Protesters clash with police in Rome over migrant centre

Migrants walk on train tracks on a railway station at Tabanovce border crossing between Macedonia and Serbia late on Thursday on their way to European countries.DPA/RomeFourteen Italian police officers were injured yesterday following clashes with far-right activists and local residents opposed to the relocation of a group of asylum seekers to a northern Rome suburb.Local activists in Casale San Nicola have been camping outside a former school since May 7, denouncing plans to turn it into a reception centre for about 100 migrants.Casa Pound Italia, a neo-Fascist organisation, joined their protest.A coach carrying a first batch of 19 asylum seekers was halted for hours by a road block, before baton-wielding police decided to charge through.Protesters insulted and threatened the migrants and police escorting them, and hurled stones, bottles and plastic chairs.“What we witnessed was indecent and undignified,” Prefect Franco Gabrielli, a top interior ministry official who authorised the opening of the migrant centre, said, urging the authorities to take a hard line against violent protesters.Police said they arrested two people, reported one to judicial authorities, and identified 15 other protesters, adding that they were considering taking further action after scrutinising video footage of the clashes.A spokeswoman for the protesters, Francesca Sanchietti, told the Ansa news agency that three people were hospitalised and several were hurt by the authorities.“We were all women with raised arms, and it was the police who charged at us,” she said. Livia Morini, one of the protesters, said the uprising was non-political even if it was backed by Casapound.“They have been supporting us for months with no flags, even if we do not share their [political] ideas,” she told Ansa.Residents argued that it was a bad move to transfer migrants to an isolated neighbourhood with little police presence and poor transport links.“We wanted to be reassured about security and on the fact that they would have stayed here as little as possible,” Morini said.Other violent protests took place earlier in the week in Quinto di Treviso, a small town 30km north of Venice, against the relocation of some 100 asylum seekers in a housing bloc.Between Wednesday night and Thursday, locals stole furniture from apartments reserved for migrants and set fire to it.Forza Nuova, another neo-Fascist organisation, staged a sit-in in their support.Tensions eased yesterday after the migrants were moved to a new accommodation – disused army barracks.Residents cheered Mayor Mauro Dal Zilio as he gave them the news.Matteo Salvini, leader of the fast-growing, far-right Northern League party, defended people’s right to protest the presence of migrants in their communities.Pro-government politicians accused him of political exploitation.The UN agency for refugees, UNHCR, condemned recent acts of intolerance and recalled that Italy currently hosts 93,700 refugees, about one per 1,000 inhabitant, against more than 200,000 each for Germany and France, 117,000 for Britain and 142,000 for Sweden.“It is shameful that citizens’ frustration is willingly channelled into violent actions against refugees and asylum seekers,” Laurens Jolles, UNHCR delegate for southern Europe, said. “People fleeing war and persecution cannot be and cannot become scapegoats.”In Italy, anti-migrant sentiment is rising amid a major influx of asylum seekers in a persistently weak economy.Arrivals from the Mediterranean have surged from 13,000 in 2012 to 170,000 in 2014, and have surpassed the 82,000 mark in the year to date.The centre-left government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is struggling to distribute incoming migrants across the nation and has had limited success in campaigning for greater burden sharing at the EU level.Anti-migrant protesters in Italy usually claim that they are likely to commit crimes and spread contagious diseases.In some cases, people have complained that having asylum seekers as neighbours reduce the value of their property.In a statement, Casa Pound Italia expressed outrage at the authorities “spending millions of euros to feed the migrant [reception] business” while “there is no money to open nursery schools or to give social housing to Italians in need”.