Chronicle
From Modena to Rome
Racist insults on the train to the Modena Ikram Jarmouni, awarded 4 days ago in Parliament
A man yelled at her: "Gypsy! I'm going to break your face, shut your phone, gypsy!"
12/05/2023
Just four days ago Ikram Jarmouni, a student from Modena, received the "America Youth Award for University Talent" at the Chamber of Deputies. While she was on her way to the capital for the award ceremony, she was the subject of a verbal aggression also with a racial background on the train to Rome on which she was traveling with a friend. This was reported by Jarmouni herself - 22 years old, born in Modena and of Moroccan origin, human rights activist and master's student in Human Rights and Multilevel Governance at the University of Padua - in a post on Instagram on which she also published the video of what happened on the train.
"On Monday 8 May - she writes on social media - I was awarded as an Italian student of excellence in Parliament. The same day, while I was on the train to Rome, I was attacked, insulted and threatened with death for the color of my skin. Neither the police nor the train conductors - he adds - intervened, despite having urgently called both. No attempt at identification has been made. He could potentially be armed. This could have been a massacre. But this is Italy."
In the video that the young woman has relaunched on Instagram we see a man, surrounded by other passengers who invite him to stop, who addresses her with vulgar and offensive epithets also with a racial background, shouting "gypsy" several times and also "I break your face". Words addressed to the young woman, who had risen from her seat to see what had happened on the convoy, following the commotion for a person who would stumble in the corridor. In the images published on social media you can see and hear the man screaming at the young woman saying: "chec.. Speak, you say I fell, gypsy! I'm going to break your face, shut your phone, gypsy!" A behavior condemned by the Kethane Movement, which fights for the rights of Roma and Sinti in Italy, which denounced the incident in a post on Facebook and expressed closeness to the girl.