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ROMANIA: Murder Brings Fear to Italy
By Claudia Ciobanu
BUCHAREST, Nov 15, 2007 (IPS) - The murder of Italian Giovanna Reggiani by Romanian Nicolae Mailat has led the
Italian government to pass a law allowing for expulsion of European Union (EU)
citizens considered a threat to public security.
In the first three days after the decree was passed Nov. 1, 39 Romanians from
seven Italian towns were expelled.
Concern about criminal acts committed by Romanians has been growing in
Italy. But the murder of 47-year-old Giovanna Oct. 30 moved Italian officials
to take drastic measures. She was robbed, beaten, raped, and then killed on a
lonely road in Tor di Quinto, a shanty town on the outskirts of Rome
inhabited mostly by Roma.
Nicolae Mailat, a Roma from Romania, was arrested for the crime. Authorities
in Rome also tore down the barracks at Tor di Quinto.
Criminality among Romanians is the highest among all migrant groups in
Italy. According to Rome Prefect Carlo Mosca, of about 8,000 foreigners
arrested in the Italian capital between January and September 2007 this year
4,700 were Romanian.
Given linguistic and cultural similarities, Italy is one of the main destinations
for Romanians looking for work abroad. Official data places the number of
Romanians working in Italy at half a million, but the independent group Open
Society Foundation Romania puts the number at about a million.
Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has said that "Italian authorities will not
resort to mass expulsions." Following a meeting with Romanian counterpart
Calin Popescu-Tariceanu in Rome Nov. 7, Prodi said that "our aim is to
guarantee the safety of both Romanians and Italians, and to ensure freedom
of movement of people, one of the fundamental freedoms on which the EU is
built."
But the order passed by the government speaks a different language. "Free
movement of labour is a fundamental right of European citizens, and applying
this principle should not be mixed with dealing with criminality," says Peter
Balazs, director of the Centre for EU Enlargement Studies in Budapest,
Hungary.
"This decree of the Italian government does give the sense that two distinct
categories, immigration and criminality, have been confused," Balazs told IPS.
Romanian officials have also been stressing the distinction between
immigration and criminality. But they have spoken of differences by
associating criminality with the Roma community, presented as distinct from
other "honest" and "hard-working" Romanians. The Roma, often also referred
to as Gypsies, are a people who migrated to Europe from India since the 14th
century.
"I wonder whether we could buy a piece of land in the Egyptian desert and
send them there," said Romanian minister for external affairs Adrian
Cioroianu. He later denied he was referring to Roma, but the comment caused
anger among Roma and Jewish organisations in Romania, who have officially
accused him of discrimination.
Romanian politicians have spent considerable time discussing the criminality
of Roma, but they barely mention the consistent marginalisation of these
people, in Romania and elsewhere.
Nicolae Mailat, 24, comes from a poor family. As a child, he spent three years
in a correction school after a theft. After his release from the centre, Mailat
was arrested again for stealing.
"Conditions in correction schools in Romania can hardly lead to recuperation
of these children," Emilia Ciocoiu, a social assistant working at one such
centre in Rasnov, 160 km north of capital Bucharest, told IPS. "We are
understaffed, and many of the personnel here are not professional. And we
do not have enough material resources."
Mailat moved to Italy, but was not able to make a better life for himself.
Mailat and his mother lived in Tor di Quinto off pickings from trash and from
selling scrap iron.
Three weeks before the murder of Reggiani, Mailat, apparently unhappy with
life in Italy, requested the Romanian consulate in Rome to be allowed to
travel back to Romania. He was told that it would take at least a month to get
a permit. The Association of Roma in Italy has been repeatedly complaining
about inefficiency at the consulate.
In an interview to Romanian daily Cotidianul Nov. 11, Italian foreign minister
Massimo D'Alema admitted that Italy does not yet have a solution for dealing
with nomadic populations. "If this is difficult for Romania, which has longer
experience of living together with the Roma, imagine what a delicate situation
we are in."
The minister said it is not surprising that more illegal acts are committed by
members "of a category that is socially and economically marginal."
Italian and Romanian politicians have agreed to work together to reduce
criminality among Romanians in Italy. Prodi and Tariceanu have jointly asked
for EU assistance. "The Europeans must do everything to prevent improvised
action - such as the Italian decree - from being taken on crucial issues like
this one," warns Balazs.
Some others are warning that the anti-crime fight should not target any
particular group. "The Romanian state was cowardly and impotent in trying to
place the blame for this incident on an ethnic group," said Madalin Voicu, a
well-known musician and representative of Romas in Romania.
"This case is not about Mailat being a Gypsy. I want to believe that people are
the same, and criminality is related to education, life conditions and
behaviour, not the colour of the skin."
(END)
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