The politics of fear return to Italy
From The Times
May 29, 2008
Richard Owen
Immigrants are under attack from the resurgent Right - and even from vigilante mobs.
Is Italy succumbing to a wave of racism and xenophobia under its new centre-right Government? To Senada Salkanovic it looks that way: as she cuddles her daughter Brenda, 7, on the step of her shack at a Gypsy camp on Via Casilina, on the eastern outskirts of Rome, she wonders where she and her six children will go when the bulldozers arrive.
The rubbish-strewn camp, consisting of wood and corrugated-iron cabins and dilapidated caravans, sits next to a disused airfield and is due for demolition as part of a new crackdown on illegal immigration and crime. Already nearly 40 huts have been dismantled, and 150 of the camp's 800 inhabitants have left.
“Where are we supposed to go?” asks Senada, who came to Italy from the former Yugoslavia 20 years ago. Her makeshift home, equipped with cupboards, a sink and a stove, is neat and well kept, in contrast to the dusty squalor outside. “They say we are all thieves, but I work as a cleaner.”
“This Government is stoking up fear,” says Najo Adzovic, her husband. “Most people in this camp are refugees from crises in the Balkans. We are used as scapegoats when what we need are jobs, housing and status. We need to find our voice.”
Across town, at another Roma camp made of converted containers next to a bus depot in the southwestern suburb of Magliana, I find Riccardo Di Segni, the Chief Rabbi of Rome, talking to Hanifa Rustic, an elderly Bosnian who tells him that she came to Italy at the age of 13, fleeing pro-Nazi Croatian Fascists in an earlier era of intolerance.
“There are alarming signs of racism in Italy today,” says Di Segni, who is visiting the camp to express Jewish solidarity. Jews and Gypsies both ended up in Hitler's concentration camps, he points out. “We have to be on the alert, not only because of what is happening but because of what could happen. First one group is singled out, then another. This must be stopped now.”
“We are treated like criminals even though most Roma people are honest,” says Mioara Miclescu, a Romanian at the Magliana camp who runs a laundry employing Roma women. “We are living in fear.”
Many illegal immigrants are not the muggers and pickpockets of popular nightmare but badanti - cleaners and carers for the elderly who cannot obtain residence permits because of bureaucratic obstacles.
The plight of Italy's Roma population made headlines two weeks ago when youths on motorcycles and scooters hurled Molotov cocktails into a nomad camp at Ponticelli, outside Naples, a city brought to its knees by the unresolved problem of how to dispose of its rubbish. Smoke from the burning camp joined that already rising from mountains of rubbish set on fire by desperate locals.
The Naples arson attacks - apparently co-ordinated by clans of the Camorra, the Naples Mafia, which is also behind the rubbish problem - were sparked by an alleged attempt by a teenage Roma girl to abduct a baby from a flat near the camp. When the new Cabinet of Silvio Berlusconi, who won a sweeping election victory last month, met in Naples last week, one of the provisions in its emergency decree on crime and immigration was the arrest of Gypsies who use children to steal or beg.
The Berlusconi coalition combines his Forza Italia with the anti-immigrant Northern League and the “post-Fascist” Alleanza Nazionale. All agree with Berlusconi that “Italians have the right not to live in fear” - which means targeting those who make Italians afraid.
Illegal immigration is about to become a crime for the first time, punishable by up to four years in prison, with new detention centres to hold clandestini prior to their expulsion. Another measure, aimed at the thousands of Romanians who have poured into Italy since Romania joined the EU, states that EU citizens will be expelled if they cannot show that they have the “economic resources” to stay for longer than three months. Vigilante “neighbourhood patrols” have sprung up in many Italian towns, and mayors are being given special powers to “ensure public safety”.
In Rome, where the election of Gianni Alemanno of Alleanza Nazionale a month ago was greeted by Fascist salutes from some supporters and cries of “Duce, Duce”, there were clashes on Tuesday between extreme Left and extreme Right supporters at Rome University. Last weekend masked youths went on the rampage in the hitherto peaceful and trendy multiracial quarter of Pigneto, smashing the windows of Asian businesses and beating up Indian and Bangladeshi shopkeepers. The pretext was an allegation that one of the shopkeepers was harbouring a North African who had stolen a purse, but witnesses had no doubt that this was a racist attack.
Kabir Humayun, a Bangladeshi shopkeeper, said; “I'm terrified that it will happen again. I'm worried for my wife and children.”
“Where will this all end?” asked Islam Serajul, whose launderette-cum-phone centre was trashed. “And why now? I have been here six years with no problems.”
