by Uli Schmetzer<\/p>\n
An emergency decree to expel poor Romanians illustrates once again our growing intolerance towards others. <\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n Venice, Italy, Nov 3, 2007 – The ancient Romans extended citizenship and the protection of their formidable legions to loyal European vassals. Modern Romans are more circumspect: This week they decided to offer their hospitality only to those fellow European citizen classified above the poverty line.
\nAt the discretion of local prefects the rest, those without sufficient means of support or living in campers and illegal cabins, can be expelled from Italy under a decree whose main target are the Romanians, the latest members of the European Community (EU) free to travel and work in any EU nation.<\/span><\/font>
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\nThe Romanians have invaded Italy in droves.
\nThe rape-murder on the outskirts of Rome of a 47-year-old woman, wife of a navy officer, allegedly by a Romanian gypsy, has prompted the center-left government of Romano Prodi to accept the clamor of the neo-fascist and nationalist opposition and pass a degree that makes it possible to expel from Italy beggars, car window cleaners, those camping inside cardboard cabins in shantytowns on the peripheries of the major cities or wandering gypsies living in campers.
\nThe decree, a gesture of intolerance offers every town prefect the right to expel Romanians, mainly gypsies. The degree does not include the real rogues, the Romanian pimps and criminals working an estimated 30,000 Romanian prostitutes and earning, according to the late priest of the poor, Don Oreste Benzi, an average 200,000 euro a year. Romanian police say fifty per cent of those Romanians forced or persuaded into prostitution in Italy are children.
\nOf course the degree also does not punish Italians who solicit and use the services of child-prostitutes. These \u2018end-users\u2019 do not live in shanty towns.
\nIn a nation renown for its bureaucratic sloth the decree galloped through the legislatures in record time as if it had simply waited for this kind of murder to bring it alive, just as the Patriot Act in the U.S. in 2001 (a mega-series of laws curtailing individual rights) flew through both Houses after 11\u201909\u201901 with supersonic speed when experts agreed it would have taken at least a year to elaborate such complicated legislation. Obviously the U.S. Patriot Act, like the Italian decree this week, had been parked in the wings, aware the right occasion would soon present itself.
\nIf the Patriot Act went into action instantly so did this week\u2019s Italian decree: Within hours police bulldozers crushed the first immigrant camps where the immigrants usually find their initial foothold before earning enough money to obtain more decorous living quarters.
\nIn an act reminiscent of collective punishment – recalling those of the Nazi era or the punitive demolitions by the Israelis in the Occupied Territories \u2013 the State bulldozers flattened cabins in the camp where the alleged murderer had lived with his wife and child even though it was a Romanian woman in the same camp who led police to the alleged murderer.
\nThe scenes of closed-down and demolished camps provided news broadcasts with images of the homeless Romanians pushing across the countryside prams and wheelbarrows containing their sparse belongings, images that could have been borrowed from the files of World War II.
\nNo one with political savvy in Italy was surprised the first politician to visit this sad scene of politically motivated State reprisals was the leader of Italy\u2019s neo-fascists, Gianfranco Fini. His party, xenophobic like all nationalists, has become a major force in Italian politics over recent years after Fini astutely joined the former government of Silvio Berlusconi. Riding on Berlusconi\u2019s coat-tails fascism has gained a popularity it has not enjoyed since the days of Mussolini, a fact reflected in the space Fini commands in daily news casts on the three official TV channels.
\nAnd few must have been surprised the decree immediately acted as a green light for skinheads and neo-fascists eager to resort to the militia methods of their credo.
\nWithin twenty-four hours hooded men armed with knives and batons set upon Romanians on the outskirts of Rome and beat them so badly three Romanians are now in hospital.
\nAgainst this outbreak of racism it was left to more sober-minded Italian women to strike a blow for rationality in a nation where violence against women has become a major problem.
\nA collective of Italian feminists left a huge banner across the Campidoglio, the seat of Rome\u2019s city\u2019s government. It said:
\n\u201cViolence against women doesn\u2019t depend on passports. It is committed by men.\u201d
\nThe women have scheduled a protest march against racism and ethnic victimization.
\nWhen Italians complain their country is inundated by immigrants they do have a valid point. But the complaints rarely admit the invasion is part of a tacit deal between politics and Mafia, one side which provides the votes, the other the legislation to favor certain projects in which the Mafia launders their illicit funds, participates in state projects or uses \u2018slave\u2019 labor as workers or killers as described in Roberto Saviano\u2019s brilliant book \u2018Gomorra.\u2019.
\nThen there is a second sweetheart \u2018deal\u2019 between politicians and entrepreneurs. Both flourish on cheap illegal labor, the politicians with kickbacks and delivered votes, the entrepreneurs on vastly-reduced employment costs.
\nThe case of Italy is unique in the EU:
\nSome four million immigrants have invaded the country over the last decade not in search of Italy\u2019s legendary beauty but access to an easily available labor market in a society which would shut down tomorrow without the cheap labor force supplied by its immigrants.
\nThe \u2018black labor market\u2019 is responsible for the fabulous wealth of Italian employers who, in their majority, do not pay social benefits, welfare or minimum wages to immigrants, a practice that is illegal on paper but largely tolerated by the authorities.
\nIn other European nations employment is more strictly controlled and employers are more forcefully obliged to pay the social contributions and wages due to their workers. As the result fewer jobs are available, the labor market is more stable and black labor is considerable reduced.
\nFollowing the Patriot Act in the U.S. the witch hunt for \u2018terrorists\u2019 turned into paranoia promoted by the media. Until recently similar paranoia in Italy fueled by the media blamed \u2018illegally residing\u2019 Albanians for almost every unsolved crime committed. Any eye witness could be expected to tell TV cameras the wanted thief, mugger or murderer looked like an Albanian.
\nOver recent months the Albanians appear to have become honest citizen, one hardly hears about an Albanian doing something wrong. The new villains are the Romanians, the fledgling members of the EU who now, so the lament goes, use their newly granted European access rights to settle, steal and kill in Italy.
\nThe irony of this argument is those Romanians who actually do the stealing, pimping and contract killing drive around in luxury cars and live in luxury flats and are therefore \u2018untouchable\u2019 \u2013 unless caught in an illicit activity.
\nOn the other hand those who eke out a miserable and largely honest existence (otherwise why would they live in shanties) can have their homes bulldozed and themselves kicked out of the country.
\nThat\u2019s Italian justice, year 2007.
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