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Outrage over ‘Kyenge’ monkey Facebook post

A member of Italy’s anti-immigrant Northern League party has sparked outrage after a photo of a black politician with the head of a monkey appeared on his Facebook profile, a suspected reference to Italy’s Integration Minister, Cecile Kyenge.

Published: 1 November 2013 17:03 CET
Outrage over 'Kyenge' monkey Facebook post
The post has now been removed. Screengrab: Facebook

The offensive post appeared on the public Facebook profile of Fabio Rainieri, a former MP and the Northern League’s Regional Secretary for Emilia, Northern Italy, Il Fatto Quotidiano reported on Thursday.

The image, which shows a black minister with the head of a monkey under the caption: “Guess who it is???” has now been removed.

When contacted by the paper, Rainieri denied that the image was directed at anyone in particular.

“It’s not written anywhere, there’s no reference to her. If you say so then I’ll take legal action,” he said.

The former MP even claimed that he had nothing to do with the post: “I didn’t write it, it was whoever manages my Facebook page.”

When asked why he had finally decided to take the post down Ranieri said: “I took it down because I don’t like this kind of thing. Cartoons are fine, but not this kind of thing.”

If the Facebook post does turn out to be linked to the Integration Minister it won’t be the first time the Northern League party has come under fire for inappropriate comments aimed at the minister, who is originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Italy's first black minister.

In July, Kyenge was compared to an orangutan by a leading member of the Northern League, deputy speaker of the Senate Roberto Calderoli, who later claimed he had not intended to be racist.

The minister also had bananas thrown at her during a political rally and one Northern League councillor even called for her to be raped, sparking an outcry and his expulsion from the party.

In August, Kyenge said she would not attend a conference organized by the Northern League party after a torrent of racist abuse from members of the anti-immigration group.

And later that month, Matteo Salvini, an MEP and member of the Northern League came under fire for saying that Kyenge should “go and be a minister in Egypt”, after she suggested the crisis in Egypt might bring an increase in immigration.

More recently in October a poll conducted by IPR Marketing found that more than a fifth of Italians think that having a black minister is wrong.

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EUROPEAN UNION

Italian PM Meloni says will stand in EU Parliament elections

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Sunday she would stand in upcoming European Parliament elections, a move apparently calculated to boost her far-right party, although she would be forced to resign immediately.

Published: 28 April 2024 15:54 CEST
Italian PM Meloni says will stand in EU Parliament elections

Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which has neo-Fascist roots, came top in Italy’s 2022 general election with 26 percent of the vote.

It is polling at similar levels ahead of the European elections on from June 6-9.

With Meloni heading the list of candidates, Brothers of Italy could exploit its national popularity at the EU level, even though EU rules require that any winner already holding a ministerial position must immediately resign from the EU assembly.

“We want to do in Europe exactly what we did in Italy on September 25, 2022 — creating a majority that brings together the forces of the right to finally send the left into opposition, even in Europe!” Meloni told a party event in the Adriatic city of Pescara.

In a fiery, sweeping speech touching briefly on issues from surrogacy and Ramadan to artificial meat, Meloni extolled her coalition government’s one-and-a-half years in power and what she said were its efforts to combat illegal immigration, protect families and defend Christian values.

After speaking for over an hour in the combative tone reminiscent of her election campaigns, Meloni said she had decided to run for a seat in the European Parliament.

READ ALSO: How much control does Giorgia Meloni’s government have over Italian media?

“I’m doing it because I want to ask Italians if they are satisfied with the work we are doing in Italy and that we’re doing in Europe,” she said, suggesting that only she could unite Europe’s conservatives.

“I’m doing it because in addition to being president of Brothers of Italy I’m also the leader of the European conservatives who want to have a decisive role in changing the course of European politics,” she added.

In her rise to power, Meloni, as head of Brothers of Italy, often railed against the European Union, “LGBT lobbies” and what she has called the politically correct rhetoric of the left, appealing to many voters with her straight talk.

“I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian” she famously declared at a 2019 rally.

She used a similar tone Sunday, instructing voters to simply write “Giorgia” on their ballots.

“I have always been, I am, and will always be proud of being an ordinary person,” she shouted.

EU rules require that “newly elected MEP credentials undergo verification to ascertain that they do not hold an office that is incompatible with being a Member of the European Parliament,” including being a government minister.

READ ALSO: Why is Italy’s government being accused of helping tax dodgers?

The strategy has been used before, most recently in Italy in 2019 by Meloni’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right Lega party.

The EU Parliament elections do not provide for alliances within Italy’s parties, meaning that Brothers of Italy will be in direct competition with its coalition partners Lega and Forza Italia, founded by Silvio Berlusconi.

The Lega and Forza Italia are polling at about seven percent and eight percent, respectively.

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