ROME - A black girl suffered racial abuse on a train from Milan to Trieste earlier this month, as a woman sitting nearby said to her, "I don’t want to sit near a black girl". 

 The girl is the daughter of Paola Crestani, President of the Italian Childcare Centre (CIAI). Crestani described what happened in a post on Facebook, alongside a photo of her daughter: "The sweet girl in the photo is my daughter,” she writes. “Yesterday afternoon, I accompanied her to Milan’s central station where she boarded the Frecciarossa train to Trieste. A few days after she sent me this message: "I sat in my seat, and the woman next to me asked, “You’re sitting in this seat?” I said, “Yes Madam”, and she responded saying, “Can I see your ticket?” I showed her my ticket and she said, “Ah ok, I don’t want to sit near a black girl”, and she moved to sit somewhere else…strange.""

 Crestani went on to explain that a boy then intervened at the scene and told the woman to be ashamed of herself. "She should have behaved as all racist people should," Crestani writes, “Go away! Because, whether people are aware of it or not, the world of today and of tomorrow is full of people of all colours, who speak different languages, of different cultures. Not just in the streets in buses, in trains or in planes but also in business, in finance, in fashion, in universities, in sport. Therefore ultimately, racist people, whether they like it or not, have already lost!”

 The event was just the latest in a series of incidents of racial abuse that have been taking place throughout Italy. In recent weeks, two non-EU citizens were beat up with baseball bats in town of Brindisi, and a young Senegalese man was kicked and punched in the town of Sondrio.

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