Mayor orders trench to be dug around Romani camp in France

10 September 1998

Agence France Presse reported on August 12 that two mayors in the Lorraine province in north-eastern France took unusual measures against Roma who camped in the region.

In the town of Tonnoy, Mr Claude Balland, mayor, ordered a one-metre deep ditch to be dug along the front and one side of a Romani camp. According to the Washington Post, sixty vehicles carrying about 240 Roma had arrived there on August 9. Two days after their arrival the mayor ordered the ditch to be dug, citing complaints by the townspeople.

French legislation allows Roma to use public land for up to eight days, and puts the local authorities in charge of providing them with water and sanitation. Mr Balland's justification for the action was that it was done for security reasons, and because "the phreatic [ground-water] layer is too low". Although the trench had not completely isolated the camp, and there was free access to water and the nearby campground facility, the Washington Post reported that the action deeply offended the Roma involved.

According to Romnews Network (RNN), the news service of the Romani National Congress, the site for travellers in Tonnoy was established 15 years ago, and every year Roma stop there on their way to Lure in the Haute-Saône region in north-east France, heading for a massive religious assembly scheduled for late August and organised by a Romani evangelical association. The assembly was expected to bring together some 40,000 Roma, and Tonnoy is the only place where they can take residence on their way. The RNN reported that while Mr Balland and a part of the population described the situation as unbearable, other citizens were so shocked with the trench that they immediately filled up a part of it.

According to Le Monde of August 14, Mr Jean Mersch, mayor of another Lorraine town, Longuyon, decided on August 11 to close the local swimming pool, after another group of Roma put up their camp around the building of the sports centre on their way to Lure. The French non-governmental organisation Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l'amitié entre les peuples (Movement against Racism and for Friendship of Peoples) denounced this decision as a return to the Middle Ages.

(Agence France Presse, Le Monde, Washington Post, Romnews Network)