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.”
Alemanno, a former neo-Fascist youth leader who - like the rest of Alleanza
Nazionale - has rejected the legacy of Mussolini, insists that he was as
horrified as anyone. He met the targeted shopkeepers, shook their hands and
offered them compensation from public funds. He accepted a bag of nuts as a
present, and blamed the previous left-of-centre Rome administration for
creating intolerance by being soft on crime. But shortly after he left, a
poster went up on one of the smashed shopfronts that read: “We oppose the
hypocrisy of those who feed racism and xenophobia”. Vladimir Luxuria, a
transsexual and former parliamentary deputy who lives in Pigneto, says: “The
thugs who attacked the Asians don't just feel legitimised by Alemanno, they
feel sponsored by him.”
Next month, a new opera about a shanty town by the composer Giorgio
Battistelli, Miracolo a Milano, has its Rome premiere. Inspired by the
anti-immigrant panic that followed the murder at a suburban railway station
last October of Giovanna Reggiani, the wife of a naval officer, allegedly by
a Romanian vagrant, it is “a parable about alienated people, whether those
living next to railway lines and under bridges in Italy, or Italians as a
whole,” Battistelli says.
Walter Veltroni, the former centre-left mayor of Rome, claimed at the time of
the murder that Roma were responsible for 75 per cent of the city's crime.
It is this kind of remark that has led MEPs and the European Commission to
give warning of Italian xenophobia, joined yesterday by Amnesty
International, which referred to a “witch-hunt”.
Last week the European Roma Rights Centre, funded by George Soros, the
Hungarian-born US financial speculator and political activist, wrote to
Berlusconi demanding “urgent intervention by Italian authorities to protect
Roma from further acts of racist aggression”.
Some Italians see all this alarm about intolerance as misplaced, and dismiss
warnings of a return to 1930s-style Fascism as hysterical. “We have simply
reached a tipping point” says Guglielmo, my neighbour. “I usually vote for
the Centre Left but, like many others who switched to the Right this time, I
am fed up to the back teeth with robberies, pickpockets, tramps, and the
sight of hundreds of immigrants selling counterfeit handbags and sunglasses
on our streets with impunity. Enough is enough.”
There has been casual racism for years on Italy's football terraces, with
insults routinely hurled at black players by far-right “ultras”. Skinhead
violence is not directed only at foreigners, though - gays, anyone with long
hair, anyone “different”, is also a target. This month a 29-year-old
industrial designer died in Verona after being beaten into a coma by ultras
for refusing one of them a cigarette. But foreigners stand out, and
geography makes the Italians feel vulnerable. “We are closer to both the
Balkans and North Africa than anyone in Europe, and our peninsular coastline
is impossible to defend,” one Italian friend tells me. “We bear the brunt.”
North African Muslims are the most visible objects of suspicion - especially
in northern Italy, where the Northern League is strong - and there is a
tendency to lump Roma gypsies and Romanians together. Of the three million
legal immigrants in Italy - 5 per cent of the population - Romanians are the
most numerous, closely followed by Albanians and Moroccans. According to
police statistics, a third of all thefts, rapes and murders are committed by
“foreigners”.
There are an estimated 600,000 illegal immigrants in Italy, and hundreds more
arrive every week at Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island near the North African
coast. Some are sent back but most make their way to the mainland. In 2006,
of 124,383 immigrants “detained for illegal entry” and ordered to be
expelled, only 13,397 were actually “accompanied to the frontier” to make
sure that they left. The rest were served with expulsion orders but then
absconded to live rough.
Marco Brazzoduro, a professor of social policy at Rome University who has
taken up the Roma cause, argues that Italians are not racist. “This is more
about poverty than race,” he says. “The poor are always to blame. It is
undeniable that Roma people beg and steal, but so do other immigrants - and
Italians.” Professor Brazzoduro, who began by doing research on the Roma
people and was drawn into helping them, has set up a dressmaking workshop
for seven Roma women, with “a waiting list of 40 more”.
Many Italians feel that their way of life is threatened by a combination of
immigration and globalisation. In an economy of near-zero growth, the family
businesses that are the backbone of Italy are struggling. In Pigneto,
residents tell you that trouble has been brewing for some time, with the gap
between rich and poor threatening social harmony. “On the one hand house
prices have rocketed as the wealthy move in, while on other the area is
flooded with illegal street traders, criminals and drug dealers,” one says.
