Living in Italy I had the chance to follow this whole story in these past days... I also had one of my uncles who was in Calabria since yesterday, not in that particular place, but Calabria is "small enough", everybody know everything about each others
I don't know how it will be reported by the international media...
Anyway here's an "african action" story
I can say this, it's true: these people were actually exploited by the landowners (most of them) which especially in the southern regions of Italy have alwayls been exlpoiers, for decades they exploited their fellow italians (that's one of the reason of the massive immigrations of southern italians to northern Italy and to rest of the world), then when they run out of italians or when italians became too expensive they exploited eastern immigrants and now they use africans to pick their oranges.
In this particular place, called Rosarno, it seems there were 2-3 big, old warehouses near the orange trees fields where around 2000 (illegal) africans used to live... You can imagine in what kind of condition... By the way as far as I "heard" they salary was 20 euros for 8-10 hours of work, of course nobody exept these people could work for such a low amount of money...
Now it seems that everthing started with a trivial argument between one of these africans and one of the landowners, the african guy was probably protesting for the low wages or something like that (it's not clear), then they start to argue more violently until the landowner pick-up one of his rifles (I guess it was what's called "lupara" which is an old school type of rifle), he loaded the rifle with salt and he shooted the african guy...
I guess it hurts a lot even if it's not a bullet, and it's not a nice thing to do... Anyway from that point on the whole african community, which as I stated above, was about 2000 people, started a massive riot, they all head to the village (Rosarno) breaking and destroing everything they encounter (sign posts, parked cars, garbage tanks), they even started to throw rocks to every native they encounter (women and children included)...
Two explicative episodes:
a) they were all running in a street to reach the center of the village, when they saw a mother and her daughter that were watching them from their second floor terrace (of course they were watching them, they never saw anything like that and they didn't even know what and why was happening), these africans immediatly stopped there and started to throw rock at these two women. The husband then pick up his rifle went out on the terrace and shooted twice
in the air to make them stop, the africans then began to charge the door of the house to get in... Fortunately the police arrived so at least that situation was cooled a little bit. But they keep on going around destryoing everything...
b) there was a car with a young woman and his two children, all of a sudden she got surronded by this flood of africans that where shouting her to get out (of course she didn't, who would get out of his car in a situation like that), well guess what, they started to throw rocks to break the car's glasses, they eventually succeded to do that, meanwhile she and her children were screaming for help and some of their fellow villagers heard them so they run there to help them just in time, because the african already managed to take them out of the car beating them and with the intention to set fire to the car itself... And if those italians weren't there to save the woman and her children, who know what else could have happened...
So this was the situation in the early stage of the riot, I forgot to mention that Rosarno had only 150 policemen, again it's a small village!
I said the "early stage" of the riot, because when it was clear what was happening to the villagers and to the people who lives in nearby communities, then the "counterattack" started... Our newspapers called it the "Caccia all'africano", which means that "the hunting season for africans was open"... There were group of people patroling the streets shooting with air rifles and with "bird" rifles (I call them bird rifles, I don't know how they are called in the US, I mean those rifle that shoot little "lead dots" projectiles)...
Nobody was killed as far as I know but many africans were injured, two of them especially which obviously did something they shouldn't have done (we'll never know what, but we know they did it) where "gambizzati" which is an italian term that indicates someone who has been purposedly shooted in both legs...
So a real "guerriglia" started for a while until special police forces were sent in the place to cool down the situation, actually they were sent for the sake of the africans (!), the media also arrived, so the africans then felt more secure and restarted to protest and do mayhem here and there, they charged the police so that now we have "beautiful" photos that show policemen beating them, so that the international community could use them to proof once again how racist is the people in Italy and so on...
I'm expecting major comdenations from any kind of organizations in the next days (the vatican already started btw)
The "funny" thing is that now our TVs are interviewing all of them, and they all say
"We want away from here, here people racist! They shoot black people here, Italy are racist!" (they speak worst english than me!), but nobody take them as slaves here, they were illegal here (which is a crime under current law) and they could have gone away if they wanted to...
So now they (all of them, 2000 people!) have been transported away from Rosarno, in special immigrants reception centers where we'll have to pay cures and food for them, until either England or France decide to grant them asylum I guess...