Milan: Riots ensue after Egyptian stabbed to death
According to Corriere Della Sera (IT), Hamed Mamoud El Fayed Adou (19) was stabbed to death by South Americans while he was with two others on a bus. A friend was lightly injured and a family member escaped unharmed. North Africans then took to the streets and took out their anger on South American shops and parked cars.
Pictures here. Seems to me this one is showing prayer.
-------------
Milan's deputy mayor says the fatal stabbing of an Egyptian immigrant man triggered a street rampage between immigrant gangs that left cars damaged and store windows smashed. Riccardo De Corato told the Italian news agency ANSA that the clash Saturday night on one of Milan's more ethnically diverse streets pitted gangs of North Africans against South American migrants.
De Corato didn't say what provoked the stabbing. But a reporter for Il Sole-24 Ore radio said the 19-year-old victim was knifed after rival gangs of migrant youths started fighting on a city bus, then got off the vehicle. By late Saturday, violence had subsided in the neighborhood along Via Padova.
Source: Ynet (English)
UPDATED:
Milan's deputy mayor, Riccardo De Corato, said the violence had turned the area into a "Wild West between North African and South American gangs".
Milan's authorities said they would start checking people's documents in the city's most racially diverse neighbourhoods in order to root out illegal immigrants.
Milan's deputy mayor, Riccardo De Corato, said officials would go from building to building in areas where immigrants live. Half of the 46 immigrants picked up by police on Saturday night had been found to be in Italy illegally, he said.
The Northern League, a right-wing, anti-immigrant party within prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition, called for the immigrants responsible for the violence to be expelled. One member of the League, MEP Matteo Salvini, called for "expulsions house by house, floor by floor".
-------------
At a press conference Sunday, police sought to play down the unrest, saying a description of the neighbourhood as a "powderkeg" was inaccurate.
On Saturday, a resident told ANSA: "There's a climate of racial hatred here now, and I'm afraid about what might happen in the next few days."
Another resident said: "This is no life. Drug dealing goes on all the time, all day long, and the few Italians left just hole up at home."
In Cairo, the Egyptian foreign ministry identified the slain youth as Hamed Mahmoud Abdel Aziz Essayyed Abdou.
The murder unleashed a war of words between the ruling centre-right coalition and the left.
Roberto Calderoli, a minister of the anti-immigration Northern League, said the incident "confirmed that we are paying for a mistaken ideology of the past... the policy of open doors for all."
Calderoli, calling for "zero tolerance" towards illegal immigrants, warned of a situation similar to unrest that has plagued French suburbs for years.
The coalition government of conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party and the Northern League "has succeeded in preventing illegal immigrants from entering or leaving for our country," he said.
"Now we must deal with all the illegals who, thanks to the (previous centre-left government) are unfortunately already here," he said.
Opposition Democratic Party's Senate leader Anna Finocchiaro slammed the remarks, saying: "You can't resolve issues like immigration with mere propaganda... Milan shows that the right's immigration policies are totally lacking."
Sources: Daily Telegraph, AFP (English)
No comments:
Post a Comment