PROSTITUTE JIBE DIRECTED AT BLACK ITALIAN MINISTER!

The latest abuse directed towards Cecile Kyenge, the minister for integration, came from Cristiano Za Garibaldi, a deputy mayor with the conservative People of Freedom party of Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister.
In a Facebook message, he implied that Mrs Kyenge, 48, who was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo but moved to Italy 30 years ago, frequented a road between the towns of Savona and Imperia, in the region of Liguria, which is used by prostitutes.
A day after posting the insult, Mr Za Garibaldi back-pedalled furiously, claiming that he had been under a great deal of stress in the last two months as a result of having to find money to pay taxes on his business.
“The comments I published were in bad taste and offensive,” he said.
Mrs Kyenge has been subjected to such a tirade of racist abuse since being appointed a minister in April that insulting her had become “a national sport”, commented La Repubblica, one of Italy’s leading dailies.
The fact that the abuse has come from national and regional politicians, rather than anonymous bigots spouting racism online, has embarrassed many Italians.
“These attacks are unacceptable and an attempt to delegitimise the minister and her work,” said Edoardo Patriarca, an MP from the centre-Left Democratic Party. “Mrs Kyenge is rightly pursuing a cultural battle to give more rights to immigrants and to combat racism.”
The minister, who is married with two children, has reacted with quiet dignity to the abuse, saying she believes it is not so much directed at her personally but is an expression of resistance against the way that Italy is becoming increasingly multi-cultural, after two decades of immigration.
Last month, as she was making a speech at a rally, a member of the audience threw bananas at her.She was compared to an orang-utan by Roberto Calderoli, the vice president of the Italian Senate and a senior politician in the anti-immigration Northern League. He rejected calls to resign.
In June a female politician was forced to resign after saying that Mrs Kyenge “should be raped” so that she understood what two Italian women had been through during a sexual assault by a Somali immigrant.