Pro-migrant demonstration in Rome, Italy, August 26, 20017 – Manifestazione pro-migranti a Roma

Two days before, August 24th, the police had forcefully broken up an improvised migrant camp site in the heart of Rome (piazza Indipendenza), just outside a vacant 10-story building where the city government had let 100 refugees live for the past four years. The owner of the building, however, suddenly refused to cede it any longer to the city of Rome and demanded that the refugees be evicted. On August 19th, the local government, not having found any other accommodation, simply threw the refugees into the street and then, on August 24th, after they had set up a camp in a nearby square, swept them away with truncheons and water canons at 6 in the morning while they were still asleep in their improvised tents. The pro-migrant demonstration held today protests this brutal and illegal action. The sign held highest in the video reads: “My father, a partisan, an antifascist and a fervent Catholic, would have been disgusted by this violence against refugees without a home.”

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