A young man murdered in Verona by four Nazi skinheads on the night between 30th April and 1st May, encampments of gypsies near Naples set on fire, attacks on gypsy encampments in Rome, a huge nation wide police operation against illegal immigrants with the arrest of hundreds of immigrants and the immediate expulsion of over 60 of them, proposals to establish citizens’ posses in Bologna and other cities to control crime, introduction of a security packet of laws by decree declaring illegal immigration to be a crime, increasing punishments for petty crimes like burglary, attempts to close the frontiers to Rumanian citizens, increasing diffidence towards the Muslim minority in Italy, mounting racism and xenophobia.
This is the sad story of the last couple of weeks of my beloved adopted land, Italy. This is the poisoned fruit of the climate of fear and xenophobia generated in the last few years culminating in the election campaign mounted by Berlusconi and his coalition consisting of the post-fascist party, the National Alliance, led by Gianfranco Fini and the xenophobic Northern League, led by Umberto Bossi. This is the coming out of what Tobias Jones has called the “dark heart of Italy”. Since the election victory of the right wing alliance on April 18th, the worst fears of people like Martin Jacques, who wrote in the Guardian that Berlusconi "represents an incipient fascism”, seem to be coming true. I guess I should be careful about comparing Berlusconi with Mussolini and about the return of fascism in Italy but I was really perturbed to see fascist salutes in Rome welcoming the election of a former fascist (Gianni Alemanno) as Mayor of that city. There is now a post-fascist Mayor of Rome for the first time after 60 years.
The election campaign waged by the right wing coalition of Berlusconi was based on creating insecurity and fear of immigrants. Italian newspapers are guilty of augmenting the climate of insecurity and of highlighting crimes committed by immigrants and by gypsies, and down playing crimes committed by Italians. Newspapers of a certain stamp report an increase in petty crimes like muggings and burglaries whereas statistics issued by the Italian government itself show that this is not the case. In fact according to these statistics Italy is one of the safest European countries. The gypsy community, the Rom, have become the latest scapegoat for crimes and a climate of hatred is being created against them. A general opinion has been created that there are a huge number of gypsies coming from Rumania. Non-gypsy Rumanians have also been portrayed as criminals. Opinion polls show that a majority of Italians want to expel the Rom, forgetting that of the 160,000 Rom in Italy a good 70,000 of them have Italian nationality. Where are they going to send them? Pandering to this climate of fear, Berlusconi’s government wants to close its borders to Rumanian citizens whether they are gypsies or not, thus going against European Community rules which allow free movement of nationals of EC countries and Rumania happens to be part of the EC.
True, gypsy encampments do disturb some people with their disorder and unhygienic conditions and their non-sedentary way of life is disturbing to the “good” citizens but the state has done nothing to integrate this community in society. Many of these camps have been deprived of community services like electricity, running water and garbage collection. It was shocking to see scenes of “ordinary” Italian citizens throwing Molotov cocktails into the gypsy camp near Naples with the police standing by and doing nothing and these same “ordinary, respectable” people booing the fire brigade when it tried to put out the fires. Scenes that remind us of the pogroms against Jews in the 19th Century in Europpe and what happened in Nazi Germany. These scenes brought to mind the fate suffered by the Rom when thousands of them were killed in German extermination camps. The Italian government was quick to condemn the violence but these acts were a consequence of the atmosphere created by itself. In fact Umberto Bossi (now Minister for Institutional Reforms in the Berlusconi cabinet) justified the actions of the mob by saying “If the State does not do its duty, then the people after some time lose their patience and therefore react”.
But it is not just the Rom. The Berlusconi Government wants to expel all illegal immigrants and to make conditions harder for those who arrive illegally. It wants to make it difficult for immigrants to legalise their position in Italy by obtaining the “permit to stay”.
Unfortunately the Centre-Left opposition, the Democratic Party led by Walter Veltroni, has also been criminally negligent in not denouncing forcefully enough the racist policies of the government and in fact it tends to follow the policies of the right on the issues of immigration and security. For example, in Bologna the Centre-Left Mayor, Sergio Cofferati, gave into the hysteria against Muslims by refusing to allow the construction of a mosque and there are proposals to have citizens’ posses to patrol the city to control crime.
