Cairo, January 13: Egypt strongly condemned on Tuesday attacks on African farm workers in southern Italy and voiced concerns about the Muslim minority there, just days before Italy’s foreign minister is due in Cairo.
“The foreign ministry deplores the violence that occurred in the Italian town of Rosarno,” and “the massive campaign of aggression” against immigrants, ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki said in a statement.
“The latest violence is only one facet of the numerous violations that immigrants and ethnic minorities in Italy are exposed to, including Arab and Muslim minorities,” he added, criticising what he termed the propagation of “racist behaviour” and “a language of hatred.”
Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit will raise the subject when his Italian counterpart Franco Frattini visits Cairo on Saturday, Zaki said.
Violence erupted in the Calabrian town of Rosarno on Thursday when hundreds of immigrants, most of them Africans, demonstrated against their conditions after some of them had been shot at with air rifles, according to Italian media.
More than a thousand immigrants fled Rosarno in the wake of the violence.
Italy’s Northern League, a party allied with the centre-right People of Freedom led by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, has backed several initiatives hostile to Muslims.
Egypt wants the UN to adopt a resolution on the controversial issue of religious defamation, condemning incitement to religious discrimination, hostility or violence, in an effort to prevent attacks against Islam in Europe.
Meanwhile, the humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres on Tuesday slammed Italy over the plight of African migrants in the south of the country where racial violence broke.
“Rosarno is not an isolated case,” said Loris de Filippi of MSF’s Italian branch, referring to the Calabrian town where authorities helped some 1,000 migrants to flee to safety after two days of unrest.
“Everyone — the authorities and employers — is aware of the miserable conditions of these immigrants. Throughout southern Italy, illegal immigrants work for us in a situation that resembles slavery,” De Filippi told a news conference. “There is widespread hypocrisy.”
“Hardly anything has changed for the thousands of seasonal immigrants since we began work (on the issue) in 2003,” De Filippi said.
“Each year, our humanitarian workers return to the same places and witness the same horrible conditions,” he said.
“It is high time that the Italian authorities set about improving conditions for the seasonal workers,” De Filippi added.
Alessandra Tramontana, an MSF medical official, said conditions were “often worse than in refugee camps in Africa”.
Seasonal workers are “victims of a perverse economic and political system that exploits them and at the same time tolerates them, but then criminalises them,” MSF said in a 2007 report.
—Agencies