(MORE)
May 29, 2008
Richard Owen
Immigrants are under attack from the resurgent Right - and even from vigilante mobs.
Is Italy succumbing to a wave of racism and xenophobia under its new centre-right Government? To Senada Salkanovic it looks that way: as she cuddles her daughter Brenda, 7, on the step of her shack at a Gypsy camp on Via Casilina, on the eastern outskirts of Rome, she wonders where she and her six children will go when the bulldozers arrive.
The rubbish-strewn camp, consisting of wood and corrugated-iron cabins and dilapidated caravans, sits next to a disused airfield and is due for demolition as part of a new crackdown on illegal immigration and crime. Already nearly 40 huts have been dismantled, and 150 of the camp's 800 inhabitants have left.
“Where are we supposed to go?” asks Senada, who came to Italy from the former Yugoslavia 20 years ago. Her makeshift home, equipped with cupboards, a sink and a stove, is neat and well kept, in contrast to the dusty squalor outside. “They say we are all thieves, but I work as a cleaner.”
“This Government is stoking up fear,” says Najo Adzovic, her husband. “Most people in this camp are refugees from crises in the Balkans. We are used as scapegoats when what we need are jobs, housing and status. We need to find our voice.”
Across town, at another Roma camp made of converted containers next to a bus depot in the southwestern suburb of Magliana, I find Riccardo Di Segni, the Chief Rabbi of Rome, talking to Hanifa Rustic, an elderly Bosnian who tells him that she came to Italy at the age of 13, fleeing pro-Nazi Croatian Fascists in an earlier era of intolerance.
“There are alarming signs of racism in Italy today,” says Di Segni, who is visiting the camp to express Jewish solidarity. Jews and Gypsies both ended up in Hitler's concentration camps, he points out. “We have to be on the alert, not only because of what is happening but because of what could happen. First one group is singled out, then another. This must be stopped now.”
“We are treated like criminals even though most Roma people are honest,” says Mioara Miclescu, a Romanian at the Magliana camp who runs a laundry employing Roma women. “We are living in fear.”
Many illegal immigrants are not the muggers and pickpockets of popular nightmare but badanti - cleaners and carers for the elderly who cannot obtain residence permits because of bureaucratic obstacles.
The plight of Italy's Roma population made headlines two weeks ago when youths on motorcycles and scooters hurled Molotov cocktails into a nomad camp at Ponticelli, outside Naples, a city brought to its knees by the unresolved problem of how to dispose of its rubbish. Smoke from the burning camp joined that already rising from mountains of rubbish set on fire by desperate locals.
The Naples arson attacks - apparently co-ordinated by clans of the Camorra, the Naples Mafia, which is also behind the rubbish problem - were sparked by an alleged attempt by a teenage Roma girl to abduct a baby from a flat near the camp. When the new Cabinet of Silvio Berlusconi, who won a sweeping election victory last month, met in Naples last week, one of the provisions in its emergency decree on crime and immigration was the arrest of Gypsies who use children to steal or beg.
The Berlusconi coalition combines his Forza Italia with the anti-immigrant Northern League and the “post-Fascist” Alleanza Nazionale. All agree with Berlusconi that “Italians have the right not to live in fear” - which means targeting those who make Italians afraid.
Illegal immigration is about to become a crime for the first time, punishable by up to four years in prison, with new detention centres to hold clandestini prior to their expulsion. Another measure, aimed at the thousands of Romanians who have poured into Italy since Romania joined the EU, states that EU citizens will be expelled if they cannot show that they have the “economic resources” to stay for longer than three months. Vigilante “neighbourhood patrols” have sprung up in many Italian towns, and mayors are being given special powers to “ensure public safety”.
In Rome, where the election of Gianni Alemanno of Alleanza Nazionale a month ago was greeted by Fascist salutes from some supporters and cries of “Duce, Duce”, there were clashes on Tuesday between extreme Left and extreme Right supporters at Rome University. Last weekend masked youths went on the rampage in the hitherto peaceful and trendy multiracial quarter of Pigneto, smashing the windows of Asian businesses and beating up Indian and Bangladeshi shopkeepers. The pretext was an allegation that one of the shopkeepers was harbouring a North African who had stolen a purse, but witnesses had no doubt that this was a racist attack.
Kabir Humayun, a Bangladeshi shopkeeper, said; “I'm terrified that it will happen again. I'm worried for my wife and children.”
“Where will this all end?” asked Islam Serajul, whose launderette-cum-phone centre was trashed. “And why now? I have been here six years with no problems.”
(MORE)
Labels: Gypsy, Gypsy Prejudice, Italy, Racism, Roma
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