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Racism Shows
In Violent Attacks

Rome (JTA) — A series of
violent attacks this summer
against homeless people and
Third-World immigrants is
raising concern in Italy
about a rise in racism and
intolerance at a time when
Italy is going through
difficult political, social and
economic changes.
The incidents have includ-
ed attacks by groups of
youths on individual persons
as well as mob actions
against communities of im-
migrants.
There have been at least
two minor incidents of anti-
Semitism, in which
swastikas and slogans were
scrawled on a few Jewish
shops in Rome and at the
Jewish cemetery in the nor-
thern town of Merano, but
otherwise Jews have not
been targets of attacks.
Two Israeli students were
beaten by a group of youths
in July, but their attackers
apparently believed they
were North Africans.
The number of attacks
does not approach the level
of racist assaults in Ger-
many. But the upsurge has
raised particular concern
here because, in addition to
attacks by skinheads, the re-
cent incidents have included
assaults by people con-
sidered to be respectable
citizens carrying out in vig-
ilante fashion actions they
considered to be in legiti-
mate self-defense.
The latest attacks took
place Aug. 23, in two widely
separated places in Italy.
In the Adriatric beach
resort town of Riccione,
seven skinheads shouting
racist slogans beat up a 25-
year-old prostitute from
Cameroon.
The same night in a small
town in Sardinia, three
youths shouting similar
statements beat a 24-year-
old Moroccan man.
A few days earlier, a group
of youths attacked a
Moroccan family at their
home in Rome, and in Milan,
a group of six youths de-
scribed as being from "good
families" and calling them-
selves the "Anti-Bum
Squad" brutally beat up a
homeless man.
Two youths staged a
copycat attack on a homeless
man in Rome a few days
later.
"Milan has become
unlivable for a series of
reasons," one of the Milan

youths, a teen-ager not iden-
tified by name, was quoted
by the newspaper La Stampa
as saying.
The youth blamed immi-
grants for all sorts of woes
and said, "Seeing that no
one has ever been concerned
to clean things up, we are do-
ing it ourselves."
This attitude took on a
more worrisome form earlier
this summer in the cities in
the north and south of the
country.
Last month in the nor-
thern city of Genoa, there
were several days of large-
scale street fighting between
Italian citizens and immi-
grants.
In the southern town of
Stornara the night of Aug.
15, local citizens described
as acting like a "lynch mob"
rose up against hundreds of
Africans based there as sea-
sonal migrant agriculture
workers for the tomato
harvest.
Experts say the highly
unstable social, political and
economic crisis is a key.
Hard hit by economic
recession, which has taken
unemployment nationwide
up to more than 12 percent,
Italy has been going through
a tumultuous season of polit-
ical change, including a cor-
ruption scandal in which
more than 2,000 of the
nation's top politicians and
business people have been
involved.
"The fact is, that the
socioeconomic situation is
changing now, unfortunate-
ly in a negative way,"
psychiatrist Paolo Crepet
told the newspaper I
Messaggero.

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Religious Leave
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Sydney, Australia (JTA) —
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