|
Two days and two nights of violence in the southern Italian town of Rosarno have brought Italy's attitude to migrants to the fore once more. Beginning with what the Guardian described as the 'apparently motiveless' shooting of two African workers it ended with the mass removal of the town's immigrant population, '1,200 of whom were whisked by bus and train to detention centers', according to the New York Times. 52 people were injured - 18 police, 14 local people and 21 immigrants, again according to the Guardian. The normally restrained Economist called the removal of the immigrants 'an ethnic clearance of Balkan swiftness, nastiness and comprehensiveness'.
Vittorio Longhi, writing in the Guardian 10th January:
'More and more migrants in Italy are reaching the end of their tether, due to the hostility caused by a political and media criminalisation campaign against the clandestini. "We must be resolute against clandestine immigration," the interior minister, Roberto Maroni - a Northern League politician - keeps on repeating like a mantra.' He puts at 300 the number of large scale violent incidents against immigrants in Italy in the past two years. It is the fourth such incident in Calabria alone in recent years, according to Rachel Burleigh in Time. Six Africans died two years ago in fighting in the coastal town of Castel Volturno.
According to Corriere della Sera journalist Gian Antonio Stella, at the root of Italian xenophobia is a failure to interrogate its past: 'Britain has reflected on its colonial past, Germany has done the same with Nazism, but Italians still believe the myth of the Good Italian, soft colonialism and insist the racial laws of the 1930s were passed by fascists, not Italians'. Italy's colonial experiences left it ill-equipped it to deal with immigration, according to some: 'Italy's colonial period was brief, violent and filled with military defeats', says Sylvia Poggioli on NPR.org. She goes on: 'Lucia Ghebreghiorges, an Italian of Ethiopian origin, says many Italians still see their former colonial subjects as enemies. "This is why they are unprepared for immigration. We are part of the future of this country, but they still see us as barbarians"'.
In an editorial published in the aftermath of the Rosarno violence entitled "Italians and Racism", L'Osservatore Romano (the Vatican's semi-official weekly newspaper) also made note of a failure to come to terms with a history of xenophobia. 'Italians are still incapable of shedding their racist past. In 2010 we are still at hatred. Whether silent, intoned in mocking chants or manifest in physical action...Apart from being disgusting, reports of episodes of racism take us to the silent, savage hatred of another colour of skin that we thought we was a thing of the past...For once, the press is not over-emphasising. Take a train, walk in the park or go to a football match. There is no room for doubt. We Italians, from the North down, have never shone for our openness'.
The UN added its voice in condemning the violence in Rosarno, and also pointed out that it is reflective of an endemic problem with migration in Italy. Said rapporateurs Jorge Bustamante and Githu Muigai, 'The violence is extremely worrying since it reveals serious and deep-rooted problems of racism against these migrant workers.'
Since May, Italy has been operating a system of 'push-backs' - sending boats full of Africans en route to Sicily to Libya before they can reach shore. Vittorio Longhi points out that, 'the UN high commissioner for refugees opposed a practice that openly violates the 1951 Geneva convention on the status of refugees'. He goes on: 'A large majority of those who try to enter Europe through Italy or Malta flee from conflicts and persecutions in central and eastern Africa, and push-backs leave no chance for protection claims'.
Italy's immigration issues are complicated by the widespread exploitation of both legal and illegal immigrants by organised crime gangs. The government argues that in order to weaken the crime gangs, immigration must be tightly controlled. Reports The Journal of Turkish Weekly on 13th January:
'[Interior Minsister] Roberto Maroni made clear the fight against illegal immigration would continue without let-up. He said the illegal entry into Italian territory represents the basis for the marginalisation and exploitation of foreigners and often becomes the reservoir for recruiting labourers by criminal organisations. Maroni said 42,000 immigrants were repatriated in the past two years. He added that since an agreement was reached with Libya, arrivals by boat on the Italian southern coast have dropped by 90 per cent. He added arrivals are down from more than 30,000 to just more than 3,000, mainly thanks to the government's new 'push-back' policy to Libya. Maroni also said the government plans to further intensify its fight against illegal labour in the agricultural sector as part of its plan to more effectively combat illegal immigration, black-market labour and every form of organised crime'.
Regardless of the reasoning behind the 'push-backs', government policy toward migrants seems calculated to make life as difficult for them as possible.
From individual.com: 'Rather than policies to help these migrants fit in, there is a tough stance that many say makes it harder for them to settle and integrate into Italian society and may, perversely, actually create illegality.
"Now they only issue residence permit for the period of your work contract, so if you lose your job at the end of it, you are no one," Nelly Diop, a Senegalese intercultural mediator told IPS.
"It means you are only here as a worker, not as a human being. You have no prospects to be able to plan for the future. Then they make you wait so long to have your permit. I know a man who has been waiting two years and, of course, in the meantime he has been forced to take jobs on the black market because he still doesn't have his papers.
"You don't create an integrated society like this. There are no thoughts of integration but only of exclusion and the climate is getting worse. They want to make us invisible."'
In the town of Citadella in Northern Italy, reports NPR,
'Mayor Massimo Bitonci has sharply restricted immigrants' rights to live there. His ordinance sets a high threshold: a regular work contract, a minimum income of $5,000 per family member, and a required home size that is too expensive for most immigrants.
Bitonci says the town feels besieged.
"We're very frightened by what we see around us. We write the rules here, we want to safeguard our culture," he says. "Yes, we're raising the drawbridge, and we're on the battlements to defend ourselves from external attacks."'
A statement by Andrea Ronchi, Italy's European Affairs minister, if true, indicates an odd refusal to acknowledge Italy's reality. News24.com reports him as saying (it's not a formal statement so its veracity is not absolute):
'"In Italy, there is no racism. It does not exist. It is an accusation made by people who do not know Italy," he said on the sidelines of an informal meeting of European affairs ministers in La Granja, Spain.
"We will give them (those making the accusation) a free tour, at our expense, to show them what there is in Italy: solidarity and welcome. But it is true there is a violent phenomenon - illegal immigration," he told journalists.
"These accusations are the fruit of a left-wing culture no longer in step with citizens," he said.
"Italy is the most welcoming country in Europe, and anyone accusing us of racism is stupid."'
|
