Hundreds of asylum-seekers clashed with riot police near an immigrant centre in the southern Italian city of Bari yesterday in a protest to demand refugee status that left dozens lightly injured.
Protesters hurled rocks and metal bars at police lines, set off fires and trashed the facility on the outskirts of Bari. Police responded with tear gas and live rounds fired into the air and 30 protesters were arrested.
The rioters blocked a main road and railway for several hours, disrupting regional train services and car traffic. A passing bus was also wrecked.
Local officials later intervened and persuaded the protesters to stand down after the authorities undertook to respond to their requests by next Wednesday.
Four hunger-striking immigrants have blockaded themselves on top of a crane since Οcttober 30 in the Italian city of Brescia in a desperate protest that has attracted national attention.
Thousands of people have taken to the streets of Brescia in recent days to support the crane protesters and demand greater rights for immigrants.
On Saturday November 13 there were clashes with the police.
The attack happened a bit after the main demonstration had ended. The demonstration was organized after recent fascist attacks in the neighborhood. Fascists were hiding during the protest. But when the demonstration ended, riot police did the fascists’ job…
On their way back a group of 50 Afghans and a few Greeks was suddenly attacked by two dozens of police. Riot police wanted to give the Afghans a lesson, so they suddenly just started beating them, blindly attacking a group of demonstrators. The first Afghans attacked fell to the ground from the beatings and were arrested thereafter for unknown reasons. Most people ran away, but at least 10 people were injured – some of them badly. Among them were also minors. One of them had to be brought to hospital, while there were rumours that another Afghan had been attacked by fascists near St. Nicholaos with a metal pipe. His leg was broken in two places…
It’s the first time that an EU country has seen its treatment of refugees described as a humanitarian crisis by the UNHCR. This report gets to the heart of the escalating tensions in Greece.
“I’ve seen too many. They cross the river like bees”, sighs a local fisherman. With as many as 400 people crossing the Evros river each day, arrests of illegal immigrants in Greece have exploded from 3,500 to 20,000 in a year. Most choose to turn themselves in, but they have no idea what awaits them. Infested with rats, Greece’s detention centres are now critically overcrowded. Those who try to avoid this fate end up on the streets, such as in Attica Square, home to hundreds of Afghan refugees. With no government support, crime is rife here, and as frustration builds, racial attacks by local vigilantes are escalating beyond control. Ghulam’s family sleep on a bench in the square – his four-year-old son was recently attacked in the middle of the night. “If I’d stayed in Afghanistan I might have been beaten, but they would have at least spared my children. I cannot believe this is Europe.”
The horrible living conditions in the Venna detention centre, a refugee camp located 30 minutes outside the northern Greek city of Komotini, was the spark that fueled over 100 protestors to converge on the site on Sunday. Among the protest group were doctors, lawyers and members of the No Borders Assembly.
The group was met at the site in Venna by a police force that also had around 100 members, among them much riot police. The group of activists was there to protest while the doctors among the group checked the health and living conditions of those inside the detention centre.
A clash between the protest group and riot police began after the police attacked the group on no provocation at all. The police threw stones at the protestors and then moved in on them with their clubs, injuring two people after hitting them in the face and head. Some members of the riots squad were also injured in the clash.
Three people were arrested and transferred to the police station in Komotini but the rest of the protest group was stopped from entering the town after the police blocked the Egnatia highway.
‘Mafia’ Provocation Behind ‘Race Riots’ In Southern Italy
More details have emerged since the ‘riots’ in Rosarno at the end of last week and it now appears that the attack by local youths on Friday was the final insult in a long line of provocations.
The migrants from sub-Saharan Africa have been a common site in Italy for decades. In southern Italy they move en masse from the grape harvest in Sicily, via the orange, tangerine and kiwi harvests in Calabria and the olive picking in Apulia. Local farmers have relied on them since the ‘native’ agricultural workforce evaporated. Instead, the 8000 or so ‘clandestini’ in Calabria pick fruit and vegetables for 12 to 14 hours a day for 20 to 25 euros and many are regularly forced to pay kickback of up to a quarter of their wages to local gangsters in the ‘Ndrangheta, the regional version of the mafia. Read the rest of this entry »
“We Are Not Animals!” Italy’s Racial Riots and Their Aftermath
MARIA RITA LATTO (January 11, 2010)
Rage and fear. This is what comes out of the images from Rosarno, a small town near the western coast of Calabria, where violent clashes broke out after two African immigrants were wounded by a pellet gun attack by white youths in a car.
“Those guys were firing at us as if it was a fairground,” one of the men told La Repubblica newspaper. “They were laughing, I was screaming, other cars were passing by but nobody stopped them.”
The photo is from the 17 year old Palestinian victim (from "Eleytherotypia" newspaper)
A 17 year old Palestinian has accused his guards of brutally beating him, in the Pagani “detention center” for immigrants without papers, in the island of Lesvos, close to Turkey. The incident happened just a few hours after the vice minister of the newly named “Ministry of Protection of the citizens” has visited the place and expressed his indignation over the living conditions of hundreds of immigrants stuffed in an old depot transformed to a nasty prison. The vice-minister left, the newspapers wrote articles about how much the new “socialist” government cares about human rights, and the policemen punished the immigrants and refugees that dared to denounce their ill treatment to the vice-minister by torturing them even more!
A few days ago, news arrived about the vice Minister visiting Pagani, describing it with the words “Dantes Inferno”. Today, our faithful source in Mytilini reports about new revolts in the Detention Center of Pagani.
Today the revolts in Pagani started again. After the Vice Minister of internal affairs visited Pagani two days ago, the violent habits returned to Pagani. Prisoners reported about a huge police brutality after the visit. Some of the prisoners where calls out, one after the other, to the prison Jard. There they where badly beaten by the police. The prisoners felt save, telling the vice Minister about there situation, but in the end there where punished for there statements in front of the visitor. A complain against the police was made by the prisoners.
A group of estimated 70 people was freed today. It was upsetting for some who are imprisoned in the detention Center of Pagani for more then 25 days. Another revolt started. on one point one of the cells was set on fire. for a long time none, aside from the prisoners,reacted in direction of turning off the fire. Not the Gard not the police. Fireman arrived around one hour after the fire started.
The Atmosphere in the detention Center is very tense. The people inside are serious about there demand to be freed. They will continue with there protest for freedom until the Detention Center is finally closed.
The rioters blocked a main road and railway for several hours, disrupting regional train services and car traffic. A passing bus was also wrecked.
