Dear friends,
it's time to explain who we are, because otherwise we do the same game as those who confuse the cards. It is clear that some, like Mr. Merola who wrote to us from the site of Il Messaggero, do not know who they are asylum seekers and refugees. It is also clear that the reality of the reception centers in Rome is very confusing. The newspaper Liberation called them "detention centers". And perhaps, "detention" highlights the reality that we live better than does the word "welcome". Yet we live in shelters.
Then we write to introduce ourselves and ask specifically what to say.
RAR means Roma asylum seekers. Who is an asylum seeker? We read the Geneva Convention to respond better, but we decide to take the words to what we experienced on our skin.
asylum seeker is to risk their lives at home, it means without being able to escape back to where you have always lived. To go anywhere, but no longer at home. Run away for many reasons - the asylum seeker is the name of many stories, difficult and different. As the category of aliens, including asylum-seeker that has all its complexity. We are not all equal, nor necessarily siblings.
I left my country because the Oromo people in Ethiopia suffer from apartheid, can not speak their language, practice their culture, democratic political activity.
I left my country because I am Catholic, and after having declared my faith have been interned and tortured in Togo.
I left my country because the Government of Côte d'Ivoire is hostile to my ethnicity. I've been fired, they took us, they put me in jail and tortured.
I left my country because Eritrea is always at war. Young people are forced to do military service for life, because without that piece of the government certifies that the military will take you down the street and put you in the ground in Trak.
We are to live in Italy. Not for a better life.
was better able to stay. But that means dying killed, we and our families. Home is impossible if we continue to live somehow. We fled to protect our lives. Do not look for work, for money, for a life to be rich.
I was a computer technician.
I graduated in social work. I
audio-visual technician.
I was a carpenter and screed.
I was a baker.
I was a teacher.
I was a student in high school.
I was sick.
In Italy I threw away my diploma because, with my humanitarian protection, there is no validation that my title here. I was sick and now I'm a caregiver to black, while Italy's need for nurses and I am forced to stay in a shelter. So it is a waste for everyone.
Imagine: arrivals in one place and you say it's England, where you expect your friends. Instead, it is Lampedusa, Crotone, Foggia, Udine, Rome. You paid all you had to travel. If it still retains some money going to change and you realize that there are only five euro. Five euro in your pocket and you do not know where you are in the world.
But do not demand money. We want to understand how the centers in which we live as sheep. Baobab: 160 sheep via Scorticabove: 100 sheep: 815 Casilina little more than 20 sheep, evacuated.
We live in Rome in the shelters, where we know what you can do and what you can not ask. Inside are treated as guilty and we feel guilty, but we do not know why. Maybe because we do not bring money to Italy as tourists? Soon learn to keep quiet because they do not pay.
Yet the City spends money for the reception. Is there a budget for each person living in the centers and that is given to those who direct them. When you deal with a bed count and the City pays for you. When you go to the canteen, queuing up to sign because you do not need to certify the spesa.Vogliamo know where to go, who is the person, office, association or institution that is paid to help us.
Enough with the business of hospitality over our heads.
I asked to read the agreement that my heart was with the Common. Impossible. They told me: Who made you come here? In Rome, the reception is made illegally. The City spends money, but it is not clear where they end up. You can not get answers from the institutions. Make fun of you if you go and ask. The same has to eat, have a lawyer, look for a job, take a training course. Always finish in the usual circle from the hostel to Astalli Centre, the Centre via the Astalli Zoccoletto, where there is Caritas, by way of Zoccoletto to the City and the City at the reception center. And while you turn and turn and wait and time passes.
Enough with the hypocrisy and its flip side, the buonismo.Vogliamo know who controls the reception centers because that means we control. Understand when, how and why it means something to return to power on a life that is ours and not that of those who receive money from the municipality.
We ask: to know the agreements between the City and the reception centers, review the agreements signed, to know how much money they are given every day by the city and how they are spent, negotiated settlement with the center managers, attend meetings of management because at stake is our lives.
And we ask for a place other than the street or standing in line at some office or Internet point at Termini. A little place to go every day and meet, discuss and understand where to study. We want to achieve, exchange and offer something to our city.
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