'Xenophobic climate' fueling policies, violence in Italy

This year in Italy, tension has been increasing between Italians and immigrants.

On Sept. 14th., shopkeepers beat a 19-year-old African immigrant to death for supposedly stealing cookies. The death was preceded by a growing number of racial attacks against minorities.

Jean Leonard Touadi, a lawmaker in Parliament and an African-Italian born in Congo, believes the tension is being fueled by parts of the right-wing Italian government.

The government has passed a number of controversial laws which back-up Toudi’s claim: in July, Italian authorities began a gypsy census, creating files on the Roma living in some 700 camps across the country. The measure was seen as discriminatory by some human rights organizations, as many Roma hold Italian citizenship. But 60 percent of Italians supported the census, according to one poll.

This summer, the military began monitoring Italy’s 16 detention centers for migrants waiting either for asylum or expulsion, in response to a declared “state of emergency” on immigration. The government also introduced a law allowing illegal immigrants convicted of crimes to be held up to one-third longer than Italians convicted of the same offense.

Milan, Italy – For the past two weeks, groups of teenagers have mourned in front of “Shining,” a snack bar not far from Milan’s Central Station. Many leave flowers and cards. But some leave cookies and two euros, a provocative gesture referencing the killing of Abdul Guibre: the 19-year-old African-Italian youth who was allegedly beaten to death Sept. 14 by two shop owners for having stolen some cookies, worth a few euros.

This death comes on the heels of a recent wave of racially motivated attacks in Italy that are raising concerns about violence against minorities, and a potential backlash from those who feel they are unfairly treated as second-class citizens.

“This is the poisoned fruit of a process that began in the early 1990s, when the first boats of migrants came from Albania,” says Jean Leonard Touadi, a lawmaker in Parliament and an African-Italian born in Congo. “Since then, a syndrome of invasion, fueled by extremists, has been spreading in the broader public, even though until recently Italy [had] a lower migration rate than the rest of Europe….

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