Torching of Indian immigrant prompts political row in Italy

Feb 2, 2009, 11:16 GMT

Rome - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government came under fire on Monday for allegedly fostering anti-immigrant sentiment after an Indian man was brutally beaten and set alight at the weekend.

Opposition leader Walter Veltroni said the attack was due to 'xenophobic preaching and a climate of hate and fear' created by Berlusconi's centre-right administration.

The 35-year-old immigrant, from the northern Indian state of Punjab, was attacked early on Sunday while he was sleeping on a bench at a railway station in Nettuno, some 60 kilometres south of Rome.

The three alleged assailants, including a 16-year-old boy, punched and struck Singh Navtej with a broken bottle before pouring petrol over him and setting him alight.

Former interior minister Giuseppe Pisanu, an ally of Berlusconi, criticized the government's 'zero tolerance' policy on illegal immigration in a newspaper interview Monday.

'We're looking at everything through glasses tinted by fear,' Pisanu told the Corriere della Sera a day after the assault on Navtej.

The three have denied a racial motive to the attack, according to Rome-based Il Messaggero, but admitted assaulting Navtej 'as a joke' following a night-long drugs-and-alcohol binge.

Police, alerted by a telephone call, took the severely-injured Navtej to a Rome hospital where on Monday he was being treated for third degree burns to his legs, arms and neck.

Members of Nettuno's Indian community together with civil rights activists staged a street protest Sunday following the attack, and denounced what they said is growing intolerance towards foreigners in Italy.

Similar protests took place in Civitavecchia, a port city north of Rome, on Saturday after an off-duty police officer was arrested for fatally shooting a Senegalese neighbour.

The policeman said he accidently fired when intervening to break up a fight between the Senegalese man and other immigrants, but some witnesses have denied this.

Rome's conservative Mayor Gianni Alemanno, condemned this 'latest barbaric violence,' but said that the facts need to be ascertained before 'launching political theories.'

The weekend incidents came in the wake of the attempted lynching last week of four Romanian men who were being escorted by police to prison after their arrest for allegedly raping a woman in another town near Rome, Guidonia.

Berlusconi's coalition, which includes the often xenophobic Northern League, successfully ran on a anti-crime and anti-illegal immigration ticket in the 2008 elections.