Roma under attack in Greece speak out – ‘We are human and we want justice’

More than 50 police came into our camp at 6am. They broke into homes and threw clothes and furniture outside.

That was with the excuse of a “missing gun”. Two weeks before that it was something else.

They try to find any excuse to attack the Roma. They say we are dirty, we sell drugs, guns, now they say we kidnap children.

They are trying to target us, to show that we are some kind of criminal. Here they want to throw us out because our area has gone upmarket and they want to build a commercial centre. That’s why they are spreading terror.

They couldn’t care less for the living standards of our children, except when it suits to use us as targets.

Our children live in poor conditions and work from a young age. But the state is trying to cut the benefits of Roma women with children.

It has fired the teachers who used to help them, and now few Roma children go to school.

And now they pretend to be sensitive and humane about our children.

We need to get all the Roma from across Greece into a big protest in Athens. We are humans too and we want justice.