Det har vært flere stygge voldsepisoder mot utlendinger i Italia den senere tid. Leder av Nasjonalalliansen og president i underhuset, Gianfranco Fini, sier det er en reell fare for rasisme og fremmedfrykt.

Last week a gang of teenage thugs beat up a 36-year-old Chinese immigrant in Rome.

The teenagers shouted racial abuse as they attacked Tong Hong-Shen, breaking his nose and leaving him bloodied and bruised.

Police said the same group was responsible for an earlier, similarly unprovoked attack on two immigrants from Ivory Coast.

In the northern city of Parma, a young Ghanaian student was allegedly assaulted by traffic police who mistook him for a drug dealer while in Milan a 19-year-old immigrant from Burkina Faso was allegedly beaten to death by the father and son owners of a bar who suspected him of stealing a packet of biscuits last month.

Six African immigrants were gunned down in a suspected mafia hit in Castel Volturno, near Naples, on Sept 18, in what police say may have been part of a drug trade turf war.

Attacks on foreigners have been accompanied by anti-Semitic graffiti appearing in Rome and other cities, including insults aimed at the Speaker of the Senate, Renato Schifani, after he paid a visit to Auschwitz last month.

During a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI in Rome on Saturday, Italy’s president, Giorgio Napolitano, said he was concerned about «new manifestations of racism» in Italy and the rest of Europe.

Gianfranco Fini, the speaker of the lower house of parliament, warned: «In Italy there exists a real danger of racism and xenophobia.»

Protests in Italy against escalating racism