Monthly Archives: March 2011

decline of empire, human rights, il cav, immigration, international development, international justice, italy, lega nord, libya, maroni, the italian left, the italian right

Italy and Refugees

1 Comment
Luca Turi: Albanians on the ship Vlora fleeing armed conflict in the Balkans

As Italy struggles to accept massive flows of refugees from the Arab Spring, one hopes that the G7 country has learned something in last 20 years.  As Berlusconi’s channel report that the refugees are complaining about the quality of food and as leghista Roberto Maroni makes doom-laden statements about a biblical exodus, I urge contemporary Italians to look back to the events of early August 1991, when mass looting, rioting, and total loss of civil society led Albanians to flee their country — which was, like Libya, a former Italian colony.

By way of trying to get Italians to look beyond their own bell-tower in these days in which the country’s biggest trade partner has become the focus of international news,  I quote award-winning Italian journalist Enzo Biagi from the Corriere della Sera of 12 August 1991 (quoted in Paul Ginsborg’s indispensable Italy and its Discontents).  Substitute “Libyans” for “Albanians” to try and get a picture of today.

The dream of the Albanians has dissolved, but so too has that of the Italians. The fifth industrial power in the world has not been capable, in three days, of distributing ten thousand cups of coffee… Those plastic sacks of water thrown from above to the dehydrated immigrants, those sandwiches scattered by the solders into the scrambling mob — it was like being at the zoo.

As Fyodor Dostoyevsky said, “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering the prisons.”  Consider the refugee from a war-torn place as a prisoner of circumstance, and let us hope that the degree of civilization that Italy offers its non-citizens is as high as what it promises its own.

As Sylvia Poggioli reports from Lampedusa:

The people here are angry and they suspect the government wants to exploit the crisis for electoral aims. U.N. officials have criticized the government for being extremely slow in moving the migrants away from this tiny island to bigger and better equipped facilities on the mainland.

Now, keep in mind that the coalition, the ruling coalition, includes the powerful Northern League, which is virulently anti-immigrant. The interior minister, Roberto Maroni, is a member of the Northern League and he’s been warning for weeks of what he calls a biblical exodus from North Africa.

Now, the foreign minister [Frattini] went to Tunis yesterday to try to negotiate with the new authorities there, ways to monitor more carefully the Tunisian coast to prevent the exodus. And Italy went so far as to propose a payment of up to $2,500 to each Tunisian who voluntarily returns home. But the Northern League leader [Umberto Bossi] blasted the idea, saying why should we pay them? We should just pick them up and send them back.

Read and listen to the whole interview here.

Bossi and his similar-indignant followers — “paying immigrants?!  But the state doesn’t pay us hardworking Italians!  They’re treating immigrants better than their own people!” reeks of a selfish insularity that isn’t hard to imagine in the land where one needs not look beyond one’s own family home, or town steeple at best — one that should be brought into sharp relief by the disturbing images of Iman al-Obeidi‘s silencing and forced evacuation  from the Rixos Hotel yesterday.

There are more compelling anti-war arguments out there that take diminishing state resources into account; here is Bob Herbert’s American perspective.

That the two countries have different interests regionally goes without saying.  But what Italy and her elites — different to France and Britain, for example — seem to have a hard time realizing is that the degree of involvement that the country has in the region and in Libya specifically means that the country cannot continue to idly sit by.  The lamentable reaction to the many (non-Libyans) coming ashore in Lampedusa reflects this idleness.

Some have said that Eni is essentially the foreign policy arm of the Italian government.  Be that as it may, it would be heartening to see the government doing more than simply throwing its hands up into the air, occupied — as usual — with the naval-gazing exploits of a philandering prime minister.

immigration, italy, lega nord, the italian right, the right in europe

In Need of a Beer Summit

Leave a comment
Small beer.

My impression is that, despite every news media outlet on earth coming out and saying that that Italy really had nothing to celebrate, most non-leghisti Italians actually did feel like celebrating, and Turin’s packed squares, riverbank, and streets were a testament to this last week. On via Po, someone hang the above banner, addressing leading leghista Roberto Calderoli, one of the six senators who stayed in session in Montecitorio in Rome: “Roberto, we’re celebrating. If you’d join us, we’ll give you a beer!” No doubt they’re busy plotting how to exploit refugees from the Arab spring to the League’s advantage.

For at least a day, the participatory nature of Italian celebrating won out over the lose-lose implications of the Libyan crisis, the nuclear question, Rubygate, youth underemployment, brain drain, slug-like growth, and all the other problems that everyone is acutely aware of.

Now, although the celebratory spirit in Turin was palpable, the sign enjoining Calderoli to join the festa is evidence that there are those  in Lombardy, the Veneto and Piedmont who have their reasons not to celebrate independence.  However,  it’s a bit circular at best to go to a place like Bolzano to find this out.  Many of the people in Sudtirol/Alto Adige would have objected to being under Rome even in the glory days of the miracolo.  Talking to what amounts to ethnic Austrians about their pride in being “Italian” — especially when the Republic has done everything possible to keep them happy in Italy — is specious reporting.  A shopowning leghista in Treviglio or San Dona’ di Paive would’ve been more incisive.

