14.02.2014 Eight-year-old Rroma girl killed by a fire

Numerous French newspapers report about an incident in a Rroma camp in Bobigny. For reasons not yet known, in that camp in question, an unexpected fire started. The informal accommodations were giving refuge to more and more Romanian and Bulgarian Rroma, who fled from forced evictions in the neighbourhood. At the time the fire started, the camp encompassed around 200 inhabitants. About one-fifth of the informal dwellings were destroyed. The camp itself had no access to running water, which would have allowed to extinguish the fire, although a demand had been filed to the city major months ago. The victim of the fire, an eight-year-old Rroma girl, had been enrolled in a primary school in Bobigny. Rroma camps in France are regularly affected by fires and other incidents. However, there is uncertainty about how the fires are started. Manuel Valls stresses that they are linked to the precarious safety conditions in many camps, what legitimizes his harsh eviction practices. Another possibility is that they are linked to politically motivated arson. During the year 2013, twenty-two Rroma camps were affected by incidents, according to the Ligue des droits de l’ Homme, which compromised about 2’000 people. The mayor of Bobigny, Catherine Peyge, pointed attention to the persisting, severe marginalization of the Rroma that has made this incident possible. In collaboration with Cécile Duflot, the minister for social housing, they are trying to find permanent accommodation for the Rroma affected by the fire (Le Parisien 2014, Le point in 2014, Le Nouvel Observateur in 2014, Libération 2014 BFMTV 2014) .