Political correctness is no longer the issue. The brutal murder of an elderly woman shocked all of Italy. 47-year-old Giovanna Reggiani was raped by 24-year-old Nicolae Mailat. She resisted until the criminal knocked her unconscious with a heavy stone. The Romanian was apprehended thanks to a fellow countrywoman who witnessed the murder. She ran onto the road, stopped a passing bus, and the driver immediately called the police.
Mailat himself, who speaks almost no Italian, denies involvement in the rape and claims he only stole a purse. The scratches on his back suggest otherwise. The incident exposed a long-simmering problem: the Italian capital is surrounded by cardboard shacks of migrants.
A forest encampment: cardboard walls, laundry drying on trees, rags and dishes scattered everywhere. This is not a set for the movie 'Borat.' This is a suburban area of the Italian capital. To the average person, it looks like an ordinary Gypsy camp, but the inhabitants of the shacks are Romanians. They lead a truly Gypsy lifestyle, while being, according to their documents, citizens of the European Union.
Italian television shows footage from the Tor di Quinto railway station, where the criminal lived, almost non-stop. It was there that Giovanna Reggiani got off the train. Viewers across Italy are stunned – it's hard to believe that what they are seeing on screen is really their country.
This is not the first time Italy has faced difficulties due to representatives of diasporas. Last spring, for example, was marked by clashes between police and Chinese protesters against discrimination. But this time it is more serious. It is not just about a different lifestyle, but about Italy's internal security.
Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni emotionally told journalists that, despite a positive attitude toward the Romanian people, he advocates expelling all Romanians who have committed crimes from the country. Prime Minister Romano Prodi convened an emergency cabinet meeting at which a bill was passed allowing regional prefects to expel unreliable EU citizens from the country without consulting Rome. He considered consultations with parliament on this bill unnecessary.
This measure, so uncharacteristic for Prodi's 'left-wing' government, is a response to a situation that is slowly but surely spiraling out of the authorities' control. This summer, a young Italian woman was killed in the Rome metro. Two Romanian girls tried to rob her, and she resisted. The thieves wounded her with a metal umbrella, apparently specially modified to be a cold weapon.
Just a kilometer from the Tor di Quinto station in August of this year, two Romanians attacked a 57-year-old cyclist. He died from his injuries a month and a half later. In Rome, there are bus routes about which guides tell tourists: 'On the bus, it will be only you and them, where 'you' are the tourists, and 'them' are the thieves.'
Prodi contacted his Romanian counterpart, who assured him that measures would be taken and cooperation between the two countries' police forces would be strengthened. Meanwhile, Italian-Romanian forums dedicated to the problem have appeared on the Internet.
The deportation of Romanians is not far off. Lists are being compiled in Rome, Milan, Florence, Turin, Naples. It is expected that thousands of Romanians who pose a danger to society will be expelled from the country. Rome police say that, according to preliminary estimates, at least five thousand people will be sent out from the capital alone.
It is obvious that the formation of camps around the Italian capital was caused by years of permissive policy. It was for this that the president of the National Alliance, Gianfranco Fini, tried to question the mayor of Rome: 'I demand an explanation from Walter Veltroni as to why Tor di Quinto is in such a state, and he cannot answer that he doesn’t know.' In response, he heard that the Prodi government has been in power for less than a year and, therefore, responsibility for the emergence of the camps lies with the Berlusconi cabinet, in which Fini was – no more, no less – Minister of Foreign Affairs. It was Fini who headed the foreign ministry when the EU expanded and Romania joined.
The problem of Romanian camps has become another stumbling block for the Italian 'right' (the parties National Alliance, Northern League, Forza Italia – leaders Fini and Berlusconi) and the 'left' (the Democratic Party – leaders Veltroni and Prodi). The confrontation between these camps has been shaking Italy since Prodi became prime minister.
Italian politicians are loudly shouting that, with free movement within the EU, the problem must be raised to the European level. Currently, only Finland and Sweden continue to keep their borders open to Bulgarians and Romanians. Last week, Great Britain decided to close its borders to citizens of those countries. There, the number of migrants from Bulgaria and Romania has long exceeded the desired level. The difficulty in counting the number of arrivals has already become a cause for a domestic political scandal – different political forces use different data.
The inhabitants of the Romanian 'cardboard suburbs' of Rome, through an interpreter, assure that Mailat was mentally ill and that they regret what happened. They already understand that their peaceful life in the Italian forests has come to an end. The husband of the deceased Giovanna allowed himself only one statement: 'Do everything so that this never happens again.'
Yulia Netesova.
IA Rosbalt