A couple of days after the big bash, I was having lunch with some friends in a nearby restaurant when the Tripoli-born owner came up to speak to us in good English.  He began by talking about a trip he’d made to the States in the middle of the Reagan years — when Libya was being bombed, actually.  Although cowed by the icy reception he got at Laguardia, his mood improved when he made it to San Francisco, where he appreciated how people loved the food, the weather, the sea.  Marveling at this diversity, he told us, “the United States are not so different than my country — although they are united, they are not all the same!”

immigration, italy, lega nord, libya, maroni, the italian right, the right in europe

Human Rights Watch Condemns Italy

Leave a comment
"Yes, it's racist."

Human Rights Watch released a report on the state of racism and xenophobia in Italy yesterday.  The results are not cheerful reading.

I wrote about this two years ago for the American, and it’s not heartening to see that things have been in a continued downward spiral.

As usual, the Italian press reacts with typical oversimplification and indignation: “Human Rights Watch says Italy is racist,” say Liquida. The timing of the report is important, as the island of Lampedusa is receiving an ever-greater influx of refugees from the ongoing war in Libya.  The Italian press stokes unfounded fears of military retaliation (nicely debunked here) while interior minister Roberto Maroni asks the EU for €100m ($138m) and stokes fear by quoting wildly-vacillating numbers of immigrants in Libya (presumably destined for Italy’s shores).

The goings-on on the other side of the Mediterranean have got normally isolated Italians in an ever-more pessimistic tizzy, abated, in some part, by the festivities last week, which I found were a nice distraction from an otherwise parlous state of affairs – although every news outlet out there took pains to explain to unfamiliar readers that Berlusconi’s hold on power is thanks to the anti-immigrant or xenophobic Northern League.

What remains to be seen is whether the government will cynically rush through more anti-immigrant measures based in the culture of fear stoked by the media.  If so, then the question remains to the aging elites in Rome who push for such legislation in a country with one of the world’s lowest birth rates that posted a 0.1% growth rate at the close of last quarter: who will do the work in the Italy of the future?

The report in full is up here; the abstract here.

america

Body Language and symbolism, part 2

Leave a comment
One man

In the era of the image, media and spin presentation is ever-important. Avid followers of Premesso will recall a post offering interpretations of an old photo of Berlusconi with a sidearm a few weeks back. This time we turn our attention to Obama’s announcement of American support in the current war in Libya.

What’s interesting about the video is how Obama stands completely alone. Unlike Bush in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, there are no medalled officers or sober government ministers flanking him. It suggest certain things about our individualistic culture, of course, but it’s also profoundly misleading – how often is it that a single leader takes a country to war? Furthermore, is it odd that a country as large and diverse as the United States invest so much power in the office of the president?

Bossi, electoral crisis, fini, il cav, italy, lega nord, the italian left, the italian right

150 Years of Unity?

Leave a comment
And the rockets' red glare?

Italy’s political situation, overshadowed lately by events in Middle East, is grim.  Berlusconi’s coalition totters.  Fini’s breakaway group seems waiting for the right moment.  Indeed this fall March was bandied about as the right time for a vote.  More power has flowed to Lega Nord’s Bossi, whose ministers voted again making the 17th a holiday, and Berlusconi even showed up tot he vote with a handkerchief in green — breakaway Lega’s color.

As the case was in WW2 and the anni di piombo, the north is again the battleground for Italy’s future.  Lega parliamentarians are in the middle of passing aggressive decentralization reforms that could be completed as early as May.  If so, Berlusconi will lose ground as Bossi’s secessionists take Italy back to a past of campanilismo and freedom from taxation.

With typical Italian flair for a big show, Turin is prepped for an unlikely show of Italian nationalism.  Italian’s lukewarm sentiments towards their nation are legendary.  The political crisis going on for the better part of a year highlights this, especially when a member of the ruling coalitions regularly insists that unification is not worth celebrating.  It leads one to ask, what’s all the fuss about?

Balkans, human rights, international justice, kosovo, serbia, UN

Vlastimir Đorđević at the Hague

Leave a comment

[youtube_sc url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw7gNPJI7BY]

(Video primarily in Serbian although the judge speaks in English.)

Readers of yesterday’s post, which quoted Rory Stewart questioning the ability of the UN and similar organizations to do much of anything, might’ve detected a hint of disappointment.  This view was informed in some measure by the inability of the UN to prevent carnage in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.  That drama is still being played out at the ICTY in the Hague, and although there are sometimes questions to be raised about the institution, when it convicts those like the former assistant minister of the interior Vlastimir Đorđević of crimes against humanity and war crimes it is redressing a real wrong.

Đorđević, as assistant minister of interior, was head of Serbia’s police forces and paramilitaries who played an active role in using violence and intimidation to force Kosovars out of their homes and off their land.  In additional to charges of mass killing, the judge also brought up the removal of the victims’ bodies to mass graves inside Serbia proper, and sentenced Đorđević to 27 years’ imprisonment.

Belgrade’s silence on the matter bodes well for Serbia’s European future.

Perhaps international justice comes out ahead of international development here because the results are so much easier to measure.  One can debate the merits of the sort of justice it is, but for those familar with Kosovo and the Milošević regime, Đorđević’s sentencing is just.

The ICTY’s indictment of Đorđević can be found here.  Names of the victims, including the 47 members of the Berisha family who were killed on a single day in March 1999, can be found in Schedules A-L, pages 25-48.