Italy black minister receives online death threats

Italy’s first black minister Cecile Kyenge has received online death threats ahead of her visit to a region housing anti-immigrant political base.

The 49-year-old minister is expected to deliver a speech to a multicultural festival in the Veneto region, home for the racist Northern League, reports said on Wednesday.

She said she was not afraid of the threats and that that Italians should respond to such intimidation in order to show that the country is not racist.

Kyenge, an eye doctor born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was named integration minister by Prime Minister Enrico Letta in April.

She has been the subject of racist taunts from far-right groups and lawmakers affiliated with the racist Northern League party.

“These actions are directed against all of us, not just me. Surely it hasn’t left me indifferent. But I think the response that the country gives is important,” Kyenge said.

Kyenge has proposed a change in the country’s current citizenship law, which dictates that children born on Italy soil to non-Italian parents become eligible to obtain citizenship on their 18th birthday.

“It’s a new citizenship that comes about by the meeting of different cultures,” she said.

Far-right groups planned to hold a demonstration during Kyenge’s visit to Veneto.

“Racist episodes exist, but you can’t say that a country is racist because there are certain episodes in the territory,” Kyenge said.

Last week, Dolores Valandro, a local politician from the Northern League party, was expelled from the party after she wrote on Facebook, “Why doesn’t someone rape her (Kyenge), so she can understand what victims of atrocious crimes feel?”