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'Sidewalk revolt' shakes Italy
13/04/2007 13:55 - (SA)
Rome - Violent protests in Milan's Chinatown produced banner headlines in Friday newspapers across Italy decrying a "sidewalk revolt" that broke out over a parking ticket.
"Milan: Revolt of the City Within the City", wrote Italy's leading daily Corriere della Sera over dramatic photographs of running battles that broke out on Thursday between police and hundreds of Chinese youths.
Several dozen people including police officers suffered injuries in the melee, which developed after a shopkeeper of Chinese origin loudly protested a fine of €40 (about R389) for parking illegally.
The centre-left daily La Repubblica said the "sidewalk revolt" should not be "underestimated" even though it was "a first in Italy between a foreign community" and police.
La Repubblica said the protest revealed "a new pride, unknown in previous generations" among Chinese immigrants, who began settling in the northern economic hub in the 1920s.
La Repubblica said Chinese immigrants are "atypical" because most are "relatively wealthy", hailing from the economically developed coastal provinces of Fujian and Zhejiang.
'Lawlessness was king'
The paper notes that the 13 000 Chinese in Milan make up about one-fifth of the overall Chinese community in Italy.
Another 10 000 are thought to be in the country illegally.
Corriere said "lawlessness was king" in Milan's Chinatown, while the city's right-wing Mayor Letizia Moratti told a news conference Thursday: "We won't tolerate any free zone in the city."
The community has been so successful economically that the "dragon" has begun "quietly, inexorably, with its own logic" conquering new territory in Milan, La Repubblica said.
"Chinatown has grown, but this impetuous and chaotic Chinese economic revolution has forced the city authorities to intervene," it said.
The paper however criticised the municipal authorities for enforcing traffic and other rules "in too drastic a way, trying to make up for time lost through the indifference of previous city governments."
- AFP
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