Race-based hate crimes are on the rise in Italy. The latest include the killing of a Moroccan, allegedly a thief, and an attack on a female discus thrower of African origins who competes on the Italian national team. A climate of hatred against those of other races has led to violent incidents on a daily basis in Italy and several shootings have occurred in recent weeks. Many of the victims have lived and worked in the country for many years and some were born in Italy and have Italian citizenship. A manhunt for an alleged thief in Aprilia, south of Rome, led to the death of a man of Moroccan nationality. The 43-year-old man reportedly died after being chased in Aprilia after some residents noted his presence in a car with a foreign license plate, forcing him to flee at high speed and end up off the road. Attack on discus athlete Italian athlete Daisy Osakue said Monday she was attacked at Moncalieri, near Turin. She was hit in the face by an egg hurled from a car and was taken to the hospital. "They did it on purpose," Osakue said. "They didn't want to hit me, as Daisy, they wanted to hit me as a young woman of color. There are several prostitutes in that area and they might have mistaken me for one of them. I have been the victim of racist incidents before, but only verbal ones. When you go from words to action it means another level has been reached.'' Osakue is a top discus athlete in her category under-23 in Italy and was born in Turin to Nigerian parents. Air guns used Several cases of air guns used against non-Italians or those that seem like it due to their ethnicity have also raised concern. Konate Bonagui, a youth from Mali who has been in Italy since 2014, has a restaurant in Naples and was one of the protagonists of a Masterchef cooking show, was shot and injured while walking in the city center by two people in a vehicle who used an air gun. A few days before, in Caserta, two youths from Mali hosted in migrant facilities had been shot by someone using an air gun from a speeding vehicle. Investigations conducted by the authorities will now explore social media networks to understand better how this hatred spreads and whether this may lead to more copycat attacks. The level of tension in the Campania region seems to be the highest in the country at the moment, following an air gun attack on July 27 on a youth from Gambia staying in migrant reception facilities. Climate of hatred In Latina, two air gun shots hit two young migrants that were waiting at a bus stop, while two other similar incidents have occurred in Forlì in the Emilia Romagna region: a Nigerian woman was injured by an air gun shot to her foot and a migrant from the Ivory Coast was shot using one by someone in a car while he was riding his bicycle. Another serious incident happened in Rome, where a man shot a 13-month-old baby girl from the Roma ethnic group from his balcony. The little girl remains in critical conditions. On July 26, a Capo Verde worker was shot in the back by a shotgun while he was working on scaffolding outside of a building in Vicenza.<doc-sep>ROME (Reuters) - Opposition politicians accused far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini on Monday of creating a climate of hate in Italy following a spate of racist attacks that have coincided with his anti-immigration drive. FILE PHOTO: Italy's Matteo Salvini attends a news conference about a trilateral meeting, during an informal meeting of EU Home Affairs Ministers in Innsbruck, Austria, July 12, 2018. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner/File Photo In the latest assault possibly motivated by racism, black Italian athlete Daisy Osakue was injured early on Monday when unknown assailants drove alongside her in a street near the northern city of Turin and hurled an egg at her face. “I don’t want to play the sexism or racism card, but people should be able to go out without someone attacking you out of the blue,” said Osakue, wearing a patch over her eye. “They are just cowards.” Doctors said Osakue, whose parents came from Nigeria, should recover in time to take part in next month’s European Athletics Championships in Berlin, where she is due to represent Italy in the discus. Local police questioned whether she had been victim of racism, saying there had been similar assaults that had targeted white locals. However, opposition politicians swept aside those concerns and the violence dominated local media. “The attacks against people of different color skin is now an EMERGENCY. This is now obvious, NOBODY can deny it, especially if they sit in government,” former center-left prime minister Matteo Renzi wrote on Twitter. The United Nations also voiced its alarm, saying it was “deeply worried” by the situation. “We can not tolerate this escalation of indiscriminate violence, which reveals an alarming racial matrix,” said Felipe Camargo, the southern European chief of the U.N. refugee agency. MUSSOLINI Salvini, head of the League party, has launched a crackdown on illegal immigration since entering a coalition government last month, closing Italian ports to migrant rescue boats and urging officials to apply tougher rules on asylum requests. “Is there a racism emergency in Italy? Don’t be stupid,” Salvini said in a statement on Monday in response to the clamor over Osakue. Saying he stood alongside any victim of violence, he added: “Certainly the mass immigration allowed by the left hasn’t helped matters.” Salvini