{"id":635,"date":"2011-03-22T12:06:46","date_gmt":"2011-03-22T11:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/premesso.newcontrarian.com\/?p=635"},"modified":"2011-03-22T12:06:46","modified_gmt":"2011-03-22T11:06:46","slug":"human-rights-watch-condemns-italy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/premesso.com\/?p=635","title":{"rendered":"Human Rights Watch Condemns Italy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
"Yes, it's racist."<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Human Rights Watch released a report on the state of racism and xenophobia in Italy yesterday. \u00a0The results are not cheerful reading.<\/p>\n

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

As usual, the Italian press reacts with typical oversimplification and indignation: “Human Rights Watch says Italy is racist,” say Liquida.<\/a><\/em> 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. \u00a0The Italian press stokes unfounded fears of military retaliation (nicely debunked here<\/a>) while interior minister Roberto Maroni asks the EU for \u20ac100m ($138m)<\/a> and stokes fear by quoting wildly-vacillating numbers of immigrants <\/a>in Libya (presumably destined for Italy’s shores).<\/p>\n

The goings-on on the other side of the\u00a0Mediterranean\u00a0have 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<\/a> news<\/a> outlet<\/a> out <\/a>there<\/a> took pains to explain to unfamiliar readers that Berlusconi’s hold on power is thanks to the anti-immigrant or xenophobic Northern League.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0If so, then the question remains to the aging elites in Rome who push for such legislation in a\u00a0country\u00a0with one of the world’s lowest birth rates that\u00a0posted\u00a0a 0.1% growth rate<\/a> at the close of last quarter: who will do the work in the Italy of the future?<\/p>\n

The report\u00a0in full is up here<\/a>; the abstract\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Human Rights Watch released a report on the state of racism and xenophobia in Italy yesterday. \u00a0The 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 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Human Rights Watch Condemns Italy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,36,42,43,47,63,64],"tags":[432,436,441,305,386],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/premesso.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/premesso.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/premesso.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/premesso.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/premesso.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/premesso.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/premesso.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/premesso.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/premesso.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}