Racist taunts against Italy’s first Black cabinet minister, Cecile Kyenge, took another ugly turn when someone hurled bananas at her during a rally.
Kyenge’s appointment as Italy’s Minister of Integration three months ago isn’t sitting well with right-wing radicals whose racial slurs and antics have overshadowed her tenure.
The banana incident is just the latest.
It took place in Cervia, where Kyenge was speaking to supporters. A man popped up out of the crowd and launched two bananas toward the podium, Kyenge spokesman Cosimo Torlo said.
The bananas fell short of the stage, landing between the first and second row of spectators.
Giancarlo Mazzuca, chief editor of the daily newspaper Il Giorno, was sitting two chairs away from Kyenge.
“I was able to verify which levels can be reached by human stupidity,” he wrote in a column.
Police haven’t found the person who hurled the bananas. There will be increased security around the minister, Torlo said.
Kyenge shrugged off the episode—as she has with the other incidents.
In a Twitter post, she called it a sad waste of food when so many people are dying of hunger.
Just before Kyenge arrived for the rally, a group smeared blood-red paint and anti-immigrant messages onto mannequins.
“Immigration kills,” read signs attached to the dummies.
The far-right political group Forza Nuova (“New Force”) claimed responsibility for the mannequins.
The scene was also littered with fliers that said Italy’s future growth depends on “protecting the Italian identity,” according to the ANSA news agency.
In addition to the banana incident, Italian Sen. Roberto Calderoli likened Kyenge to an orangutan. Calderoli, a member of the anti-immigration Northern League party, made the remarks at a political rally.
“I love animals—bears and wolves, as everyone knows—but when I see the pictures of Kyenge, I cannot but think of, even if I’m not saying she is one, the features of an orangutan,” he was quoted as saying.
After his comments were published, Calderoli said “if I’ve offended her, I apologize.”
“It was a joke, a comment in a joking way. There was nothing particularly against her,” he said. “It was just my impression. . . . It is all very well that she be a minister but in her own country. Given that this government needs to govern Italy, I hope that it is done by Italians.”
Kyenge responded diplomatically, saying Calderoli “does not need to ask forgiveness to me, but he should rather reflect on the political and institutional role that he carries. It is on this that he needs to make a profound reflection also to then apologize.”
She added, “Also, he must go beyond putting everything on a personal level. I think the time has come for us to study the problem of communication.”
Kyenge has also received death threats before visiting an area where the Northern League is powerful.
A local politician recently said on Facebook that Kyenge should be raped so she can understand the pain felt by victims of crime, which some politicians blame on immigrants.
She’s been called a “Congolese monkey,” “Zulu” and “the Black anti-Italian.” One Northern League official said “she seems like a great housekeeper” but “not a government minister.”
Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta appealed to Northern League leader Roberto Maroni to “close this chapter right away.”
Other elected officials are publicly supporting Kyenge. Italy’s environment minister Andrea Orlando expressed “utter indignation for the wretched act,” while agriculture minister, Nunzia De Girolamo, said “Kyenge has shown that faced with idiotic and violent acts, sometimes the best weapon is irony.”
Judicial sources at a court in the northern city of Bergamo confirmed a file had been opened looking into the comments, made by Calderoli.
Calderoli has fended off calls to resign after his “orangutan” comment, but told the Senate that they should judge him on his behavior there, rather than at the political rally where the racial slur was committed.
He said that Kyenge had accepted his apology, that he would send her a bouquet of flowers, and added: “I said something foolish and I recognize that.”
Meanwhile a councillor for the Northern League was given a 13-month suspended sentence and banned from public office for three years because she suggested Kyenge should be raped.
Dolores Valandro was found guilty by a court in Padua of inciting sexual violence for racial reasons, after she posted a comment on an article about an attempted rape by an African: “Why doesn’t anyone rape her [Ms. Kyenge], that way she will understand the experience of the victim of this bloody crime? Shame!“
The government has also authorized an investigation into neo-fascist websites whose members called Kyenge “Congolese monkey” and other epithets.
Among the issues that Kyenge is pushing for that anger conservatives are laws that make it easier for individuals born in Italy not of Italian heritage to gain citizenship before the age of 18. Conservative political factions across Italy are continuing to show their face, upping the ante with a mantra that originally featured on the Facebook page of a 19 year-old Veronese boy: “Bananas at Cervia, hand grenades at Verona.”
Kyenge, 48, was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and moved to Italy three decades ago to study medicine. An eye surgeon, she lives in Modena with her Italian husband and two children. She was active in local centre-left politics before winning a seat in the lower Chamber of Deputies in February elections.
While her ascent to a top government position reflects the success of immigrants, it also has stoked nativism.
She founded an intercultural association (DAWA) to promote mutual awareness, integration and cooperation between Italy and Africa, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She is also the spokesperson of the association “March First,” which works to promote the rights of migrants in Italy.
Premier Enrico Letta tapped Kyenge to be Minister of Integration in April in his hybrid centre-left and centre-right government that won its second vote of confidence.
Italy, which for decades was a land of emigration, has relatively little experience in dealing with immigration.
While millions of Italians fleeing poverty emigrated to the United States, Latin America and other parts of Europe throughout the 20th century, the Mediterranean country has only had to absorb large numbers of immigrants over the past 20 years or so, mainly from Africa.
As African immigrants have integrated into Italian society and become more visible, racist incidents have popped up including taunts hurled at soccer players by fans.
On the other hand in 2008, Italian Vogue stormed into the fashion world with it’s all-Black issue, featuring page after page of Black models. The edition sold out in 72 hours in both America and the United Kingdom, and ignited conversations about the inclusion of Blacks as models.
Holly Yan, Lauren Russell and Boriana Milanova | CNN
