ITALY: Italian police announced the arrest of hundreds of suspected illegal immigrants yesterday in a sign of the determination of Silvio Berlusconi's new right-wing government to clamp down.
Police arrested 383 people, including 268 foreigners, with 53 immediately taken to the border for expulsion, in a week-long operation stretching from northern Italy to the Naples area.
Those arrested came from eastern Europe, Albania, Greece, north Africa and China and face charges ranging from illegal entry into Italy to prostitution and drug trafficking.
In Libya, police have arrested 240 would-be illegal migrants over the past four days as they prepared to sail to Italy, the interior ministry said.
The policeman in charge of the Italian operation, Francesco Gratteri, told reporters the sweep "wasn't aimed at any specific category or ethnic group. The sole objective were criminals who have caused a sensation of rising alarm in society."
The focus of Italian concern about immigrant crime is the Roma, who come from Romania and other eastern European countries. In Rome, police raided the biggest Roma camp and took away about 50 men for questioning.
The arrests coincided with a visit by Romanian interior minister Cristian David.
Romania has Europe's biggest Roma population and its prime minister warned that Italy's crackdown could cause "xenophobia" against other Romanians.
Italy has tried to reassure its fellow EU member Romanians are not being targeted. The two countries have launched a joint police effort and Romania will send a taskforce of 15 officers to work with Italian police this month.
Illegal Roma camps in Naples had to be evacuated by police this week after locals, angry at a suspected baby-snatching incident involving a 17-year-old Roma girl, set fire to shacks repeatedly during the night. No one was hurt.
The incident sparked warnings of "do-it-yourself justice", with Rome's chief policeman Carlo Mosca saying such behaviour was unacceptable and adding: "Foreigners are not the enemy."
Milan's conservative deputy mayor, Riccardo de Corato, said the problem was that "Italy has 700,000 illegal immigrants, but carried out about 1,500 expulsions in 2007. The numbers speak for themselves," he said. "People who want to work are welcome in Milan, but if you want to beg, go and do it in Bucharest."
Pope Benedict held an apparently unrelated meeting with the Vatican body for the care of migrant people, run by Cardinal Renato Martino, who spoke of "miseries related to migration" and mentioned "gypsies", a word some Roma consider offensive.
Italy's new interior minister, Roberto Maroni, from the anti-immigrant Northern League party, is rushing out emergency laws to bring back passport checks on Italy's EU borders, despite its membership of the Schengen passport-free zone.
He also wants to make illegal immigration a jailable offence and speed up the deportation process.
The league made strong gains in elections last month and is imposing tough measures to control immigrants in many northern cities. Its leader, Umberto Bossi, who often uses anti-immigrant rhetoric, said of events in Naples: "People do what the political class can't manage." -