Gypsy slum a world away from Milan's fortunes

Wed Jan 17, 2007 10:38 AM GMT

By Lisa Jucca

MILAN (Reuters) - Half an hour's drive away from Milan's sumptuous fashion shows, hundreds of Romanian Gypsies who came to Italy seeking a better life have found themselves in a rat-infested camp.

Since New Year's Eve when their trailers burnt to ashes in a fire at Milan's largest Roma camp, 50 families in the suburban shanty town of 800 in Via Triboniano have subsisted in squalor.

Drawn since about 1999 to a small illegal settlement in an abandoned parking lot next to Milan's main graveyard, these Roma did not wait for Romania to join the European Union to head west in search of a better life near this wealthy European city.

In the town centre workmen polished fingerprints off the black glass facade to prepare Dolce & Gabbana's fashion show venue last week, but in the Gypsies' sprawling suburban favela there is no running water, electricity flows only intermittently and they share a dozen chemical toilets.
"I am disillusioned. I want to go back home," said Marian Marin, 23, as he tried to warm up from a street bonfire after the blaze burned out his caravan.

"Back in Romania I was earning only 100 euros a month as a construction worker. I came here to send something to my family. Now I don't care about anything," said Marin, who now sleeps in the open.

Next to him, a woman wearing a colourful Gypsy headscarf cried out her resentment in Romani language as the winter drizzle turned the camp's soil to filth.

(MORE)