By Nick Meo in Rom
Last Updated: 11:28PM BST 09 Aug 2008 “Telegraph”
When soldiers arrived with submachine guns to fight crime last week outside Rome's Saxa Rubra metro station, residents of the quiet commuter suburb applauded and shouted "bravo".
Judging from the mood in the suburbs, the 3,000 soldiers deployed by Silvio Berlusconi have won the hearts and minds of the commuting classes "
It's great to see the army here," Luigi Cabras, 60, a civil servant, said with enthusiasm. "There used to be lots of petty stealing, but it's much better now. And the gipsies who were camped around here have gone, thank God."
The station is crime-plagued; a littering problem, pickpocketing, and car park break-ins, all blamed on gipsies from the squalid camp which used to be next to the station until bulldozers moved in a fortnight ago. But everybody knows why combat veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq have been deployed, the first time the army has been on the streets of Italy since anti-Mafia operations in the 1990s. Mr Cabras gestured towards a nearby field and shook his head sadly.
"Before things change, you have to have a dead body," he said. What he pointed at was the spot where an admiral's wife was raped and beaten to death in November, in one of Rome's most shocking murders for years.
Giovanna Reggiani, 47, a housewife and religious education teacher, was walking back to her car along a badly-lit road when she was attacked and murdered by an illegal immigrant from Romania.
The incident provoked a nationwide backlash against Italy's 150,000-strong gipsy community, which has seen them portrayed as one of the biggest threats to the Eternal City since the Barbarian invasions.
Gipsies, also known as Roma, have been in Italy for centuries, ever since their ancestors arrived as metalworkers and merchants from India. Many live in houses rather than itinerant camps and have intermarried with Italians, sending their children to school and integrating into society. But over the past decade, their numbers have almost doubled as poorer, uneducated gipsies arrived from Eastern Europe, some fleeing Balkan wars, others simply in search of a better life, creating additional strains with a host community that has never entirely accepted them. Saxa Rubra's white-collar workers are delighted to see the military fully-armed as they set off for work, without the fear of being raped, robbed.
Fabio Monaci, 25, who has been giving the soldiers discounts at his sandwich shop, feels much safer. "Crime is a real worry in Italy now," he said gravely as he poured an espresso. "But it won't be so bad if we get into a new era of discipline."
That is exactly what is promised by new prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, and Northern League allies on a wave of fear and perception of the problem about crime. Sending 3,000 troops to guard railway stations and tourist spots has been Mr Berlusconi's boldest move yet, and judging from the mood in the suburbs, the soldiers have won the hearts and minds of the commuting classes, after the murder of Mrs Reggiani, most Italians are pleased to see them. The killing was particularly shocking for Romans because their city is considered relatively safe by the standards of other European centres – there is nothing comparable to London's current knife crime epidemic, for example.
Mr Berlusconi declared a "Roma emergency", produced a disputed dossier of alleged immigrant muggings, robberies and murders, and promised to dismantle illegal gipsy camps. So far 700 have been identified. On the streets of northern Rome there are no reservations regarding the Government coming to terms with reality "All our problems come from immigrants getting drunk, smashing windows and stealing," said Anna Maria Mercure, who at 80 is old enough to remember an earlier era of Italian discipline. "Mussolini had his positive side. The streets were safe in his day." We need another man …..Berlusconi”.
The residents of the Rome suburb of Centocelle, a pleasant, tree-lined district of modest apartment blocks, finally lost patience last week with the gipsies in a local camp called Casalina 900, a miniature shanty town where rats and naked children run amid piles of half-burnt rubbish and beer bottles. These, gipsies who left the Balkans, have coexisted uncomfortably with their Italian neighbours for more than a decade, after arriving uninvited, unwanted and unwashed
This nervous, apprehensive, explosive, situation erupted last week when the migrants burnt old tyres instead of taking them to the dump, creating clouds of acrid black smoke. In the current political climate, it became the catalyst for a riot, with Centocelle's residents staging a demonstration in the middle of a major highway.
"I would kill them all," said Virginia Cristell, a mother in her 40s. " send them back from where they came, they are dirty and there are endless problems with burglary and thieving”. Soon her wish will come partly true. Rome's new Right-wing mayor, Gianni Alemanno, promised if they gave up their road protest he would get rid of the camp.
For these creatures of Casalino 900, the bulldozers will be another of life's frequent disasters. Afterwards they will scavenge what possessions they can and move off to some other patch of unoccupied land, hopefully in Bulgaria or Romania whose governments are accustomed to dealing with these people. The camp has been sealed off by police, a relief to civilized human beings. ************************************************************
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