has come under fire from human rights groups and factions within the Roman Catholic Church for his uncompromising stance on migration, with a popular Christian magazine comparing him to Satan on its front cover last week. “So many enemies, so much honor,” Salvini tweeted on Sunday, slightly tweaking a well-known saying of Italy’s World War Two dictator Benito Mussolini on the 135th anniversary of his birth. At the same time, he dismissed concerns over racist attacks in Italy, saying migrants were to blame for a third of all crimes in the country. “This is the only true drama,” he said. His comments exacerbated anger on the left. “Violence is multiplying everywhere. But he denies it,” said Maurizio Martina, head of the opposition Democratic Party (PD). At least eight migrants from various African countries have been shot by air rifles since the start of June in possible racist attacks. In addition, a Roma baby was hit by an air pellet and risks being paralyzed for life. The Italian who fired the gun has denied aiming at the child. The U.N. migration agency (OIM) said there had been 11 racist attacks in Italy since mid-June. “(This represents) an extremely worrying trend of violence and racism,” it said.<doc-sep>MONCALIERI, Italy — Daisy Osakue grabbed her pink sneakers from the terrace and packed them in a suitcase embossed with the Italian flag. All around her family’s apartment, newspaper articles, old photos and posters hailed her success in track and field. Dozens of medals hung from pictures of her family celebrating in traditional Nigerian dress. “Just need to get my medicine,” she said on Thursday morning, her left eye tearing and bloodshot, as she grabbed prescription drugs and eye patches. They sat on a coffee table next to white flowers a neighbor had dropped off in solidarity. Before this week, Ms. Osakue, 22, had a modicum of renown for throwing the discus farther than any other Italian woman ever in her age group. But since Sunday, when young men outside her apartment complex threw an egg that cut her cornea, she has become the bandaged face of Italy’s explosive debate over whether the country is becoming more racist under its new populist, anti-immigrant government or whether politically motivated liberals and a sensationalist media are unfairly sounding the alarm. What is clear is that Italy is on edge.<doc-sep>
Italy's government has been accused of fostering a climate of racism after a string of attacks, the most recent of which occurred Monday, the same day President Donald Trump praised the Italian prime minister at the White House for his hard-line immigration stance. Italian athlete Daisy Osakue, a 22-year-old discus thrower whose parents are from Nigeria, suffered corneal damage Monday when she was hit with an egg thrown from a car in northern Italy. The incident gave new fuel to opposition politicians' argument that the government's anti-immigrant rhetoric has resulted in a spate of violence against people of color. "The attacks against people of different color skin is now an emergency. This is now obvious, nobody can deny it, especially if they sit in government," former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi tweeted Monday. Although police said race may not have been a motivator in the attack against Osakue, she disagreed. "They didn't want to attack me, as Daisy. They wanted to hit me as a young woman of color. That's an area used by prostitutes, and I was mistaken for one of them," Osakue told the BBC. In the past two months, a Malian man was fatally shot while gathering scrap metal, a Moroccan man was beaten into a coma, and a Senegalese asylum seeker was physically attacked. In addition, according to The Guardian, "at least eight people from various African countries have been shot by air rifles since the start of June in possible racist attacks." Osakue recently returned to Italy after spending 10 months training and studying in the United States and said she is shocked at how the country has transformed. "Certainly, the climate of widespread violence that I see scares me," she said. Since taking power earlier this year the government—an alliance between the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and the far-right League—has forcefully promoted an anti-immigrant agenda, vowing to slow the flow of African and Middle Eastern migrants into the country. Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has led the charge to alter immigration policy. Salvini has prevented boats carrying rescued migrants from disembarking on Italian docks, challenged Germany over the European Union's immigration policies and proposed a census on Italy's Roma population. The minister, who has been dubbed "Europe's Donald Trump," has denied that his policy stances and rhetoric have led to a dangerous environment for immigrants. "A racist emergency? Let's not talk nonsense," he said of the revived allegations, as reported by Politico. "Mass migration allowed by the left does not help." As of June, more than 13,400 migrants had arrived in Italy, according to the International Organization for Migration. Last year at the same time, over 60,200 had landed in the country. Trump met with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte at the White House Monday and praised the European country's immigration stance. "I agree very much [with] what you're doing with respect to migration and illegal immigration, and even legal immigration," Trump said.