A 45-year-old Kosovan national has died in Treviso from injuries sustained in a fight between opposing ethnic gangs from the Balkans, Italian news outlet Ansa.it reports.
The fight is understood to have broken out in the Fiera district of the northeast city on Wednesday evening, and involved between 15-20 men, many of whom were injured from stab wounds.
The Italian news outlet reports that some of the participants were hospitalized in the emergency room, while others fled along the bank of the River Sile.
President of the Veneto Region Luca Zaia expressed his concern about the incident in a statement shared on his social media platforms on Thursday, calling the violent brawl “unacceptable and unfortunately a very bad sign that makes us fear it is the tip of the iceberg” regarding social unrest among foreign nationals in the region.
He lamented “an increasingly widespread sign of serious malaise to which our territories are not accustomed,” and called on the “strengthening of the defense of the territory by the police in terms of prevention and repression, and a strong commitment of the new parliament that takes office.”
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Zaia, who served in Silvio Berlusconi’s fourth cabinet from 2008-2010 as agriculture minister, said that “laws worthy of the name are needed for the punishment and repression of crimes” which must “guarantee the certainty of a penalty,” arguing that Italy has become a country where “those who want to commit a crime are the first to know there are too many possibilities to get away with it or to pay less than due.”
The Veneto region in the northeast of Italy is the first area many enter when arriving into the country via the Balkan migratory route.
A total of 70,770 undocumented migrants were recorded entering the European Union via the Balkan route in the first seven months of 2022, up 205 percent from the same period last year.
Giorgia Meloni, soon to become Italy’s next prime minister following her historic electoral victory last month, has vowed to clamp down on illegal immigration into Italy, a key element of the next Italian government’s policy that will be insisted upon by her right-wing coalition partners including former interior minister and current League leader, Matteo Salvini.
