Stabbing sparks fresh anti-immigration calls

The stabbing death of an Egyptian youth in Milan sparked fresh anti-immigration calls Sunday.

ROME, February 14, 2010 (AFP) - The stabbing death of an Egyptian youth in Milan sparked fresh anti-immigration calls Sunday that were immediately slammed by the left-wing opposition ahead of regional elections in Italy.

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.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi shot back to power for a third time in 2008 in coalition with the Northern League, campaigning heavily on an anti-immigration platform that frequently linked immigrants to crime.

The killing blamed on Peruvian and Ecuadorian youths, reportedly after an altercation on a bus, sparked a rampage by around 100 north Africans in a poor suburb of the northern city late Saturday.

The rioters damaged 17 cars including nine that were overturned, and they vandalised five shops, most of them owned by South Americans, the ANSA news agency reported.

The unrest took place in a northeastern section of Milan that is home to many immigrants, most from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia but also from other South American countries.

Milan's deputy mayor, Riccardo De Corato, from Berlusconi's centre-right People of Freedom party, called the area a "Far West between north African and South American gangs."

News reports said four Egyptians suspected of taking part in the rampage were in police custody.

In Cairo, the Egyptian foreign ministry identified the slain youth as Hamed Mahmoud Abdel Aziz Essayyed Abdou.

Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa of the right-wing National Alliance called for "maximum rigour" against illegal immigration. "We will fight it without exaggerating, but without ceding a millimetre," he said on the sidelines of a campaign rally in southern Naples.

La Russa said the unrest in Milan should "make Italians see that the government wants to address this issue but there are some who stubbornly want to put a spanner in the works."

Those who obstruct the government's hard-line immigration policies "by definition favour illegal immigration and evasion of the law," he said.

The opposition Democratic Party's Senate leader Anna Finocchiaro slammed the remarks by Calderoli and La Russa, saying: "You can't resolve issues like immigration with mere propaganda... Milan shows that the right's immigration policies are totally lacking."

Northern League members will run for key governor posts in the neighbouring Piedmont region as well as the northeastern Veneto region in the elections set for the end of March.

Saturday's unrest followed a wave of violence against migrant farm workers in the southern town of Rosarno last month that prompted two UN human rights experts to raised concerns over "growing xenophobia" in Italy.

At a press conference Sunday, police sought to play down the unrest, saying a description of the neighbourhood as a "powderkeg" was inaccurate.

Berlusconi's government "has succeeded in preventing illegal immigrants from entering or leaving for our country," Calderoli said.

"Now we must deal with all the illegals who, thanks to the (previous centre-left government) are unfortunately already here," he said.

Last June, Berlusconi came under fire after expressing shock at the number of non-Italians in Milan, his hometown, saying: "We must intervene to turn these people away."

He was speaking shortly after the introduction of a new policy to turn back immigrants before they arrive on Italian shores aboard boats from north Africa.