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Enrico Letta, the new Italian leftist prime minister, has just
appointed the first ever black cabinet minister in Italian history.
The new minister was until her appointment an MP of the leftist
Democratic Party (PD), Cécile Kyenge Kashetu, who has to manage the
contentious portfolio of Integration, a newfangled political-correct
ministry.
And she happens to be a Congolese-born eye surgeon who emigrated to
Italy in her late teens, and later on became a naturalized Italian
citizen.
Dr. Kyenge is married and the mother of two daughters--Maïsha and Giulia.
Dr. Kyenge was born in the now restive mining city of Kambove in
Katanga Province. Just this past February, violent clashes pitted the
Congolese police against artisanal miners who were being evacuated
from a makeshift mining site outside Kambove.
According to a contemporaneous report by Radio Okapi, those clashes on
February 19 obtained a deadly toll:
"[F]ive injured people including three wounded by live bullets, ten
arrests, and property belonging to Gecamines and the Congolese state
ransacked or burned."
Anyway, right now Kambove may be murky and blurry in the mind of
Integration Minister Kyenge, for she has a lot on her plate.
To be true, as the Guardian reported, the Ghanaian-Italian AC Milan
striker Mario Balotelli hailed Kyenge's appointment as "a further, big
step towards a more civilised and responsible Italian society."
But, still according to the Guardian, as her agenda aims at "changing
Italy's citizenship laws, which are based on descent rather than place
of birth," she quickly drew massive flak from the rightwing Northern
League.
Matteo Salvini, one of the leaders of the League, blasted Kyenge's
appointment as "the symbol of a hypocritical, do-gooding left that
would like to abolish the crime of illegal immigration and only thinks
about immigrants' rights and not their duties."
(Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/28/italy-first-black-minister-attacked)
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PHOTO CREDITS: Via dazebaonews.it
