VERONA - Dora, a fifteen year old Italian girl has been rejected from entering the Canta Verona Music Festival. When she asked the organiser, known only as S.P, on Facebook why she could not join the contest, he replied "It's just for real Italians.” He could have said that she was underage, but he preferred to ban her because of her origins.

 When Dora insisted: "I have Italian citizenship, can’t I join?” The organiser replied, in capitals no less: “No! You are born Italian, you don’t become it, and you must be born to Italian parents… I think like this and it [the festival] is only for de facto Italians.”

 Naturally upset, Dora turned to her brother, Emmanuel, who contacted the organiser to ask for an apology. And it arrives, only after Dora shares screenshots of the conversation with him on Facebook, which go viral. 

 Defending himself, the festival’s organiser stated: "I'm not racist, I have a political opinion." The girl's brother retaliated; "The problem is not his views. It is to write that my sister is not Italian even though she was born here by parents who arrived 30 years ago.” 

 The organiser does not deny the messages in a phone interview with Italian daily La Repubblica. "I'm 42, I’ve been doing this job since I was 24. I'm not racist, my girlfriend is foreign and I have friends of all nationalities." So why that respond like that? "I get so many adds on Facebook, but how do I know who is behind that profile? I realise I was wrong to write those things but I didn’t know who was talking to. I thought it was a joke, a provocation. Anyway, that's my opinion, I do not think I've committed a crime. "

 What happened next? "Her brother contacted me, I apologized several times, and offered to host the girl in a future event, because I’m not doing Canta Verona anymore.”

 “I insisted on the apologies because my sister was having a really hard time and she needed support,” confirmed Emmauel, 24, also born in Italy. “We are second generation Ghanians, my sister has little to do with Ghana. I was born and raised in Verona, I have experienced similar situations and I'm strong, but my sister isn’t used to it.”

 When asked whether he will report the organiser, he responded: “I will report it, not for revenge. It’s a question of morality that’s bigger than us. The organiser has invented his own constituion, which suits him well, because if this had happened in London or Berlin, the consequences would have been quite different."

 Just one day after, in Margherita di Savoia, Apulia, an Italo-Cuban couple, Cristobal and Josephine Rojas, were rejected from their pre-booked holiday home because the racist homeowner does not “want coloured people in my house.”