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Old 01-09-2010, 08:12 AM
Twoller Twoller is offline
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Default Illegal immigrant violence in Italy

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8450083.stm

Quote:
Migrants evacuated from southern Italian town

Italian authorities have evacuated hundreds of migrants from a southern town and brought in extra police after violent protests broke out.

Some 320 African migrants, many of whom work as fruit-pickers in Calabria, were taken by bus to an emergency centre.

Extra police were deployed after two days of riots, during which 37 people were injured and cars were set alight.

The violence broke out after two migrants were shot at with pellet guns by a group of local youths.

'Difficult situation'

Italy's Interior Minister Roberto Maroni prompted a storm of criticism from the leftist opposition by suggesting that the violence was the result of not addressing the issue of illegal workers in the country.

"There's a difficult situation in Rosarno, like in other places, because for years illegal immigration - which feeds criminal activities - has been tolerated and nothing effective has ever been done about it," he said according to Italy's La Repubblica newspaper.

Opposition leader Pierluigi Bersani said: "Maroni is passing the buck ... We have to go to the root of the problem: mafia, exploitation, xenophobia and racism."

Some 320 African migrants - mainly from Ghana and Nigeria - were taken by bus from the southern town of Rosarno to a reception centre at Crotone, some 170km (105 miles) away.

Local residents applauded as the eight buses carrying the migrant workers left the town, AFP reports.

Police said reinforcements had been called in at intersections and squares in the town to keep order on Saturday.

Many of the migrants, most of whom work as fruit-pickers in the region's citrus farms, live in difficult conditions - camped in abandoned factories and buildings with no running water or electricity, and paid as little as 20 euros ($30) per day.
Notice the hysterical tone of this second report. The "shootings" were with pellet guns. Nobody was seriously wounded.

Quote:
Racial violence continues in Italy as four migrant workers wounded in shootings
  • Southern town of Rosarno suffers night of violence
  • Farm workers protest against racist treatment
John Hooper in Rome
The Guardian, Saturday 9 January 2010


Two migrant workers from Africa were shot and two more beaten with iron bars last night as racial unrest continued to grip the town of Rosarno in the south of Italy, after a night of rioting and an earlier shooting in which a further two immigrants were wounded.

On a main road, close to a disused building in which hundreds of itinerant farm workers live in conditions of squalor, about 100 local people armed with iron bars and wooden staves were manning an illegal roadblock.

The latest shooting took place at the same location as the earlier attack – an unoccupied factory on the outskirts of the town that also serves as sleeping quarters for workers from all over Africa. As in the previous attack, a drive-by shooting, the victims were hit and injured with pellets from an air rifle or pistol.

Following the first incident, more than 100 immigrants rampaged through the town on Thursday night, smashing car windows with steels bars, setting rubbish bins and cars on fire, and clashing with police in riot gear.

Some 2,000 immigrants demonstrated in front of the town hall yesterday to protest at what they said was racist treatment by locals. Some shouted "We are not animals" and carried signs reading "Italians here are racist".

As the demonstrators marched through Rosarno to the town hall, a resident fired shots into the air from his balcony, allegedly to protect his wife and child, who he said had had stones thrown at them by protesters.

By nightfall, after further demonstrations by immigrants and locals, seven people had been arrested and 37 injured.

Several clashes were reported between locals and immigrant farm workers, most of whom come from sub-Saharan Africa or the Maghreb. Furious about the violence and damage, groups of locals occupied the town hall and blocked a main road.

Silvio Berlusconi's interior minister, Roberto Maroni, provoked controversy by appearing to blame earlier governments for the outburst of violence. He said: "For all these years clandestine immigration has been tolerated, which feeds crime."

But others pointed a finger at the farm workers' conditions. Father Carmelo Ascone, the parish priest of Rosarno, said they reminded him of the circles of hell in Dante's Divine Comedy. "These people live in inhuman and desperate conditions," he said.

Several thousand immigrants live in and around Rosarno while helping with the harvest of oranges and clementines.

Looming behind the disturbances is Calabria's mafia, the 'Ndrangheta. Rosarno, a town of 14,000 inhabitants, is a stronghold of the organisation, which police and prosecutors say has overtaken Cosa Nostra in Sicily to become Italy's most potent crime syndicate. In December 2008, the town council was dissolved on orders from the head of state because it had been infiltrated by mobsters and their known associates. Rosarno is currently administered by a prefect appointed by the central government.

The prefect, Domenico Bagnato, said yesterday: "The situation is serious and onerous. I have spoken to the immigrants and I have told them that we shall do everything possible to protect them. But I have also made it clear that they ought not to confuse an attack by individuals with the attitude of the entire town."

Just over a year ago, at the time of the last citrus harvest, an unknown gunman walked into a factory where several hundred farm workers were sleeping and shot two of them. One, a 21-year-old from the Ivory Coast, was seriously injured.

