8:00am Thursday 4th September 2008
TRAVELLERS plan to beam live video interviews from their site to an international Roma conference in Brussels.
Campaigners at Dale Farm in Crays Hill, near Billericay, hope to turn the St Christopher’s Community Centre at the site, paid for by Essex County Council, into a studio to link up to an EU-sponsored Roma summit via the internet on September 16.
They plan to use laptops to feed DVD film of previous UK traveller site evictions, including one at Hovefields, Wickford, and live interviews with travellers to an outdoor stage and giant screen, set up during the conference, and linked via the internet to centres across Europe.
Richard Sheridan, Dale Farm spokesman, is attending the summit to put his case for stopping the eviction of what he calls the UK’s largest gipsy village.
Latest figures from Basildon Council in July showed there were 38 occupied pitches at the Dale Farm illegal site and 12 which were empty.
The authority still wants to carry out what would be the country’s biggest mass eviction and is appealing a High Court ruling which suspended its action on December 5 last year.
The Brussels summit, draws together Roma representatives from 40 countries with a total gipsy population of more than ten million, and has been called in the wake of recent mob attacks against Roma people in Italy.
Mr Sheridan complained: “Here in the UK planning regulations are being used to exclude us.”
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