Italian beach culture is usually so body conscious. But not this time...
Sunbathers at Torregaveta in Italy look at the covered bodies of two Roma girls who had drowned in the sea a mere hour earlier
Saturday July 26 2008
It seemed like a shameful display of indifference in the face of death. The lifeless bodies of two girls, who happened to be members of the Roma community, had been laid out on a southern Italian beach following a double drowning tragedy.
The makeshift shrouds thrown over the small corpses looked hopelessly undignified: brightly coloured beach towels obscured the girls' faces and bodies. Their little feet peeked out from under the brash coverings. It was a pitiful sight. But sunbathers sitting close by carried on regardless, apparently unfazed by the shocking sight of two dead bodies on the Neopolitan strand.
The Roma youngsters, Cristina and Violetta, had come to the beach at Torregaveta last Saturday with two other girls, Diana and Manuela. Some eyewitnesses said the four -- all members of the same extended family -- were begging, others said they were trying to sell trinkets.
The girls went for a dip in the sea around lunchtime. It seems that none of them knew how to swim and they soon got into trouble in the rough waves.
Some sunbathers and professional lifeguards from a nearby private beach tried to help but Cristina and Violetta drowned after being dashed against rocks. Diana and Manuela survived and were taken away by the authorities.
Italian newspapers reported that few sun-worshippers left the beach, apparently seeing no reason to cut short their day at the seaside. In the hour or so that passed before the bodies were removed from the shore by mortuary services, bikini-clad bystanders simply resumed their beach rituals of applying sun tan lotion and snacking. "While the lifeless bodies of the girls were still on the sand, there were those who carried on sunbathing or having lunch just a few metres away," said one report.
Some commentators have subsequently wondered how these impassive beachgoers would have reacted if two Italian signorinas had been lying dead on the beach.
Would the shallow beach culture have continued if the girls who had drowned in the depths had not been Roma? The Archbishop of Naples, Cardinal Crescenzo Sepe, was not slow to deliver a verbal belt of the crozier for what he saw as a chilling lack of compassion.
"Indifference is not an emotion for human beings," he thundered, "and it should be even less so when faced with Violetta and Cristina, already scarred by a life of hardship and weakened by the prejudices that must have been difficult to bear at their age." The Archbishop remarked that while the rubbish crisis that plagued the Naples area in recent times may have been cleaned-up, he was now warning of a much more serious moral crisis to come.
"The city is undoubtedly cleaner and more presentable. But the Church has the duty to look into the soul of its children. And if it sees indifference growing, everything can become irreparably dirty," he said. But some say those who witnessed the incident should not be criticised.
Torregaveta's Mayor has defended them, pointing out that some helped with the rescue bid, and denying the existence of a prejudiced attitude to the Roma.
Others say the sun seekers who remained unmoved by what happened were simply taking their lead from their government's hardening attitude to the country's 150,000-strong Roma community. Politicians voicing anti-immigrant rhetoric proved popular with voters in this year's General Election, although not all Roma are newcomers to Italy. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Right-wing allies in the Northern League helped ease him to victory with a strong showing of their own.
In May, rumours that a Roma woman had tried to abduct an Italian baby girl in Naples triggered attacks on sprawling Roma camps by vigilantes wielding Molotov cocktails.
The firebrand leader of the Northern League party, Umberto Bossi, argued this grassroots action was understandable, claiming: "People are going to do what the political class cannot." Berlusconi awarded the coveted position of Interior Minister to the tough-talking Northern League figure, Roberto Maroni.
Maroni courted controversy last month when he proposed fingerprinting Roma children, saying this would make it easier for the authorities to identify child beggars. The European Commission and human rights organisations have weighed in with strong criticism, urging the Italian government to introduce measures aimed at integrating Roma into mainstream society rather than implementing laws which risk further isolating the minority group.
There are fears that a discreet message appears to be filtering down from certain prominent politicians to some disgruntled Italians: The Roma is the minority it's okay to ignore, if not actively dislike.
Which perhaps goes some way to explaining why the body conscious beach babes of Torregaveta appeared to turn a blind eye to the dead bodies of two Roma children.
- Mary Minihan
