Fascism
Revisited – the Italian case
By
Valeriu Nicolae*
The behaviour of some law enforcement officials vis-à-vis members of the Roma/Gypsy communities living in
Italy
is also a cause for serious concern to ECRI… numerous reports of
evictions of Roma/Gypsy families … during which law enforcement
officials have acted in a violent
and abusive way. Alleged misconduct includes abusive
use of firearms, ill-treatment, humiliating treatment, arbitrary
destruction of property and confiscation or destruction of papers.
Racist and xenophobic propaganda
is disseminated through the use of written material such as posters
and leaflets, but is
also significantly present in
the speech of public figures, including mayors and other elected
representatives…there have also been reports of cases where politicians
have resorted to speech encouraging violent or discriminatory
behaviour vis-à-vis members of these groups, and particularly
illegal immigrants and Roma/Gypsies.
April 2002 – Council of Europe –ECRI’s second report on
Italy
Imagine
this.
May
– June 2008
Four
Molotov cocktails are thrown into a Jewish neighborhood in
Italy
. Two days later, assailants burn down another Jewish neighborhood
causing approximately 800 residents to flee. Crowds of people are seen
cheering live on the main national TV channel RAI yelling: Jews out!
The riot police is not even alerted at the time the broadcast takes
place.
During
the next weeks, a number of similar incidents happen. The minister of
interior, known for his anti-Semitic stands during his previous job as
the minister of employment, decides the Jewish children should be
fingerprinted for what he calls “safety reasons”.
The
OSCE, organization which deals mainly with security issues and
conflict prevention and resolution, known for taking extensive
commitments to combating racism and promoting tolerance, announces it
will discuss in one month’s time, during its next meeting in
Vienna
, on Jewish-related issues.
The
OSCE plans to have the following three sessions:
Role and responsibility of regional and local authorities to assist in
integrating Jews
Good practices and major challenges in improving the situation of Jews
at local level: examples from municipalities
Policies to facilitate equal access of Jews to public services, in
particular social services and education
Indeed
the above are hard to imagine. Both the incidents and the reactions
would be hardly believable even to the existing wishful European
hardcore anti-Semites. It would be out-of-the-question
that the OSCE would address only issues on the extreme margins of the
relevant issue, and avoid mentioning ethnically motivated attacks or
the blatant Italian officials anti-Semitism. Would be expected from
leaders of the democratic world to speak harshly against
Italy
and condemn the acts of hate targeting Jews.
The
European Jews and Roma as ethnic groups have been primary targets for
European racism for centuries and were the main targets of
extermination policies of the Nazi Germany. There are many
similarities regarding between anti-Semitism and anti-Gypsyism which
makes the comparison salient.
Unfortunately
when it comes to Roma the European Union, the UN and the OSCE seems to
have a blind spot. Blatant racism, hate speech and nazi style
demonstrations against Roma are rather justified than fought against.
A
long list of similar incidents took place in the last years.
In
2001 leaflets with “Via
gli zingari dalla citta’” (Gypsies out of the city!) or
“Cacciamo gli zingari” (Let’s kick out Gypsies!) were
distributed during the rallies of Lega Nord. Since then Lega Nord has
been part of the Berlusconi’s governments.
On
Saturday, 29th of January 2005, 10 young Italians set
ablaze a camp where 5 Romanian Roma families including a 9 months old
baby lived in. The event happened in via
Aveta de la Ercolano 10 km away from
Napoli
. The perpetrators justified their action as “Saturday night fun”.
This
incident and similar ones from 2004 were downplayed or ignored by
Italian media and there was no official reaction of any major Italian
politicians against racist attacks targeting Roma. There was nothing
but silence at the high political level of the European Union.
On
4th of February 2005, two Roma women were accused in
Lecco
for trying to steal a child. Both of them declared they were begging
with no intention whatsoever of kidnapping. In order to avoid being
sentenced both of them accepted the suggestion of their lawyer and
pleaded guilty. Accordingly they were sentenced to 8 months and 10
days in jail. As expected the sentence was suspended. Their lawyer
acknowledged publicly that the women told him they never tried to
kidnap the child but they agree to follow his advice in order to avoid
prosecution for begging.
Corriere
della Sera ran an article largely quoting the young mother defending
herself against the “kidnapers” but with no quotes from the lawyer
or the Roma women accused of trying to steal the child. La Padania
started a strong campaign against the “zingari” who are stealing
the young Italians (Padanians).
“Giu le mani dai nostri bambini” (Take your hands off our children)
posters with a picture of a Roma have been spread all around Lombardia.
Demonstrations against the “shameful” decision took place in
Lecco
.
Pietro Zocconali the president of the National Association of
Sociologists implied in a public statement following the incident that
killing children is a practice among Roma . He claimed that Roma steal
children and then sell them, “sometimes in parts”.
Roberto Maroni the minister of employment at that time and the now
minister of interior, who has proposed and now implemented the
systematic fingerprinting of Roma has asked the judge who suspended
the sentence in the case of the women in
Lecco
to consider changing her job.
Maroni
did not limit himself to the judge; he also had strong racists words
against the Roma.
The mayor of
Lecco
as well as other leading politicians including Minister
of Reforms -Mr. Calderoli, Minister of Justice, Mr.Castelli,
Senator Valditara
were also fast to join in anti-Gypsyism.
TV
news in Treviso, largely quoted Councilman Pierpaolo Fanton who,
after he said that “ Nomads , they are animals” suggested the
necessity for a vaccine for Roma children who with their saliva and
spit pose a danger of infecting Italian students going to the same
schools.
