BRESCIA, Italy A series of unrelated murders this month has pushed this elegant city to the center of a national debate on the challenges of immigration and intercultural integration.
The trigger was the gruesome murder of Hina Saleem, a 20-year-old woman of Pakistani descent who was found buried, with her throat slit, in the garden of her family home in a small town about 20 kilometers, or 12 miles, north of Brescia. Her father and uncle have been accused of the murder and are in custody, and a brother-in-law, according to the ANSA news agency, turned himself in Thursday afternoon.
The tragedy ballooned into a cause célèbre after newspaper reports alleged that Hina (as she is known in Italian papers) had been killed because her traditionalist Muslim father objected to her Western lifestyle. She smoked and wore revealing, low-slung jeans like many girls her age. After she died, she was reported by the press to have been living with an Italian man and working as a waitress.
"She was always happy," said Multani Gurmail, her boss at the Antica India restaurant. "I knew she had some problems. I didn't realize how bad they were."
The murder has prompted weeks of front-page debate on what can happen when conservative beliefs collide with the mores of more permissive societies, and has sparked strong anti-immigrant feelings.
It has also highlighted the growing generation gap between parents who have immigrated to Italy from countries with strong social and religious traditions and their children raised in a Western environment.
The Muslim community here, which has universally condemned the murder, strongly resents the allegations that Hina was killed as a result of her family's religious beliefs.
"For us, murder is a sin, not only a crime," said Mahmood Tariq, the director of the Muhammadiah Islamic Cultural Association in Brescia.
"This is an exceptional case," he added, above all a question of tension between members of the Saleem family. "Cases like this happen in all societies."
On Thursday, Hina's mother, Bushra Bakum, dismissed notions that religion had played a role in drama. She told reporters that Hina had been a constant worry to her parents.
"She stayed out without explanation, we never knew where she was and with whom, she was simply a daughter who did not obey," Bakum said. She said she would not forgive her husband. "It's his fault and no one else's."
Hina's death was merely the first of several others involving immigrants. A few days after her body was found, a young Italian woman was found dead in a Brescia church and a Sri Lankan immigrant who assisted the priest has since been arrested.
Then an immigrant from Morocco was arrested for the murder of a notable painter here, and this week a Pakistani man was knifed during what appears to be a robbery.
The result has been a round of anti- immigrant rhetoric. The federalist Northern League party used the Hina case to argue that immigration to Italy should be limited to people who "are socially, culturally and religiously compatible with our way of life and legislation," as a Northern League lawmaker, Angelo Alessandrini, told ANSA.
Some residents of this wealthy provincial capital east of Milan, in one of Italy's most industrialized areas, have been venting their anger.
"The mayor tells us we have to live with them, but the immigrants don't reciprocate. And this isn't their city," said Gloria Gatta, the owner of a café on the Via San Faustino, a street lined with shops catering to the neighborhood's growing African and Asian clientele. Things in Brescia have gotten so bad, she said, that "people are afraid to go out after dark."
Comments like these prompted City Hall to issue a statement this month addressing the wave of immigrant-related deaths and pledging security measures to ensure that laws would be respected.
Citing the case of Hina, the statement also said the city would work to ensure that women's rights were respected "against any tribal or fundamentalist point of view."
The backlash has the Pakistani community very worried.
"People used to be more tolerant; they used to be less allergic to seeing someone from a different race, " said Sajid Shah, the founder of the Muhammadiah association, which is building here what will be the second biggest mosque in Italy.
When a foreigner does something, the reaction is immediate, Shah said, adding that since the wave of crime he felt as though he was under surveillance.
"Now people don't want to see us outside the factory," he said bitterly. "They just want us to produce."
Many Pakistani immigrants to the area share a similar story. Mohammed Saleem came to Italy in 1989 to work in a factory. He shared a cramped apartment to save money to send home. Then, as his economic situation improved, he brought his family over from Pakistan. Hina reportedly came over in 1999. Saleem's lawyer, Alberto Bordone, said Saleem was physically fine after 10 days in prison, but that psychologically his state was worsening.
"He's aware of the accusations against him, and he's mostly worried about his wife and the remaining six children," he said. "It's a strongly patriarchal family."
Several members of the Pakistani community said it was their responsibility to try to soothe the tensions that led to the Hina case, in particular because there's a real chance that they could re-emerge.
According to the Catholic charity Caritas, there are about 110,000 immigrants among the 1.1 million people living in the province of Brescia. Pakistani community leaders estimate there are 10,000 immigrants of Pakistani origin in the area.
"This is the story of a social problem between two cultures within the same family," said Farhat Hussain Naqvi, a sociologist who heads the local chapter of the Pakistani Welfare Club, explaining that many of his fellow nationals who immigrated here in the 1990s came from small towns and were not educated. Most still do not speak much Italian. "They have a closed mentality," he said.
Their children, on the other hand, grew up going to Italian schools and having Italian friends. Possible problems were imminent, because "most are just becoming teenagers now," he said. Hence the need to help Pakistanis deal with children they might not understand or relate to. The problem within Hina's family "was not something that happened overnight," he said.
"We don't live in Pakistan, we live in Italy, and it's about finding a middle way," Naqvi said. It was, above all, a question of accepting reality and opening a dialogue. "Maybe it will change something. Maybe the situation will improve."
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