The recent rioting caused by African immigrants in the picturesque town of Rosarno, Italy has brought to light a disturbing fact of how organised crime within the country is still extremely widespread.
The riots broke out after it now appears three local residents shot a number of the legal immigrants with pellet guns.
Immigrants who arrive in Italy find themselves ending up trapped in a system where they work 10 – 14 hours a day for around $3 an hour. They live in improvised shelters of shacks or tents without any of the modern appliances or basic human resources we take for granted. They have no right to health care and support service’s/organisations to aid them are extremely scarce, non-white police are never seen and therefore many immigrants do not report any form of crime they fall victim to and often people go missing and are believed to be killed.
So these people become prime picking's for the organised crime gangs within the country as a slave labour force. And you can understand why. They receive a higher rate of pay, better living conditions and apparently better treatment from such gangs than the Italian government or officials give them.
Incidentally Italy’s parliament has only one non-white person representative
Still the Rosarno riots highlight the fact that this is a very volatile situation and at any moment more civil unrest can occur and that racism seem to be very much ingrained into the Italian governmental system which is obviously torn between acceptance of the immigrants and very xenophobic stance.
Many countries have now addressed these concerns to Italy. But as of yet Italy seems reluctant to really fully deal with the situation and until they do we should expect more of such incidents.
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