The latest riot began as a protest against the insecure conditions in which the immigrants find themselves. But a former town councillor, Domenico Ventre, said: "The immigrants in Rosarno are helped and assisted. Their reaction to the isolated incident on Thursday was disproportionate. We cannot allow them to devastate our town, spreading fear among the inhabitants."

In their report of arrests, the Carabinieri said that one man had been held for trying to run over a farm worker with an earth mover. Another had allegedly attempted to run down an immigrant with his car.

A smaller riot by immigrants broke out near Naples in September 2008 after a multiple killing that was linked to organised crime.

According to the Catholic charity Caritas, immigrants now account for 7.2% of the resident population in Italy – one percentage point more than the EU average. Caritas put the number of legal immigrants at 4.5 million and said the number of illegal immigrants had fallen sharply, to 422,000.

Berlusconi's government has taken a hard line against illegal immigration and made an agreement with Libya to prevent boatloads of immigrants landing on its southern shores from Africa. The boats are now routinely intercepted in international waters and returned to Libya.

Grapes of wrath
Desperation of itinerant workers


The disturbances in Calabria have brought home the fact that the wretched migrants who arrive from Africa off Italy's coastline do not disappear once they are taken ashore. Thousands end up in a transient workforce of crop-pickers that finds work in the south.

Some of the Africans who rebelled after the shooting in Rosarno will have been helping with the wine harvest in Sicily in the early autumn or picking olives in Puglia in the late autumn. Some will be intending to drift up to Campania, around Naples, next spring.

On the Gioia Tauro plain which encompasses Rosarno, they are collected each morning by overseers and driven into citrus groves for work that can last from dawn to dusk.

"They earn €25 a day", said Father Ennio Stamile of the Roman Catholic charity Caritas. "They have to send money to their countries to maintain their families and also live here. Not much is left for them. The economic crisis has exacerbated their situation."

"On the plain, there are about 2,000 African immigrants who sleep the night crowded together in a former paper mill and another large building, said Monsignor Pino de Masi, the vicar-general of the Oppido-Palmi diocese. "If anyone from central government were to see the conditions in which they live, without sanitation, electricity, water or heating, they would not be surprised by what has happened.
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  #2  
Old 01-10-2010, 08:26 AM
Twoller Twoller is offline
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More news on this from the GuardianUK. Note again the attempts to incite hysteria by evoking the US south in the twenties.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010...ca-immigration

Quote:
Italians cheer as police move African immigrants out after clashes with locals
Mafia involvement is suspected as riots leave scores injured

Tom Kington
The Observer, Sunday 10 January 2010


Local people clapped and cheered yesterday as hundreds of Africans were moved by police out of a small town in Calabria following clashes in which immigrant farmworkers were shot at, severely beaten and run over.

More than 300 immigrants were loaded on to buses in the riot-torn town of Rosarno, destined for immigrant holding centres. Meanwhile, an immigrant was shot from a moving car with a pellet rifle, bringing to five the number who have been shot.

The first shooting, last Thursday, provoked a violent protest march by Africans through Rosarno, which left 66 injured. A second immigrant was beaten with metal bars yesterday despite a heavy police presence in and around Rosarno.

"There is a very serious security problem here and many immigrants working on local farms are scared and just want to get out, even though many have not been paid," said Laura Boldrini, a UN official, after touring some of the disused factories in which immigrants sleep after returning from poorly paid shifts in nearby fields.

"My fear is that the government will use this opportunity to expel those who do not have permits to stay in Italy," said Jean-Léonard Touadi, Italy's only black MP.

Reportshave emerged of mafia involvement in a vigilante-style response by locals to the immigrants' protest, including setting up a roadblock and hunting down stray Africans in the streets of Rosarno. Among the Italians arrested was Antonio Bellocco, 29, who is related to members of the feared Bellocco clan, which controls the area in which the fruit farms are situated, the newspaper La Repubblica reported.

A year ago, two immigrant pickers were shot and wounded by a gunman in the disused factory where they were staying.

"This is the very first time the Africans rebel against the local 'Ndrangheta mafia which dominates the fruit and vegetable businesses," said Francesco Forgione, a former head of Italy's parliamentary anti-mafia commission.

"During their protest they even surrounded the house of an old boss in the Pesce clan, which is powerful locally, something the Calabrians have never done."

The Pesce and Bellocco clans are both believed to be involved in racketeering at the nearby container port of Gioia Tauro.

Touadi said: "[African imigrants] need to be helped or the Italian south will this year become like Alabama in the 1920s, just as Rosarno is now."
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  #3  
Old 01-10-2010, 08:36 AM
Twoller Twoller is offline
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I forgot to include the link for the above article "Racial violence continues in Italy as four migrant workers wounded in shootings". Here it is:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8450657.stm
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