In Rome, police in battle dress have evacuated Gypsy settlements and prevented children from going to school, and the city’s rightwing mayor, Gianni Alemanno, is having fingerprints taken of those who remain. In Milan, Silvio Berlusconi’s government has appointed a “commissioner extraordinary for the Roma emergency” and enforced ID checks for people entering their camps. In Naples, the police charged a settlement with Molotov cocktails, forcing families to flee; the faces of the terrified children were seen on television screens around the country that evening. “I see institutionalised racism here,” said Luciano Muhlbauer, the Milan regional councillor for the Communist Refoundation Party. The mayor of Venice, Massimo Cacciari, went further: “If they continue like that, they’ll be a threat to democracy.” Cacciari, a leftwing mayor, asked for social housing for the Roma but district committees, controlled by the right, turned him down. He is an exception among leftwing mayors who like to outdo the Northern League and the National Alliance when security is an issue, and deport the Romanian Roma, fine beggars and patrol the neighbourhoods.
