Race Riots in Calabria Region of Italy Escalate, Organized Crime Suspected

Race riots in Calabria region of Italy reached unprecedented heights during the weekend with more than a thousand African workers being put aboard buses and trains over the weekend and removed from immigrant detention centers following one of the worst riots in Italy in years. According to the New York Times, the clashes began Thursday night in Rosarno,which is a working-class city amid citrus groves in Calabria, after a legal immigrant from Togo was lightly wounded in a pellet-gun attack in a nearby city. Authorities said that it is not clear who initiated the fight, but they are investigating whether organized crime played a role in sparking the riots.

Dozens of immigrants, who blamed racism for the attack on the Togoan, burned cars and broke shop windows, threw rocks at local residents and clashed with police in Rosarno over two days of rioting. More than 50 immigrants and police officers were wounded, while 10 immigrants and locals were arrested before the authorities began sending the immigrants to detention centers elsewhere in southern Italy on Saturday. Some immigrants have characterized the series of events as comparable to the violence inflicted by the Ku Klux Klan in the United States in the 1960s during a dark period of in America's history of racial unrest.

Article continues: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/world/europe/11italy.html