Immigrants working as crop-pickers wait to be transferred from Rosarno, Italy, after clashes with locals in some of the worst episodes of racial unrest in years. Photograph: Tony Vece/EPA
Rosarno in southern Italy had, by last night, been turned into what one politician termed the world’s only entirely white town after a bloody ethnic cleansing that produced scenes reminiscent of the old American deep south.
As bulldozers got to work to obliterate shacks belonging to the itinerant crop-pickers who had fled, the last of more than 1,000 such workers were being removed from the area for their own protection.
After two days and nights of violence that began with the apparently motiveless shooting of two African workers, the number of injured stood at 53, comprising 18 police, 14 local people and 21 immigrants, eight of whom were in hospital.
Some of the crop-pickers had been shot; others had been beaten with metal bars or wooden clubs as local people took indiscriminate vengeance after a riot of Thursday in which more than 100 Africans caused extensive damage in the town to protest at the shootings.
Those who fled included several hundred people who had agreed to be taken to government-run centres after reportedly being given assurances they would not be deported if found to be illegally in Italy.
But Silvio Berlusconi’s interior minister, Roberto Maroni, said yesterday that they would, in fact, be expelled. “The law is implemented and nothing else can be done,” he told a television interviewer.
A centre for asylum seekers near Bari took 324 immigrants, mostly Ghanaians. The city’s prefect said that more than half of those whose cases had been examined had temporary residence permits. The others were destined for internment at a so-called centre for identification and expulsion.
In his traditional Sunday sermon to the crowd in St Peter’s square yesterday, the pope said: “Immigrants are human beings, different in culture and traditions, but nevertheless to be respected. Violence ought never to be the way for anyone to resolve the difficulties.”
Addressing his parishioners in Rosarno, the local priest, Father Pino Varra, said the immigrants had erred. “But that does not give us the right to beat them, chase them, kill them or drive them out.”
Maroni criticised local authorities for turning a blind eye to the widespread, irregular use of immigrant labour, adding that they had created communities of foreigners that were “bombs primed to go off”.
A junior minister in the previous, centre-left government, Luigi Manconi, commented ironically that Rosarno was now “the only wholly white town in the world. Not even South African apartheid obtained such a result.” And he asked: “Who now will pick the oranges?”
But, perhaps explaining the crop-pickers’ frustration and the eagerness of some locals to get rid of their immigrant workforce, the Calabrian citrus industry has been in crisis due to a fall in prices, according to Antonio Lupini, vice-president of the local farmers association. He told the daily Corriere della Sera that 800m kilograms of citrus fruit were rotting on the trees.”
Peter
November 9, 2012 at 2:27 pm
Well done! Time for the rest of the European countries to follow suit! These animals are not ready to live like civilized human beings! Look around you and see what is happening! They are unemployable, a bunch of low-life parasites here to take advantage of the generous welfare benefits available! Quoting Eric Clapton: Wogs out! Fucking niggers!
The Native
January 21, 2012 at 3:27 pm
@hiram1555 The mutation which lead to a pale skin color is estimated to have originated in Europe between 6,000 and 12,000 years ago. The Celts were a “white” people who lived in the British Isles and North-western Europe, but was assimilated as the Roman Empire expanded. Todays Britons are a mix of Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians, the Celts didn’t became extinct, they assimilated. Breton, Cornish, Welsh, Irish and Gaelic Scottish are most of the Celtic languages who are still spoken today. Europe are the only native homeland of the “white” people. In Europe they originated and have live to this day.
Not all Europeans who settled in Africa came just to kill the native people. If the Europeans really just wanted to exterminate the natives, then why are they still alive and over 90% of the population in every African country today? The many Islamic Caliphates attacked Spain, France, Italy, Greece, the Balkans etc. through history. Does that justify killing all Muslims who enters Europe?
hiram1555
January 20, 2012 at 2:17 pm
greetings,
first of all the first white man was confirmed to be from the isle of patmos(pelan) in the agean sea. the whites ,whether they be in europe or america are not indigenous to any place on the earth. if you were a true student of history you would know that even in european’s history,they are not called indigenous. who were the celtics? who were the first in spain? who were the first in england….they certainly were not white as history teaches us , and white scholars confirms this…the first white man came on the scene around 4004bc.
they have found artifacts which predate this history by thousands of years. who were those people? certainly not white as there were no whites around.
now about your statement. you spoke of the whites in africa. they all should have been killed just as they came there with killing and conquering on their minds.. the same as white today. those blacks in italy did not come there to conquer or kill…this is the signifigant diferrence!!!!
The Native
January 20, 2012 at 1:09 pm
The “whites” were hunted out from Africa, and today less than 5% of the South African population are “White Europeans”. The Immigrants in the Italian town cannot be “ethnic cleansed” as they are not the native population or have lived there for a long time. Actually the current mass immigration (1.2 million a year) into Europe will ethnically cleanse native Europeans, many who will be a minority in their own native homelands in less than a century. A European Politician have even openly said that the future Swedes will have dark skin, and black hair, instead of blond hair and blue eyes. Now THAT is ethnic cleansing.
gery
March 31, 2010 at 6:31 pm
All i read was that they were ALL illegal immigrants to Italy. the town they squatted on had a indigenous/white population of around 1000, and the black illegals from africa numbers 1000…thats asking for trouble to flood a small town like that with outright foreighners. And for them to riot aswell and burn much of the town down ? Thier lucky only a few got beat and they wernt killed in retaliation.