04.15.07
Chinese protesters, police clash in Italy: What’s going on?
Yet another case of blind men grasping at an elephant? One event, two news sources, two very different stories.
What we know for sure is that workers in Milan’s Chinatown clashed with local police. The Agent France Presse (AFP, the French equivalent of the Associated Press) characterizes the protesters as scofflaws who were rioting against an illegal-parking and illegal-working crackdown.
The article mostly quotes guys with last names like Moratti and Montanari, along with the “centre-left” La Repubblica newspaper, which refers to Milan’s Chinese as a “foreign community.” (Note to that fine publication: They live and work in the same country as you. So they’re not foreign.)
The Shanghai Daily, on the other hand, says that the protest was in response to the police’s assault on a pregnant Chinese woman who was disputing a parking violation with them. (The woman was also carrying a two-year-old baby in her arms at the time, reportedly.).
Other news sources, like the BBC and Reuters, take a more neutral stance. Both of those say that the whole mess started over an alleged vehicular violation, but they disagree on whether a woman was involved. (And no mention of pregnancy, either.)
The truth, once again, probably lies somewhere in the middle. But we’ll tell you this: If the AFP overlooked an assault on a pregnant woman, they’ve got some explaining to do.
Daniel said,
April 15, 2007 at 5:42 am
It’s very hard to tell what happened, because both articles had very different stories, also the BBC and Associated Press stories didn’t make much sense.
However, there is a youtube video taken from an Italian student there at the protest and it did not look that rowdy or violent from the protesting side. They had signs that read “Stop the violence” even though it was supposedly over a “traffic ticket.”
The general consensus I heard from the Chinese people was that for two months the Italian governtment kept passing laws targeting their businesses (especially shoes and clothing) because the native Italians had a hard time competing with them. It was mainly a protest against discrimination but there was a beating by the police during the protest. So far the Chinese embassy step in and is monitoring the issue closely with the Italian government.