“I don't see why Alemanno had to apologise,” says the barman at a café near
one of the smashed shops. “Attacking people is out of order, but it is
beoming impossible to live here - noise all night, drugs, drunkards. I'm not
a racist, it's just that our neighbourhood is being destroyed.”
According to Opera Nomadi, an organisation set up to represent Roma
immigrants, Roma gypsies began coming to Italy in the late Middle Ages, and
half of Italy's 150,000 Roma are Italian citizens. Many of them make a
living by dealing in scrap metal and second-hand goods, and many Roma
children attend Italian schools.
“Not all Roma are Romanians, and not all Romanians are Roma,” says Ilvo
Diamanti, a leading sociologist. He agrees with Professor Brazzoduro that
Italians are not racist, “but they are xenophobic, in the sense that
foreigners arouse fear. But then that is true throughout Europe. To say that
this is a phenomenon that has exploded because Berlusconi is back in power
is surreal.”
Giuliano Ferrara, formerly Berlusconi's spokesman and now a prominent editor
and television pundit, agrees. “It was entirely predictable that once
Berlusconi returned to power a Greek chorus would appear to warn us all that
Italian democracy is in danger, that Italy is introducing mass deportations
and concentration camps,” he says. In reality, he adds, violence against
immigrants and gypsies has been “limited”.
The true problem, Ferrara says, is that Italy has had to cope with an influx
of immigrants who end up living in poverty on the edges of cities - the very
margins in which Italy's own poorest people live.
“There is no ethnic persecution in Italy,” he insists. “To draw comparisons
with what happened to the Jews, who were exterminated, is irresponsible.”
Roberto Maroni, the Interior Minister and deputy leader of the Northern
League, points out that making illegal entry into Italy a crime merely
brings the nation into line with Britain, France and Germany. As for
vigilante attacks on immigrants, “that is what happens when gypsies steal
babies, or when Romanians commit sexual violence”. The Right was elected, he
says, to do something about it. “The whole point of our security package is
to reassure citizens, precisely so that they don't take the law into their
own hands. It is the job of the state to guarantee public safety.”
Italy remains a tolerant country, partly thanks to Roman Catholic traditions
of hospitality and charity. But if a doctor were to take Italy's temperature
at the moment, he might conclude that it was in a feverish and troubled
state of mind. Italians, the writer Claudio Magris observes, seem to have
forgotten that just half a century ago they, too, were a nation of poor
emigrants to America. “We, above all, should know what it is like to be
strangers in a strange land,” he says.
The danger is that the more Italians feel threatened and hard done by, the
more xenophobia will take hold, according to Marco Lodoli, a Rome
journalist. Italy is a tolerant mixture of traditions - a macedonia (fruit
salad) - he says, but “the fruit is turning sour. The air is electric, it
will take only a flash of lightning to cause the next explosion. Today it is
Naples or Pigneto. Tomorrow, who knows?”
Yes, it could happen here
Italians riot against Gypsies in their midst; South Africans riot against
Zimbabweans and other immigrants. In troubled times, the foreigner is always
hated.
Mass immigration usually takes place without the consent, and even against the
wishes, of the receiving population, who are then inclined to bitterness at
the disregarding of their wishes. We in Britain should not be too quick to
congratulate ourselves that there have not yet been many outbreaks of
violent xenophobia, even though we have far more immigrants, from many more
countries, than Italy. I remember how, in the early 1960s, we used to laugh
at the absurdity of Italian football hooliganism, only to become world
leaders in it ourselves shortly afterwards.
Our nervousness in this respect is demonstrated every time a young member of
an ethnic minority is murdered. Was he killed by racists? If he was, will
there be further outbreaks of violence? We breathe a sigh of relief when it
turns out, as seems to have been the case with the young man killed recently
in Dewsbury, that the act was non-racist.
It seems that, in exhibiting some of the worst characteristics of contemporary
British culture, immigrant groups are adjusting to the ways of their adopted
country. In Britain, ethnic and cultural tensions are not necessarily
between native Britons and others. There are plenty of tensions between
different minorities. For example, Sikhs and Muslims do not see eye to eye,
and I have met many patients with horror stories to tell of clashes between
them, especially over matters matrimonial. The “communities” sometimes even
set up vigilante groups to police their borders.
