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Interculture Wiki
Introductory summary of Via Anelli
What happened?
In the '70s Via Anelli was a nice place to live. There were modest apartments divided into six blocks where doctors and lawyers used to work but above all there were university students living there.
It is hard to say exactly when all these people moved away but at a certain point they were replaced by groups of immigrants mostly from Africa. Many of them were desperate, violent and probably had nothing to lose. Thus via Anelli has become a urban battlezone between rival gangs, drug dealers, and groups of immigrants, who still lack the possibility of working legally.
The main problem is that these illegal immigrants are willing to do the most dubious jobs to survive. However, life is hard for families of legal immigrants as well, as they try to bring up their kids in a developed country.
The wall
The straw that broke the camel's back was the finding of the corpse of a drug addict in August, followed by terrible riots between gangs of illegal immigrants. Thus, the administration decided to dismantell the area and find a house for the immigrants in the private market. In addition to this, during the dismantling of the ghetto a conflict with the inhabitants of confining buildings exploded. In order to stop these episodes of tension and violence a 84m long and 3m high wall was built. Policemen are on patrol 24 hours a day and check all the people at the gates.
In this way, the authorities try to limit the massive presence of drug dealers. The mayor of Padua, Flavio Zanonato, who ordered the construction of the wall, insists in saying that it was built simply to divide the neighborhood from dozens of drug dealers, to isolate them from the nearby residents who felt threatened in an atmosphere of constant violence and decay. He added that "it is not an instrument of segregation. We just want to limit the activity of the pushers here; it is just something that is harder for drug dealers to jump over."
Paolo Manfrin, who heads the local association of residents, stated that the wall really was built to defend people from crime and it should not be seen as something that divides blacks from whites. The spokesman says that residents are not afraid of the “militarization of the area”. The militarization is precisely what they wanted, because they have been afraid to leave their homes for ten years. According to Padua’s Centre-Left Council, the wall was the only possible solution in the short term. However, on the other side immigrants living there say that they feel incarcerated. Some Italian newspapers support this view by stating that a new Berlin Wall has been erected.
Is the wall a working solution?
Every ghetto becomes a stronghold of crime. Every ghetto creates hostility, and hostility leads to isolation, resentment, hate and violence. For this reason a significant number of people believe that Padua should not set a precedent for ghetto-quarters in Italy. The consequence is that Via Anelli has become notorious all over the country and the world as the worst possible example of failed integration.
Immigration is a touchy question in Italy and above all in the Veneto region, and it represents one of the main electoral strongholds of the anti-immigration Northern League party. In this region the standard of living is among the highest in Europe, but according to statistics immigrants represent an important percentage of the workforce because it is seriously difficult to find Italian labour nowadays. Although controls have increased, the situation in Padua is still the same.
See also
Bibliography
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Comments (3)
Sarah said
at 2:09 pm on Nov 6, 2006
Why don't you make a summary in English?
Sarah
Erica... said
at 3:48 am on Nov 26, 2006
Here is another link about via Anelli.
You should write something about what people think about this problem (especially those people who work in Centro Giotto or those people who live there without having the possibility to sell theri houses, because no one wants to buy such houses in this particular situation and position!).
Alessandra Peron said
at 12:27 pm on Nov 28, 2006
In my experience, you only start a new line when you start a new paragraph, so in my opinion it doesn't make much sense to begin a new line after each sentence. I think a pargraph should be at least 2-3 sentences long.
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