New riot police reinforcements were sent to a locality in southern Italy on Friday, where the appearance of a coronavirus outbreak among foreign workers has for several days been causing tension with the local population.
ud83c uddee ud83c uddf9 #Covid19 296 new cases of contamination in 24 hours in Italy. The army deployed as reinforcement.# JT8h @AlbanMikoczy pic.twitter.com/tOYfz2oP6L
— Info France 2 (@infofrance2) June 26, 2020
Some 700 people, mostly Bulgarians employed in the agricultural sector, have been confined since Monday in Mondragone, a town 60 km northwest of Naples, after the discovery of 43 cases of contamination among them, according to the president of the region from Campania, Vincenzo De Luca. Illegally occupying a complex of five buildings, they were ordered to remain confined to the site for a fortnight, while screening tests are underway throughout the neighborhood.
Many scuffles
On Thursday morning, a group of dozens of people broke through the confinement cord for a protest march in the city, causing tension and scuffles with residents, who threw stones at them.
Several vehicles belonging to Bulgarian residents were damaged, their windows broken by Italian residents who displayed their foreign license plates like a trophy, according to images broadcast by Italian television. An occupant of the building also threw a chair from the floors on the crowd massed on the forecourt. Another vehicle was set on fire overnight from Thursday to Friday by a Molotov cocktail.
The police intervened to turn them back, while around fifty soldiers arrived in the evening as reinforcements to delimit and enforce a containment zone. “No one should leave these buildings for 15 days. The area will be controlled 24 hours a day by the police, the gendarmes and the army,” Vincenzo De Luca told local press. “If there are a lot of positive cases, I will quarantine the city,” he warned.
Poverty
The situation returned to calm on Friday, and no clashes were to be reported, according to the AGI news agency. “Groups of citizens” nevertheless stationed at the entrances to the “red zone”, watched by the police and now delimited by concrete blocks installed on the road by the military.
The confined area is a block of four rectangular ocher buildings, squatted mainly by Bulgarians, many of whom are in an irregular situation, but also by Italian families. This subdivision “is one of the thousands of ghettos in Italy where one gathers foreigners more or less in order”, wrote an editorial on Friday in the daily Corriere della Serra.
Its occupants wish to return to their work on farms in the region to earn money, while the local population accuses them of helping to spread the coronavirus.
“Social bombs”
League president and far-right leader Matteo Salvini will be there as early as Monday, according to the League press office. He will come “to give the floor to respectable Italian citizens victims of intimidation and violence”, in a city that has become “social bomb”, consequence “of the policy of open doors and uncontrolled immigration”, accused the League. “These Bulgarian workers are part of this proletariat forced to thank you, without rights, often without contract or security,” wrote for his part the left writer Roberto Saviano, in La Repubblica, deeming “too easy” to accuse these foreigners .
So far, 19 Bulgarians have “escaped” from quarantine and have been found working in the fields, all tested negative, according to AGI. According to local hoteliers, quoted by AGI, there were 90% cancellations for this weekend which normally marks the start of the summer holidays in this seaside region, known for its production of tomatoes and mozzarella, but also gangrened by organized crime.
First country affected outside of China, Italy has paid a heavy price for the epidemic, with 34,644 dead and 239,410 people infected to date. The disease seems today under control, if one believes the figures of the health authorities, with between 18 to 30 deaths per day this beginning of week, and a reduced number of contaminations.
Several foci of contamination have nevertheless appeared in the last three weeks in the penis, including two in Rome and one in Bologna (center) in a delivery company. For the past week alone, ten new outbreaks have been identified, according to Italian media.
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