The real danger comes not when people of different origins intermingle but
when they segregate themselves into virtual ghettoes. Resentment leads men
to do the worst things, and is rarely absent from the human heart. It is at
its most dangerous when it has an easy target.
Dr Theodore Dalrymple
All western countries at this time are in financial crisis. It is difficult enough providing for their own citizens without the worries of an influx of jobless, lower-class castoffs from other nations. Despite denials, Romania was eager to get rid of those considered to be a drag on their society.
Al, hadley, USA
Some of the complaints about the immigrants in Italy sound bizzare and I question how truthful these accusations are. It is right to remember that the UK also, has its own problems. People from different backgrounds often tend to group with people similar to themselves, this is not very constructive
R.Smart, Portsmouth, UK
What a joke! Italy's economy can only survive because of the badanti working for miserable wages. After exporting migrants for centuries, Italy can't cope with the internal migration. I left because I didn't want my son to grow up in a racist country.
cristina, melbourne, australia
I may not agree with Italy's approach to the matter, but atleast they are not hindered by PC'ness. They will stand up to the EU and tell them where to stick their laws.
Arthur, Newcastle,
I have been living in Italy for over thirty years now and I see that the Italian people have had enough with the lax laws that have been in force up to now.The Italian Government is only trying to do what other European countries have done to ensure that we can all feel a bit more secure!
Anne, Rome, Italy
Crime and ignorance are a problem in every country. The problem in Italy is that the provincialism and racism of many Italians are being fostered by a political class which does not seem to realise that the whole world is changing .
Nicola, Casera, Italy
Other EU nations had to meet the ERM standard before entering Europe in order to aviod the types of problems being creating by states such as Romania today.
Besides, with unemployment at 6% in ITaly and at 60% in the south, there is simply no reason to host these people.
Jon, Norfolk, UK
The point is that the new government expects the rule of the law to be respected by everyone, italians and foreigners. Is that racism? I don't think so: foreigners are welcome in this country, but those coming here to break laws need to know that there will be zero tolerance for crime.
Eugenio, Genoa, Italy
When I arrived in London in 1981,I was asked to show the sufficient amount of money for my one-month stay.I didn't consider the rule to be racial or fascist.Now Italy's government is following suit.
Bozena, Reggio Cal.,
Today thje news is reporting the arrest of a group of North Africans for selling class A drugs to students outside a school! I expect all the nutty lefties here see this as racism by the Police?
Luca, Salerno, Italia
Ec. slowdown, ancestral fear for foreign, some crimes by spectacularised by media: this is the picture of what's going on here. Italy has already strict laws the problem is to make them work. Adding more severity and fuelling anxiety is just the right way to distract people from real issues.
Florian, Milan, Italy
Good for Italians, defending their land and people from illegal aliens and criminals. 'Roma" is PC for gypsies; they commit 75% of all violent crime in Rome, for example. It is genocide against native Europeans backed by EU immigration policies. Italy may save itself but England is lost
Sue, formerly of Londonistan,
Yesterday, may 29, surrendered the person who led the Pigneto raid, mentioned in the article, and stigmatized as fascist by the left.
Today the press reports (and the TV shows) he has a portrait of Che Guevara tattooed the whole width of his right forearm.
A very peculiar kind of fascist, it isn’t?
Andrea M., Arezzo, Italy
Why, why, why does everyone keep confusing the Roms with Romanian's?! The Roms - gypsies - may have an historical link in their past, but, as the mid-section of the article states, most Roms are Italian citizens! They aren't going anywhere, unfortunately! I, too, am sick of their harrassing me.
Alyson, Firenze, Italy
Has been published in italian press that one of the authors (togheter with some italians) of a "racist" deed has turned out to be an African, long-living in Italy and perfectly integrated, who resented the crime and the abasement brought to his town by the recent immigrants.
Is this racism?
Andrea M., Arezzo, Italy
Double standard applies here. Italians burn down gypsy camps and almost everybody on this forum cheers.
Yet if such a thing had happend in Romania everybody would be
skoched and indignated. Romanians would be branded as fascists and the west would bomb us into submission. JUST LIKE IN 1942-1944.RAF
Ovidiu, Bucharest, romania
People who try to blame Berlusconi for a problem that the left created is a joke! Italy is unable to cope with immigrants when it has so many problems of its own! Besides, the idea of immigration is to improve society, not make it worse!
