archive : s0metim3s

From the Independent:

The forces of law and order took up the struggle yesterday. In Rome, some 50 Roma without identification and living in the city’s biggest Gypsy camp were arrested as part of a crackdown on illegal immigration which resulted in more than 400 arrests nationwide.

Meanwhile, the government announced that its new diktat on security is almost ready and will be approved at its first cabinet meeting in Naples, as announced by Mr Berlusconi, to symbolise his determination to crack the city’s chronic refuse problem.

The “decree law”, which will have immediate effect, is expected to make illegal immigration a criminal offence, punishable by up to four years in prison. The discussion of the draft of the law and the announcement that there will be no more amnesties have thrown the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who work informally as nurses and old people’s companions into a panic. Now the government is trying to fine tune the law so it only applies to criminally inclined clandestini – and Gypsies.

The theme here is rubbish. It’s interesting that this comes on the heels of a long-running garbage collector’s strike, rendered by Berlusconi as akin to a “natural disaster”.

From the Campaign Against Immigration Controls, No Borders London:

Thousands of protesters, including many migrants, took to the streets in Verona, Italy, in defence of Roma and migrants and against racist attacks and police raids the 17th of May. Between the 14th and 15thof May, Roma camps in the Napoli area had to be evacuated and one camp was burned to the ground by mobs with links with the Camorra (Napoli’s equivalent of Mafia). Police did not even try to stop the violence but helped the Roma evacuate. Mobs were threatening to lynch them.

The incident was sparked by the alleged kidnap of baby by a teenage Rom girl - a very stereotypical accusation in the popular legend that depict Gypsies as monsters to fear.

In the same week police made nearly 400 arrests in raids across the country. 115 of the arrested are Italians, mostly of Rom ethnicity, 268 immigrants including Albanians, Romanians, Greeks, Moroccans and Chinese. Of those arrested, 53 were deported immediately and 65 were taken to detention centres. All were accused of a range of crimes from theft to illegal immigration to drug smuggling and three of prostitution.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, at the government with the fascists, who now call themselves Alleanza Nazionale, and the racist North League are delivering what they promised in their electoral campaign: in a fear-and-hate climax, the wholesale scapegoating and persecution of Roma and other ethnic minorities in the name of ’security’. Roma and Sinti have been targeted with totally exaggerated claims of involvement in criminal activities. That concernes nomads living in Italy for generations as well as Roma arrived more recently from Eastern Europe and especially from Romania.

While Roma camps were burning, migrants suspected of being ‘illegal’ were being targeted by police. New detention centres are promised in Italy, the length of detention to be extended to 18 months - a new concept introduced in Europe by Sarkozy - and new concentration camps to be built outside Europe, from Ceuta and Melilla to Libya and Egypt. Protests in Italy and international condemnation, however, are having their effects and the Interior Minister, Roberto Maroni, already had to amend his new security decree: he had to scrap his plan of making illegal immigration a criminal offence, punishable by one year imprisonment. He also had to back down from targeting nurses and care assistants without regular work permits.

I suppose those who clean up the Italian people’s shit get honorary, if highly conditional, not-shit status.