THE TELEGRAPH: Thousands of people took to the streets of Rome at the weekend to protest against a spate of attacks on immigrants and recent ugly displays of anti-Semitism.
Protesters marched amid fears that intolerance is on the rise in Italy as the country's president told the Pope he was concerned about "new manifestations of racism" domestically and across Europe.
The demonstration followed a poll taken by the centre-left La Repubblica newspaper which found that 86 per cent of readers agreed with the proposition that Italy faces "a racism emergency".
Last week a gang of teenage thugs beat up a 36-year-old Chinese immigrant in Rome.
The teenagers shouted racial abuse as they attacked Tong Hong-Shen, breaking his nose and leaving him bloodied and bruised.
Police said the same group was responsible for an earlier, similarly unprovoked attack on two immigrants from Ivory Coast.
In the northern city of Parma, a young Ghanaian student was allegedly assaulted by traffic police who mistook him for a drug dealer while in Milan a 19-year-old immigrant from Burkina Faso was allegedly beaten to death by the father and son owners of a bar who suspected him of stealing a packet of biscuits last month.
Six African immigrants were gunned down in a suspected mafia hit in Castel Volturno, near Naples, on Sept 18, in what police say may have been part of a drug trade turf war.
Attacks on foreigners have been accompanied by anti-Semitic graffiti appearing in Rome and other cities, including insults aimed at the Speaker of the Senate, Renato Schifani, after he paid a visit to Auschwitz last month. Protests in Italy against Escalating Racism >>> By Nick Squires in Rome | October 5, 2008
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