Roma family gets no French residency
Print Edition
A French court yesterday rejected an appeal for residency for the family of a Roma schoolgirl whose deportation sparked outrage and student protests in France.
A court in the eastern city of Besancon ruled that the public magistrate handling the case had been right in upholding the October 9 expulsion of 15-year-old Leonarda Dibrani, her parents and six siblings to Kosovo. The Dibrani family can appeal the latest ruling.
The family expressed shock denouncing the ruling as inhumane.
“They (the French authorities) should have killed us since here it is not a life, this is not justice but unjustice. I will kill myself since here there is no life for us,” Leonarda said in Kosovska Mitrovica, in northern Kosovo, where she has lived with her family since being deported from France.
“My homeland is France, here we are dying of hunger. We were sent here to die. The lawyer told us not to despair since we have the right to appeal but I don’t believe in justice any more,” she said.
“This is a death sentence. The situation is unbearable. I just sold my watch to be able to purchase medication,” Leonarda’s father said. “We are Roma, but we have the right to live!”
The Dibrani case triggered outrage in France as Leonarda was taken by the authorities while she was on a school trip.
The public magistrate on January 7 said the decision by local authorities to deport the family was justified as they had made no attempt to integrate into French mainstream society.
The magistrate said Leonarda’s father Resat, who is originally from Kosovo, had made little effort to find employment.
The father has admitted to lying and saying his entire family was from the former Serbian province, which proclaimed independence from Belgrade in 2008. But the mother and six of the seven Dibrani children were actually born in Italy, from where they illegally entered France in January 2009. One child was born in France, according to their lawyer.
Resat also provided a forged marriage certificate to try to win asylum in France.
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