Italian Intellectuals Militate For The Rights Of The Rroma Population
“We have had it with the racist tendencies that have affected Italy especially after the death of Giovanna Reggiani. We are against mass incrimination. The woman was abused and killed in Rome. The killer is most certainly a man, probably a Romanian. However, the woman who stopped a bus in order to save someone else’s life is also a Romanian citizen. That horrible crime staggered Italy, but that grand gesture was immediately forgotten,” reads the letter of the Italian intellectuals, quoted by the electronic edition of the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
The petition was forwarded by Gianni Biondillo, Girolamo De Michele, Valerio Evangelisti, Giuseppe Genna, Marco Rovelli, Antonio Scurati and Wu Ming and managed to gather some 1,500 signatures until now.
“Hatred and suspicion make people generalize situations such as the fact that all Romanians are of Rroma origins, that all the Rroma population is formed of criminals and thieves and that all thieves and murderers should be expelled from Italy,” the petition reads.
“It is easier to talk about collective terror (today provoked by Romanians, yesterday by Muslims and tomorrow by Albanians) than to analyze the real causes of the lack of social security triggered by the phenomenon of globalization. It is easier to militate for banishment than to enact European directives regarding immigrants’ rights to medical care, work and accommodation. It is easier to leave people without their homes, than to fight against black market labor. Individual crimes cannot justify collective punishments,” the petition concludes.