BERLIN, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- Italy has been shocked by a wave of right-wing hooligan violence that has killed a police officer and injured dozens of people. Observers say the fascist mob is professionally organized, and disturbs the country's domestic security.
Last Friday in Catania, Sicily: Around the city's soccer stadium, masked men hurled stones at police, tear gas and bomb smoke filled the air, cars burned, and people ran for their lives. More than 100 people were hospitalized that night, and 38 hooligans have since been arrested. The images broadcast by Italian news channels could have led the audience to believe that a civil war had broken out, yet only a soccer game was staged.
The angry mob killed Filippo Raciti, a 38-year-old policeman among the roughly 1,000 officers on duty that night. Raciti's picture has since swept the Italian media, and it is the picture of a dark-haired man with disillusioned, almost sad eyes. On Wednesday, it surfaced that the father of two was killed by a tattooed hooligan who hurled a large washbasin at his head.
Italy -- a soccer-crazed nation that last July celebrated a World Cup victory in Germany -- has been in a virtual state of shock ever since. Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said the hooligans had turned Italy's beloved pastime into "a guerilla war," and Pope Benedict XVI, in a message of condolence to the widow of Raciti, expressed his "firm condemnation for any act of violence that stains the world of soccer."
The violence hasn't reared its ugly head suddenly, however. Italy's soccer stadiums have long been a haven for far-right extremists to publicly portray their radical views.
Fans in the stands repeatedly uncoil banners with swastikas on them; they chant songs praising former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini; they yell at the opposing players that they are to find their end in the "gas chambers of Auschwitz." Paolo Di Canio, a former professional player for Lazio Rome, used to celebrate his goals with the Nazi salute. Raciti's death came only a week after a manager of a low-level team was kicked to death when he tried to pacify an after-game brawl.
According to official estimates, some 60,000 hooligans are organized in 700 violent groups in Italy, although many observers believe the figure is higher. Often, these groups are highly organized and interconnected.
In Sicily, where unemployment as well as disillusionment is high, experts believe that the so-called "ultras" are backed by the Mafia, in a bid to gain access to the clubs, the biggest of which in Italy have the status of national industry champions. Soccer makes big money in Italy, and it seems everyone wants to have a piece of the cake.
Experts say Italy's politicians and its sports officials have willfully turned a blind eye on the problem, and should have acted much sooner.
"In Italy, everyone has looked away, that's the aggravating thing," Gunter Pilz, a German expert on hooliganism at the University of Hannover, told Deutsche Welle Online in an interview. "Some of the problematic ultra groups by now even have a say in the clubs."
Often, out of fear, club officials have been unwilling to sever ties with the violent supporters of their team and politicians have not called for games to be cancelled or aborted because of soccer's huge standing in the country.
Yet after years of ongoing violence, Raciti's death seems to have handed Italian officials a long-overdue wake-up call. Several Italian newspapers spread their front-page headlines with "Basta!" ("Enough!"), and officials as a result of the Catania clash cancelled more 10,000 soccer games over the weekend, from top-league matches to the lowliest men's league games.
Conservative politicians have attacked the suspension of the Italian top leagues, which is ongoing, but Prodi and his government members seem to be unwavering, despite huge financial losses for each cancelled soccer weekend.
And finally, Rome seems to act: After a top-level meeting earlier this week, the Italian government announced it would launch harsh anti-hooligan measures to combat the rising violence in and around the stadiums.
Interior Minister Giuliano Amato said fans, in the future, can be banned from games as a preventive measure and old, unsafe stadiums (the large majority of Italy's soccer temples) will no longer be tolerated, nor will be club ties with violent fan groups. The new regulations were drafted in a bill by the Italian Cabinet on Wednesday.
Pilz, the German expert, said for Italy's soccer scene to return to normal, more preventive measures had to be taken by the cities, by clubs and police.
Social pedagogy fan projects, organized by clubs and the cities, have shown considerable success in Germany, for example, where a violent hooligan scene was creating havoc in the 1980s, but is now largely under control.
