Marchers in Italy stand up to racism after migrants shot

ROME — Marchers protested racism Saturday in several Italian cities and warned against a revival of neo-fascist sentiment amid the campaign for Italy’s March 4 national election.

In Macerata, a city in central Italy where a farright gunman with neoNazi sympathies wounded six African migrants Feb. 3 in a drive-by shooting, there were fears the march could trigger violence. But the march by several thousand people was peaceful.

Anti-fascist, anti-racism marchers also turned out in Milan, Turin, Rome and Palermo, Sicily, among other cities.

In Piacenza, a small city in northern Italy, some anti-fascism demonstrators hurled cobblestones at police and clashed with officers as they protested the opening of a local headquarters for a far-right political group, Sky TG24 TV and the ANSA news agency reported.

Italy’s election campaign has been marked by rising tensions over the country’s migrant population, which in the last few years has swelled by several hundred thousand people, many of them Africans. Most of them were rescued at sea from human traffickers’ boats in the Mediterranean.

Surveys indicate that many Italians blame immigrants for violent crime. Leaders of a center-right campaign alliance have pledged to deport huge numbers of the migrants if they win power.

In Macerata, the suspected gunman, Luca Traini, 28,was arrested for the Feb. 3 shootings that targeted African migrants. He has told authorities he had been angered by the death of an Italian woman whose dismembered body was found in suitcases.

Macerata prosecutors said four Nigerians are under investigation in her death.

TIZIANA FABI/GETTY-AFP A protester holds a placard — “Stop the fascism and racism, stop playing with the migrants’ life” — during an anti-racism demonstration Saturday in Macerata, Italy.