Mayor
Giancarlo Gentilini, wanted to disguise Roma immigrants in rabbits in
order to let the Padani hunters train.
On 10th of February. 2005 at dawn around 5 am the
Palermo
police did a round up in a Roma "camp", justified
as a "children census", leading to the arrest of several
persons and the notification of a number of repatriation orders. Most
of those living in the camp were refugees from Kosovo and Human Rights
Activists in
Palermo
thought this was motivated by possible collective deportation that
could have fitted the ongoing electoral campaign, which used racist
messages as selling points.
The
online version of Il Manifesto on 23 June, 2005 citing the opinion of
the citizens about the nomads wrote: “we are ready for extreme
reaction. Which one? If they ever enter into my garden I will shoot
them dead with my rifle.”
During
the night of 10 August 2007, four Roma children died in a fire which
destroyed their hut in a Roma camp in
Livorno
,
Italy
.
On
August, 12, the investigator in charge of the case, Antonio Giaconi,
stated that there are two possible causes for this incident: “it
was an aggression against this camp perpetrated by unknown persons, a
version which shocks us, or a tragic accident, caused by the
unsupervised lighting of a fire.”
On
Saturday, 18 August, an unknown extremist group in
Italy
sent a letter claiming its involvement in the death of the four
children, and threatened the Roma community in
Italy
. This as well as the declaration of the parents who indicated a
criminal attack as the cause are ignored as the Italian police chooses
to blame the parents for “criminal negligence”.
On
October, 31, 2007 an Italian woman was killed in
Rome
. The suspect (still a suspect in July 2008) is a Romanian citizen of
Roma origin.
A
large part of Romanian and Italian media were fast to blame the entire
Roma community for the criminal acts of an individual, in what can
only be described as a “lynching” campaign. And as has
happened before, the
fact that anti-Gypsyism is promoted, without sanction, by European
media outlets gave legitimacy to open racist messages transmitted from
the highest level of the Romanian and Italian political class. The event
was shamelessly used by a number of Italian politicians to justify
measures against immigrants.
On
November 3, 2007 Mr Frattini, then Italian Commissioner for Justice
and Civil Liberties declared:
“What
has to be done is simple. Go into a nomad camp in
Rome
for example, and ask them: ‘Can you tell me where you live?’ If
they say they do not know, take them and send them home to
Romania
. That is how the European directive works. It is simple and safe.
Romania
cannot say they will not take them back, because it is an obligation
that is part of being a member state of the EU.”
He
also urged
Italy
to pull down the camps to prevent any Romanians from returning.
The
Commissioner implied that
Romania
should receive anybody who does not know where he or she resides. This
statement was diplomatically put extremely worrying, coming as it did
from the Commissioner
charged with safeguarding civil liberties in
Europe
.
Frattini
seemed to forget for a short time that he was not paid by the Italian
extreme right or Berlusconi but by the European Commission, an
organisation which promotes (at least on paper) “respect for human
rights”, “tolerance” and “unity through diversity”. Since
then he seemed to have figured it out what is more profitable as he
joined the new Berlusconi lead Italian government which includes the
extremist Lega Nord.
May
– June 2008
On
May 11, four Molotov cocktails were thrown into Romani camps in
Milan
and
Novara
.
On
May 13, assailants burned the Ponticelli Romani settlement in
Naples
to the ground, causing the approximately 800 residents to flee while
Italians stood by and cheered. On
the day of the arson attacks on the Ponticelli settlement, RAI
television showing Italians in the area screaming “Roma out” was
broadcast before the police were even alerted to the riot. Further
arson attacks on the Ponticelli settlement undertaken by locals have
continued into the week of May 26-30, with evident impunity.
On
June 9, Italian media reported that a settlement of circa 100 Romanian
Roma in
Catania
,
Sicily
had been attacked and burned to the ground.
June
25th Italian
interior minister, Roberto
Maroni announced during a meeting of the Constitutional affairs
committee of the Italian Low Chamber, a 'Census' of all 'nomads' in
Italy
. In the frame of this measure finger prints will be taken to all Roma
children.
Anti-Gypsyism
continues to be the most widespread, accepted and unpunished form of
racism in
Europe
. The current
Italy
crisis – in which parties with explicitly racist agenda seize the
state and begin implementing their explicitly racist agenda, while at
the same time fomenting the public to vigilante acts of violence –
has no precedent in post-Holocaust
Europe
.
In
1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) noted
“disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous
acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind and the advent of a
world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief
and freedom from fear …”.
Although
there have been muted expressions of concern at the current events in
Italy, no entity has dared accept measures with any teeth – such as
for example invoking the human rights emergency provisions of the
Treaty on European Union – for the sole reason that, in Europe
“such confrontational measures are not done in polite company”.
This was, indeed, the same logic which led to widespread European and
international tolerance for Hitler. After all, it was argued at the
time, perhaps he had some positive points. Many in
Italy
and Europe for that matter say the same when it comes to strident
“disregard and contempt for human rights” in the case of Roma or
”barbarous’ acts’ such as recent events in
Italy
,
Hungary
and
Romania
. On 10th of
December this year there will be 60 years since the adoption of the
UDHR. Most of the Roma will rightly say that these 60 years were
mainly wasted.
*
Thanks to Claude Cahn for his help and comments during the entire
process of writing this article. Many thanks also to Alessandro
Massini and all the Italian, non-Italian and Roma activists who worked
on these issues during these years.