Many politicians and observers in Europe have expressed horror and indignation at what is going on in Italy. But much of this is plain hypocrisy. The fact is that secretly many European governments are probably applauding the Italian government’s tough attitude towards immigrants. There is a rising tide of xenophobia and intolerance towards immigrants throughout Europe. The European Commission itself has submitted a directive to the European Parliament concerning the detention and deportation of immigrants. If the European Parliament approves the directive detention could be extended to up to 18 months for people whose only offence is to want to live in Europe. Generalizing a policy of confinement for aliens could become the normal way of treating migrant populations. In establishing a five-year ban from Europe for all people who are expelled, this project stigmatises illegal immigrants and transforms them into delinquents who must be deported.
Scores of migrant detention centres have been set up throughout Europe. Aspiring immigrants are kept in inhuman conditions in these camps. Spanish ministers have been in the forefront in criticising Italy but, much before Berlusconi, Zapatero’s government had taken a hard line against immigration. No journalists and not even members of parliament are allowed to visit the detention centres in Spain to see the conditions there. There is evidence that these conditions are very harsh. Already the Zapatero government has increased the period of detention from 40 days to 60 days. Thousands of migrants have been sent back. Mostly these are from Africa and Latin American countries. 50% of passengers arriving at Spanish airports from Brazil are sent back. I was witness to one of these incidents. I was at a physics conference in Lisbon in February this year. Amongst the announced participants was a young student from a university in Brazil and she was to present a research paper at this conference. However she could not get to the conference. Unfortunately she had to fly into Madrid and then take a flight to Lisbon. She was accompanied by two colleagues from the same university. Although she was going on to Lisbon she was refused entry into Europe by the Spanish authorities even though she provided evidence that she was presenting a talk at the Lisbon conference. The action was quite arbitrary as her two colleagues were allowed to transit to Lisbon. Like in Italy conditions to obtain the “permit to stay” have been made much more difficult in Spain.
Other European countries are not much better. Xenophobia in England against the Muslim community is on the rise. Prime Minister Brown wants to increase the maximum time from 28 days to 42 days during which a “terrorist” suspect can be kept in police custody. Anti-Muslim sentiment is on the rise in Denmark and Holland with cartoons and films insulting Islam. As the sociologist Zygmunt Barman warns “A spectre is haunting the planet: the spectre of xenophobia” and nowhere more so than in this “civilised” Europe. We now realise that there is just a thin veneer of civilisation which can be easily ripped apart by demagogues and charlatans.
I do not want to say that immigration into Europe is not a problem. But this has to be looked at in the logic of the propaganda about free trade, free markets and globalisation. The ideologists of the free market argue that there should be no barriers to the movement of commodities and above all capital. But these ideologists conveniently forget that the capitalist system depends on both capital and labour. Logically if capital and commodities can move freely across borders then so should labour. Capital moves to where it can get more profits and by the same token labour should be allowed to move where it can earn more. Therefore for proponents of the free market there should be no limits to the movement of labour. And in this we see the hypocrisy of the proponents of the free market. On the one hand they want freedom for capital and commodities to move wherever they want but they want to restrict the movement of labour so that they can exploit the cheap labour available in poor countries. But the market moves independently of their wishes and labour tends to flow towards where it gets better remuneration. Thus all attempts to stem the flow of immigrants are futile. And capitalists, more than others, in European countries know that European economies could not function without the input of labour from the underdeveloped world. The only way that immigration from countries of the South can be reduced is for the developed countries to promote conditions such that these countries can develop economically. This means the reversal of the tremendous flow of money from the poorer countries to the richer countries through unequal terms of trade, debt repayments and expatriation of profits. Unless this is done no amount of barriers can stem the tide. All that such measures do is to promote racism and xenophobia in Europe and the progressive barbarisation of a civilised continent.
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