Italy: LN steps up racist crusade
01 March 1999
The Lega Nord (LN, Northern League) leader, Umberto Bossi, continued his xenophobic crusade following the launch of a petition to force a referendum on the modification of the Russo-Jervolino law on immigration. He is calling for tougher anti-immigrant measures despite the fact that 54,000 expulsions were carried out in 1998 as a result of the law. With declarations ranging from the paranoid to the anti-Semitic, he claimed that "They want to import 20 million third country nationals", and:
"They want to destroy the very concept of Europe by guaranteeing their interests through the worldwide economy of Jewish bankers and through a multiracial society."
Bossi also expressed his conviction that the LN campaign to collect the 600,000 signatures required for the formal proposal of a referendum would be a success, claiming that 100,000 signatures had been collected on the first day of the initiative.
Francesca Calvo, LN mayor of Alessandria, has continued to provoke migrant communities: after her decree requiring health certificates for foreign children wishing to enrol for primary school she has shut down the local mosque using the event to express her "shock" at the ritual slaughter of animals by Muslims. On March 7 she attended the anti-immigrant mass which she organised with Mario Borghezio (see Statewatch vol 9 no 1) in Porta Palazzo in Turin. The mass was celebrated by a Lefebvrian minister, Luigi Moncalero, who spoke of the Crusaders' famous battle against the Moors in Lepanto in 1571, and the lifting of the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683. Borghezio explained the mass as merely a symbolic gesture, "a gesture of reappropriation of an area which has been taken from its legitimate inhabitants...", a clear reference to the Turin imam's celebration for the end of Ramadan in the same square. The imam of Turin explained that "Here, there is immigration of people who want to improve their economic conditions. It is certainly not a Muslim invasion", as he observed the event featuring green posters announcing, "Stop illegal immigrants, area controlled by green volunteers", as the LN militants like to call themselves.
The League's racism grows increasingly alarming as other LN mayors follow in Calvo's footsteps. The mayor of Varese has announced his intention to close the mosque due to its lack of a car park. In Acqui Terme the LN mayor was re-elected following his offer of a 1,000,000 Lira reward for people who report illegal immigrants in his municipality. It appears that it is becoming politically fruitful to express notions in the north of Italy which would not have been tolerated until very recently.
La Repubblica 5-9.3.99.