Senior Italian politician investigated for racial slur

Senate Vice President Roberto Calderoli (pictured above), a leading member of the Northern League party, who made the slur against Cecile Kyenge, is being investigated for defamation.

Mr Calderoli, who is in the opposition, has apologised and sent a bouquet of roses to Ms Kyenge, but he has refused to step down as one of the top institutional figures in the Senate.

Yesterday, Italy prime minister Enrico Letta said Mr Calderoli had been “asked to resign.”

He told Channel 4 News: “It’s a big problem of course,” he said. “We asked him to resign because it really was a shame for the country, for the image of the country.

“I think his approach was bad, stupid, and absolutely it was necessary for him to resign. This is why I asked him to resign, he is still there, it is a big problem for us.”

It is not the first time Mr Calderoli has been under fire for racist remarks: In 2006, he was forced to resign as a minister in Silvio Berlusconi’s government after he wore a T-shirt on state-run television featuring one of the Prophet Mohammed cartoons that had inflamed the Muslim world.

Instigating sexual violence

Also on Wednesday, a local councillor, who called for Ms Kyenge to be raped, was given a 13-month suspended sentence and banned from public office for three years.

A court found Dolores Valandro, a councillor for regionalist party the Northern League, guilty of instigating sexual violence for racial reasons for a Facebook post in June about Integration Minister Cecile Kyenge. Valandro wrote last month above a photo of Kyenge and an article from an anti-immigrant website about an attempted rape by an African:

“Why doesn’t anyone rape her, that way she will understand the experience of the victim of this bloody crime? Shame!”

The regionalist Northern League party expelled Valandro for the comments.

However the ban on Valandro holding public office will not come into effect until two appeals allowed by Italian law are exhausted, while the one-year-one-month sentence – almost the minimum for a crime that carries a penalty of between one and four years – means Valandro will not go to jail unless she re-offends.

Kyenge, an eye doctor and Italian citizen who was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has become a lightning rod for racist remarks since her appointment as Italy’s first black minister in April, sparking debate in a country struggling to adapt to an increase in immigration over the last two decades.

Speaking to the Associated Press, Kyenge said:

“It is clear that my path has not been an easy one. It has been difficult in terms of integration, and for professional affirmation, and for even the possibility to study,”

But she urged those who have issues with race to “translate your discomfort into a different language, not a violent one, but a message that might improve the system.”