Race Riots Grip Italian Town, and Mafia Is Suspected

[alp227]

Source: Rachel Donadio, The New York Times

ROME — More than a thousand African workers were put aboard buses and trains in the southern Italian region of Calabria over the weekend and shipped out to immigrant detention centers, following some of the country’s worst riots in years.

The clashes began Thursday night in Rosarno, a working-class city amid citrus groves in Calabria, the toe of Italy’s boot, after a legal immigrant from Togo was lightly wounded in a pellet-gun attack in a nearby city. It is not clear who pulled the trigger — the authorities said they were investigating whether organized crime had provoked the riots — but the consequences were severe.

Blaming racism for the attack, dozens of immigrants burned cars and smashed shop windows in Rosarno in two days of riots, throwing rocks at local residents and fighting with the police. More than 50 immigrants and police officers were wounded, none seriously, and 10 immigrants and locals were arrested before the authorities began sending the immigrants to detention centers elsewhere in southern Italy on Saturday.

The images emerging from Calabria over the weekend — of torched cars and angry African immigrants hurling rocks — were the most vivid example of the growing racial tensions in Italy, which have been exacerbated by an economic crisis whose depth has only recently been acknowledged in the national dialogue. Both the official and underground economies increasingly rely on immigrants, while Italy remains torn between acceptance and xenophobia.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/world/europe/11italy.html

[Oerdin]

1. Let's be honest.

There are a lot of unemployed Italians and they look around and see that illegal workers are taking some where between 5%-10% of the jobs in the country and that makes them mad. The government said it was going to crack down on illegal immigrants and then the illegals rioted, burned cars, breaking shop windows, and generally behaved badly. Is it any wonder the legal citizens of this town demanded the rioters be detained? Especially since most of them were there illegally to begin with. If you're an illegal the sensible thing to do is keep your head down and not try to make waves but these people held a massive riot in the center of town.

I think some people are barking up the wrong tree if they're trying to paint this as racism instead of a law and order issue.

[Blue_Tires]

2. interesting quote:

Human rights groups say that many African immigrants come to Italy with what appear to be legal offers of work in the agricultural sector in the south, often by paying middlemen more than $10,000 for the opportunity. When they arrive, the rights groups say, the immigrants often find that the agricultural outfits refuse to honor their end of the bargain, instead compelling the migrants to work under the table at wages far below the legal minimum wage. Often, the outfits that hire them have links to organized crime.


and:

They are often paid less than $30 a day picking fruit, a job that many Italians see as beneath them. Organized crime syndicates are known to have a strong grip on every level of the Calabrian economy.

[Oerdin]

3. Confusing two issues.

Yes, organized crime does take advantage of the vulnerable but that said these people knew they were breaking the law, that the human traffickers were breaking the law, yet the decided to go ahead and do it anyway. Is it any wonder criminals are liars (speaking of the human traffickers)? At the end of the day though if you're in a country illegally it's just stupid, down right stupid, to riot thus bringing your presence to the attention of the authorities who will deport you for being illegal. Especially when unemployment is already high and politicians are floundering about trying to find scape goats. These people shot themselves in the foot in this instance.

[whathehell]

6. It may be both a law and order AND a racism issue....

You didn't imagine that Europe was free of racial problems did you?...They are not...not by a long shot.

[classysassy]

4. Legal immigrant

Where in this article did anyone see illegal immigrant?.

[Posteritatis]

5. Stuff like this is great for drawing out the xenophobes around here. (nt)

[WriteDown]

7. Or those who support undercutting unions and wages. nt

[pampango]

8. Berlusconi's conservative government scapegoats legal immigrants as a wedge issue to their advantage

Berlusconi's Interior minister, Roberto Maroni, is a member of the Northern League, a RW party that is very conservative on social issues and opposed to non-Christian immigration.

("The party takes a social-conservative stance on social issues, such as abortion, euthanasia, medical embryonic stem-cell research, artificial insemination, same-sex marriage. The party has a tough stance on crime, illegal immigration, especially from Muslim countries, and terrorism. It supports the promotion of immigration from non-Muslim countries in order to protect the "Christian identity" of Italy and Europe, which, according to party officials, should be based on "Judeo-Christian heritage.") http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_League_%28Italy%29

"Mr. Maroni, called the situation in Rosarno “the fruit of the wrong kind of tolerance.” The day before, he had been quoted as saying the riots were the fruit of “too much tolerance.”

A member of the powerful Northern League Party, known for its anti-immigrant language, Mr. Maroni also defended a proposal introduced by his party last week to cap the number of immigrant students in public school classes at 30 percent. “Sometimes they speak different languages, and there’s no common balance in the classroom,” Mr. Maroni said."

These riots occurred in the home ground of the Northern League.