Steve, Milan, Italy
The truth is that the majority of Europeans are fed up with immigration, and those with any sense wnat it stopped. The EU has used immigration to try to dilute us, but at the same time has created a demon that will sadly end in war.
Mick, Brighton, UK
Hearing Italians blaming the immigrants for raping their women has become very common. What most Italians don't know is that the 1st cause of death for Italian women is assassination by an Italian male family member. This climate of fear has been constructed to divert the attention from other issues
Anita, Udine, Italy
nobody here mentioned the fact that the italian law system has been destroyed in these last 15 years and nowadays nobody pays for the crimes they commit. why aren't those immigrants caught breaking the law in prison or sent back to their country?how come Romanians have such a low crime rate?
Kiara, London, UK
I guess it's because romanian thugs would rather go to italy and be free to commit crimes without risking to be jailed...
Kiara, London, UK
I often visit Italy and love the country. The ITalian people are not racist and are only doing what is right.
The tone of this article is off-base and rediculous. The government is responding to the needs of the citizens and there is nothing wrong with their actions. Enough is enough, that's it!
pietro bonanno, san francisco, USA
Brussels should force countries to manage their own problems and not punish countries that have problems from other countries forced upon them. Mass migration and over crowding has reached critical mass in Italy, the UK, Sweden, and Switzerland thanks to the EU and the open border concept.
Douglas Cochrane, Halifax,
Dino from the US "Thet want Italy to remain
their country and there is nothing wrong with it" the native Americans think the same way about you!
Timur, London,
Berlusconi is doing the right thing for Italy, he is doing what Britain should have done many years ago to avoide the situation we are in now. He is making a stand for the Italian people. Enough is enough
shaun, Edinburgh ,
Here we are again. Blaming the new Government because they want to do something serious about illegal immigration and accusing the Italians of racism. Why don't you take them all over here and then, we'll see what happens. It's easy to talk when it's not your problem, Mr.Owen, isn't it?
Laura, Cambridge,
Good for the Italians,
Let them take a stand for their country. Thet want Italy to remain
their country and there is nothing wrong with it. There is no room for these immigrants who bring low skills and crime with them. Enough is enough!!!
Dino, Bayonne, US
No matter are they legal or illegal ones, the discriminative and hostile attitude of italians towards immigrants is just the same, if you are a foreigner, just walk into a police department in Italy, then you'll know what i mean.
gp, Forli, Italy
Very nice column! So what is your proposal? Let them move to the UK or squat in Calais? Very nice to blame the Italians for what is happening in their country with regards to immigration. Now letting migrants rot in the next door country instead of dealing with the issue was the UK solution.Better!
Julien, London,
I have difficulty with the term 'multicultural'. To me, this implies living in peace and harmony in a civil society. We are a society of many cultures with all the baggage and friction that comes with it.
KWC, West Yorkshire,
The fear of italians is conditioned by an heavy TV drive organized by the televisions of mr. Silvio Berlusconi. The episodes interesting gypsies and immigrant have had an incredible sensation and have raised the uncertainty of the italians. Also in this way Berlusconi is returned.
Giuseppe, Napoli, Italy
Why not report it from teh Italian point of view. They have a right to kick out foreign migrants. Whose coutnry is it?
Neil, London, UK
More than 5% of the Italian GDP is in the hands of organized mobs, and all are blaming the immigrants for the crime. Very italian indeed! I want to remeber to all these people that our immigrant law is still the "Bossi-Fini"; switch off the TV and try to switch on your brains...
Jois, Rome, Italy
I agree with John from London. Italy is far to be the country Berlusconi pretend it is. Bad decisions in bad period. We will pay very soon consequenses of his foolish politic.
Mario, Ascoli Piceno, Italy
My wife is british, therefore I travel to U.K. every year by car.
NEVER seen a nomad camp there. How come?
It's easy when you have a few ports to check, but here is different. we've always been tolerant, but now the situation is different and thousands of thugs came in in the last 7/8 years.
dardib, rome, italy
I can understand why Italians would be angry. It's become a similar situation in Ireland, with Romanian gypsies on almost every street corner, forcefully begging, and many involved in crime. Immigrants who won't, or can't work, should be immediately deported.
Paul, Ireland,
This is not xenphobia! that is an illness! this is nothing to do wit left or right governments. this is to do with not listening to the people.
