters for the judicial part. Later, the mayor confirmed that a substantial first part of the city’s Roma community is being carried out, which is made up of about 300 people, but also in any contact outside the community.
At one point, the idea also came to transfer infected people who are part of the Roma community to an outside structure, but many said they disagreed. The brother of the person whose funeral was held on April 30 said: “I totally disagree with moving to other facilities, we all have a home where we live with our relatives. We can stay home.”
The Roma community
The whole story was told in a very stereotypical way. Titles have circulated such as “Roma nomads organize a funeral” and a television report referred to Campobasso’s “Roma camp”, when instead, as Molise’s nomadic work wrote in a statement, Roma communities “live in Molise for 600 years “, are” integrated into the urban fabric of five cities and towns in our region, including the two provincial capitals “.
Image of the Campobasso report from “La Vita in Diretta” on Tuesday, May 12
The same statement also says that “a recent death occurred in Isernia, of a young Rumrì”, but that “the community, although heartbroken, remained at home and postponed the collective ceremony until the end of the emergency.” . It is also said that “a young Roma from Isernia was prevented from entering a supermarket”.
Concetta Sarachella, president of the Association of the Community of the Union of Romans in Italy, has also asked that they not ethnically denounce the pandemic because the criminals are simply transgressors: “It is time for solidarity and immediate medical attention for the infected and not for racial hatred. A few articles (…) that mentioned the term Roma ethnicity (…) were enough to immerse an entire community in what we call the year zero: hatred determined by that deadly mixture of ancestral fears and ignorance, which push identify in a minority, already for many years marginalized and locked in the ghetto, the responsibility of spreading and infecting and that reminds us so closely of those times that were believed to be definitively archived, but that evidently are still present in the collective memory and that they saw in him the poisoner of the wells is Jewish, the uncle scapegoat and responsible for the black plague in the Middle Ages and beyond ».
Finally, Sarachella said that “like all citizens, even the Roma, Italian citizens, they have strictly respected the rules.” Those who have not respected government decisions for the good of all stand out not for their cultural origin, but only for lack of civic sense. “
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