NOCERA INFERIORE - Seid Visin, 20, a former youth academy player AC Milan, Inter and Benevento, who had described the racism he experienced in Italy in a heartbreaking letter, was found dead in his home in Nocera Inferiore on June 4. He is believed to have killed himself. 

  He was a promising player, but retired from professional football aged only 16 to focus on his studies - though continued to play 5 a side for Atletico Vitalica.

  In a letter he had written almost three years ago, read out at his funeral, Visit spoke of the “the weight I feel on my back, like a boulder, of people’s sceptical, prejudiced, disgusted and fearful looks.”

  In the letter, written in January 2019 and at the time only shown to a few friends and his therapist, he described the racism in Italy and his experience as a young black man - he had come from Ethiopia aged only seven and was adopted by a couple from Nocera Inferiore, in Campania. 

  Despite the heartbreaking letter, his parents denied that his suicide had anything to do with the racism he described. Though they gave no further insight into his personal life, Visin was known to be suffering from depression.

  In his letter, Visin wrote that as he watched “this huge influx of migrants, I remember with a bit of arrogance that everyone loved me. Wherever I was, wherever I went, people turned to me with great joy, respect and happiness. Now, however, this idyllic atmosphere of peace seems so far away.”

He continued, “a few months ago I managed to find a job that I had to leave because too many people, usually older, refused to be served by me and, as if this was not enough, as if I did not already feel uncomfortable, they also blamed me for the fact that many young (white) Italians could not find jobs.

  “After this experience something changed inside me: as if they had created subconscious mechanisms in my head, by means of which I appeared in public, in society, different to what I actually am; as if I was ashamed of being black, as if I was afraid of being mistaken for an immigrant, as if I had to show people I didn’t know that I am like them, I am Italian, I am white.”

  He described the fear he felt for the looks he saw towards immigrants, but concluded that “the difficulty and suffering that I live” is only “a drop in the ocean of the suffering that people of great dignity, who prefer to die rather than lead an existence in misery and hell. Those people that risk their life, and the many who have already lost it, only to smell, to taste, that which we simply call ‘life.’”

ol