Unlimited immigration is dreamworld. rising crime, rising aids, rising TB and many other similar issues are directly caused by this immigration policy.
andy, london,
The politicians seem to have decided that no-one belongs anywhere yet everyone can be anywhere. This cannot and will not work. Stop trying to manipulate us and start trying to do your jobs which does not include a mix and match of everyone anywhere.
Roger, Surrey.,
We all know that a good person no matter where he comes from is always welcome.Here we see the authorities unable to distiguish the good from the bad and generalise about people.Anyone in this world has the right to move out of this country to find a better place to live.Criminals must not be free.
Giancarlo, London, England
The worst criminals in Italy are La Cosa Nostra/la Camorra, but hey lets just bury our heads in the sand with regards to them, and blame all the poverty, lack of jobs etc in the South on the rising numbers of Immigrants.
Nathan , maidenhead, england
An albanian dancer who work in a tv show has been beaten up,few days ago it happened to the anchor of DeeGay.it. It's not a reaction to the growing insecurity.The fascist groups,always existing in Italy,finally feel legitimize by the actual political/social situation to act as they always whished.
Rosa, Rome, Italy
No, the article gives a wrong impression, there is no such a trend in Italy's government which simply tries to re-establish order and have law respected. Italians are simply too tolerant, welcoming and open-hearted but enough is enough sometimes.
Alessandro, Chiasso, Switzerland
The results of foreign plunders come back to haunt us, grate badly with prols (C's) and those of the middle class (B's) who slip down the greasy pole; as for politicians, we get those we deserve, Torries next time and a BNP grand 'coalition' after - I am no clarevoyant but can read the grafiti.
Nicholas Xenakis, Borough, London, England, Britain
so while the rich dodges billions of taxes, infrastructures crumble and are paid to mafia-friendly firms 10 times their value with public money, the state is being used to serve the interest of an Elite.... Italians are cunningly lead into a prefabricated cruisade against the poorest.
Pierluigi, London, UK
I have been to the UK in my Italian car several times and am always abused and insulted. ONce outside a McDOnalds in Dover, a thug punched my car leaving a dent in it (with my family inside) because he thought I was foreign? Put your own house in order and then criticise Italy!!!!
Steve, Milan, Italy
Is it acceptable for people to come to your country and begin drug dealing, raping 13 year old girls, murdering and raping women on their way home or robbing peoples homes and torturing the owner for hours? Welcome to modern Europe!!! ITALY OUT OF EUROPE IMMEDIATELY
Teresa, salerno, Italy
History has shown this is a natural set of events. When people percieve that they are being swamped and the economy isn't doing well, they will 'rise up'. Not right but that's how things are.
John, London,
So Italians are supposed to sit back and watch people rob their homes, murder their wives and daughters or steal their kids from them? This is not racism, but people saying that they have had enough of damagin social engineering.
Matt, Napoli, Italy
I understand that, FROM OUTSIDE, Italian plitics may be seen as racist and xenophobic. But I can assure you that, FROM INSIDE, this is seen as what we needed since a long time. Do not try to compare immigration rules and laws which apply in most EU nations to Italian ones. Because we had no rules.
davide, milan, italy
I would have sympathy but having spent a year abroad it has made me realize how multiculturalism has ruined Britain. There is no British culture anymore. Just a boring multicultural stodge of segregated communities.
Matthew, Enfield, England
Whether Berlusconi himself is racist, I am not sure. He's a mysogenist, chauvanist, egocentric, antiquated, a sad stereotype. Those he represents are racist. The northerners see themselves as the elite, yet the Veneto/Fruili area was referred to as the "Calabria of the north - now they strut around.
Fulvio, Sydney, Australia
If the British government had not a policy of border control removal then maybe I wouldn't have had to move from London. It simply became impossible to live the kind of life my and my family had always lived, due to the massive level of immigration and consequent flight of indigenous people.
Jeremy, Lincoln,
You never look at the other side of these issues. I have lived in Italy for more than 25 years and I can assure you that there most certainly is ANOTHER SIDE. Immigrants who work and contribute something to society are welcomed here - it is those who are here illegally which are the problem .......
Frances, Monsano, ITALY
People are getting upset over here regarding the roms.They are seen as idle,dirty and lawless,which to quite a great extent i must say is true.The europeans work,the indians and asians as a whole work,as do the africans but the roms,( +90%) just beg and cause trouble.tax?adding to society?no,no
dominic, milan, italy
Obviously, no decent healthy country really likes foreign riff-raff feeding off it and poluting it's own back yard!
