By: onislam.net
Source: http://www.onislam.net/
Members of the far-right, neo-nazi Italian party “Forza Nuova” have marched in Venice to protest an earlier decision specifying time for Muslim women at swimming pool to integrate the religion minority.
“A free swimming pool!” protesters from Forza Nuova (New Force) party shouted outside the Polisportiva Bissuola di Mestre sports centre in Venice, The Local cited Vicenza Today on Monday, May 20.
The protest followed an earlier decision by a sports club in Mestre suburb in Venice, Polisportiva Bissuola di Mestre, to open the pool only to women and their children between 9am and 10.30am on Sundays.
According the club president, Ugo Di Mauro, the move, launched in coordination with the Italian Union of Sports for All (Usip), is “an opportunity to promote integration and raise awareness of women from different backgrounds.”
If the pilot initiative, suggested for three Sunday’s after May 9, was proved successful, it would be extended.
But Italy’s extreme right has repeatedly hit back against efforts to bring the country’s increasingly diverse communities together.
“We are at the swimming pool – you go back to Medina,” protesters shouted, targeting women of Saudi Arabian origin.
Protesters were stopped by police outside the sports centre, where scuffles briefly broke out, Vicenza Today said.
Last year, Forza Nuova supporters protested public appearances by Cecile Kyenge, then integration minister, by hanging nooses up around a town and leaving bloodied mannequins in another.
Italy has a Muslim population of some 1.7 million, including 20,000 reverts, according to the figures released by Istat, the national statistics agency.
