Cecile Kyenge, an Italian
member of the European Parliament, on Thursday invited Deputy
Senate Speaker Roberto Calderoli of the anti-immigrant Northern
League to make a pilgrimage to the Congolese village where he
claims her father placed a hex on him.
"He may return a changed man," said Kyenge, who served as
Italy's first black cabinet minister under the left-right
government of Enrico Letta until Premier Matteo Renzi ousted his
Democratic Party (PD) colleague in February.
Her comments came after Calderoli, a former minister for
reforms and simplification under ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi,
told weekly magazine Oggi that he needed an exorcist to lift the
'macumba' allegedly placed on him in Kyenge's native village in
Democratic Republic of Congo.
Calderoli is facing criminal charges of defamation
aggravated by racial hatred and discrimination against Kyenge, a
medical doctor and PD MEP after he likened her to an orangutan
last year.
Since then, he has undergone six operations, been twice in
intensive care, broken two ribs and two fingers, and his mother
died, according to the interview.
The run of apparent bad luck culminated with the discovery
of a two-meter snake in his kitchen last week.
"Maybe it's time to send Kyenge's dad a message of
detente," Calderoli told the magazine.
"It seems to me that I am still being persecuted," replied
Kyenge at the time.
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