Police in Rome have cleared nearly 400 people, including dozens of children, from a camp inhabited for years by members of the minority Roma community, despite an EU court ruling halting demolition.



Residents stood outside the camp with mattresses and other belongings piled alongside vehicles, some protesting against the move with chants of “racists!”

Some complained that police used force during the eviction, however the police commander, Antonio Di Maggio, denied the claims.

The eviction is a victory for Matteo Salvini, the Italian interior minister and leader of the far-right League party, who has long campaigned against Roma people.

The party’s joint government programme with the Five Star Movement, to which the Rome mayor belongs, includes a plan for all “unregistered” Roma camps to be closed down, while in June Salvini called for a census of the community to be carried out.

“Finally, the eviction at the Camping River Roma camp in Rome is underway. Legality, order and respect before everything!” he wrote on Facebook on Thursday.

Earlier in the week Salvini belittled the intervention by the European court of human rights (ECHR), writing on Twitter: “All we needed was the do-goodism of the European Court of Roma Rights.”

Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, praised the eviction on Facebook. Photograph: Vasily Maximov/AFP/Getty Images

Mayor Virginia Raggi wrote on Facebook that the settlement, established in a former camping ground called Camping River on Rome’s northern periphery, was closed for hygiene reasons. Parts of the camp had been without electricity and running water.

She said the move was meant to provide greater protection to the Roma, especially minors, some of whom do not attend school.

“It is unacceptable to continue to finance places like this that create ghettos, and above all, where the living conditions don’t protect the rights of children, women and men,” Raggi wrote.

The ECHR on Tuesday asked Italian authorities to suspend action until Friday and outline plans to rehouse the community, following an appeal by three camp residents. City officials said they had been working to relocate residents, and had delayed the planned closing by more than a year.

City spokesman, Gennaro Barbieri, said only 100 people had accepted offers to move into government reception centres over the last few years, with another 43 joining them on Thursday.

Raggi said some residents who were not Italian citizens had returned to their native Romania in recent months.

While many members of Italy’s sizeable Roma community, also known as Gypsies, are of Italian nationality, many living in the camp were from Romania, Kosovo, Bosnia and Serbia. Italian authorities periodically clear out camps such as Camping River, where many live on the outskirts of big cities.

A woman holds a child after being evicted from the Camping River village. Photograph: Gregorio Borgia/AP

Mikhaila Dobreska, who had been living in the camp, accused police of using unnecessary force.

“They forced us out,” she said. “They pushed all the women.”

Another woman, Gordana Khardzic, claimed police used pepper spray, hitting one woman in the eyes.

“They slapped a girl. My sister-in-law fainted,” she said.

Di Maggio said the entire operation was filmed, and told reporters that police had organised the operation to allow residents to leave calmly.

Journalists were kept outside during the operation. TV La7 showed groups of men driving away from the camp, some saying they were headed to Romania, others saying they were going to look for the next place to squat, probably under a bridge.

But dozens remained outside the closed camp gates, protesting plans to rehouse them elsewhere in the city.