It's not rocket science is it!
James Bradley, Southampton,
Fulvio is right. Alas, our government is really racist, as Mr Fini demonstrated by empathising with his mentor, Giorgio Almirante, at the fascist review "Difesa della razza" in 1938-1943. The politics of racism is conceived as a device to cope with the increasing economic frustration.
giandomenico, milan, italy
Multiculturalism is incomptatible with a united society. Unless illegal immigration is outlawed western democracies face a bleak future with ghettos of ethnic groups surviving according to their own customs and laws. The only solution is to aid poorer nations develop their economies
peter fieldman, paris , france
Italy is being flooded with illegals from Eastern Europe and North Africa - there is a problem yet some people would be quite happy to stick their heads in the sand and do nothing
HarryLondon, London, England
It is a great shame for Italian society !
Italy, oh my beloved Italy, my heart is broken to pieces seeing you decline to such a state.
Dante's words :"non mori e non rimasso vivo"
(i did not die, but didnt stay alive) describe so well the currant situation in the country.
H. Capone, Tel Aviv, Israel
So, "immigrant groups" are "exhibiting some of the worst characteristics of contemporary British culture"? I refer you to India in 1948.
james , London, United Kingdom
unfortunately,many hard working law abiding tax paying immigrants across europe will face the same situation.there has to be quotas on how many people a country can take in without it affecting the infrastructure and the indigenous population in a negative way.or mass immigration is doomed to fail
dave jones, manchester,
and still the ruling elite believe that multiracialism works and force it down our throats. How many more people of all ethnicities have to die or suffer violence before governments realise it does not work.
Andy, Stockholm / Chesterfield, England / Sweden
Having lived in Italy I would say the north is racist, it used to hidden in details like the demonisation of southerners, now its open. Ever watched Italian TV to get a feel of how Italy likes to see itself, you would think Italians are all blond!
T.Andre, London,
I am Italo-Australia, this is further proof of the decline of Italian society and way of life. Italians are extremely conformist fearful of those who are different. This is tolerable when there is work and money. Italians now struggle, so they those who they feel threaten they lifelihood.
Fulvio, Sydney, Australia
The Berlusconi government is not being racist. They are simply enforcing the law, a responsibility the left refused to undertake when they were in power.
jp, milano, italy
It appears that Italy -- alone of all the Western democracies -- actually cares more about the interests of their own people rather than the interests of foreign governments, foreign ideologies and law-breaking illegal immigrants. Where do I sign up for Italian lessons and a visa?
MaryJ, San Francisco, US
"We breathe a sigh of relief when it turns out, as seems to have been the case with the young man killed recently in Dewsbury, that the act was non-racist."
Are you for real? I doubt his parents will be sighing with relief.
Garley, London, UK
How is Italy closer to north Africa than Spain? Strangely enough it isn't at all.
Rob, Singapore,
Very nice for Dr. Dalrymple to come over all wobbly at the mere thought of racism but, for people who feel at the end of their tether, "There are an estimated 600,000 illegal immigrants in Italy, and hundreds more arrive every week" is excuse enough.
John Blackley, Winter Garden, Florida
Why doesn't George Soros write to Mr Olmert and demand Israel stop the racism and theft from Palestinians?
Funnily enough the refugees in the article say they fled the Balkans. Why was Yugoslavia dismemnered? The first war based on lies, the second was Iraq. Iran next?
Sian Davis, London, England
Would Maroni and Lega not be elected in the UK if there was an election tomorrow?
probably, by quite a margin.
Maybe we have become over sensitive to centre right politics?
I can't fill my bin with what I want, or feel safe in my house, while Labour would like to control my brain and wallet.
Matt, Nottingham, Sicily
This is what you get when you delude yourself into thinking that several foreign cultures forced on a dominant culture can all get along.
You'll get a backlash. It wont end in Italy, it'll spread right across Europe as the economy shifts down a gear or two.
Phill, The Wirral, England
"We breathe a sigh of relief when it turns out, as seems to have been the case with the young man killed recently in Dewsbury, that the act was non-racist."
Yes phew it wasn't racist, just a feud over which gang of 'youths' seizes control of our public spaces .. nothing to worry about.
D Rose, York, UK