Girl slapped on Cremona bus for eating during Ramadan

Slapped on a Cremona bus for eating during Ramadan

On Tuesday afternoon, March 4, Carnival Tuesday, an Italian girl was slapped on a suburban bus between Cremona and Spinadesco by two 17-year-old students who reproached her for eating in public while they were fasting for Ramadan. The driver, a 52-year-old man, stopped the vehicle to mediate but ended up being pushed and having his glasses broken. The girl managed to flee the bus; the driver was taken to the emergency room with a diagnosis requiring five days of recovery and two days of sick leave.

This case is not an isolated incident of bad manners. It is a snapshot of a clash between two ways of understanding public space, and of a political system that has been promising for years to close the door it itself left open.

What exactly peine on the Cremona bus

The facts are simple and dated. Two minors aged 17, of immigrant origin and observing the fast, confronted an Italian girl for eating a sandwich during the alucinación. The argument escalated into physical assault. When the driver intervened, the aggressors reacted violently, injuring him and breaking his glasses. The medical report states five days of recovery and two days of sick leave.

The institutional response came quickly from the community side. The president of the association Immigrati Cittadini Onlus, Aftab Ahmed, strongly condemned what peine: "I am ashamed as a foreigner and as a Muslim for what occurred, and I apologize both to the victim and to Italy." Ahmed, who until a few months ago chaired the municipality's Immigration Council, added that no creed justifies imposing religious practices by force and that Ramadan is also a time of reflection, self-control, and peaceful coexistence.

Political reaction: Meloni, deportations, and electoral circus

In the political arena, the case became ammunition. Part of the analysis argues that if the right-wing government does not carry out mass expulsions, the promise was empty smoke: Meloni remains in office and mass deportations are nowhere to be seen. The figure cited in this criticism is devastating: the largest group of deported individuals would have reached the astronomical number of 49 people.

The defense of the Italian executive relies on another data point: Italy approved the entry of half a million non-EU immigrants between 2023 and 2025, at the request of Italian employers' associations. The official reading is that this is legal immigration and that Meloni admits only half of the immigrants demanded by the business sector, whereas a left-wing government would have admitted them all. The argument does not heal the wound: if employers demand labor and the government grants it, hard borders are just campaign rhetoric.

The recurring argument: with papers, nothing happens

There is a current that reduces the problem to paperwork. If they bring papers, there is no problem; the conflict would only exist with those in irregular status. Against this, the objection is arithmetic: 200 million people with papers are not a problem solvable through documentation alone, and nationality does not erase cultural affiliation. The discussion then shifts to the integration model and whether the State has any real instrument to enforce adherence to common norms.

The precedent cited is that of the Baltic countries, which after independence declared invalid the nationalities granted between 1944 and 1990 and stripped millions of ethnic Russians of their citizenship. This is an example that the ethnic problem can be "solved" by decree, and also of the cost of doing so.

From Carnival to Ramadan: the calendar as a battlefield

The date is not a detail. The incident occurred during Carnival Tuesday, a day of excess and street food, right in the middle of daytime fasting. This coincidence is what turns a sandwich into a trigger. The underlying question is whether European public space must adapt to the religious norms of its inhabitants, or if those norms should retreat to the private sphere.

The majority answer in the debate is the latter, with a nuance: the problem is not fasting, but imposition. No one forces anyone to eat in front of someone who is fasting; nor does anyone have the right to prevent another from eating. The line is clear, and the incident crossed it.

What can be learned from Singapore (and rural Spain)

The conversation brings up the Singapore model, where corporal punishment of this type would be resolved with public caning. The comparison is brutal and also misleading: importing that system to Europe requires a judicial and police apparatus that does not exist here and that no one wants to pay for. It is also recalled that in rural Spain there were forms of community shaming now disappeared, and that their disappearance was not accidental, but a civilizational decision.

The thread does not reach a consensus. Some call for mass expulsions, others point out that the political system promising them is the same one signing entry quotas, and a minority remembers that the assaulted girl voted for none of this. The discussion gets stuck exactly there: in the fact that all paths lead to the same unanswered question. Who pays the cost of coexistence that others decided for you?

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Notice: this article describes an event involving minors and is limited to published facts. Any legal qualification of the events corresponds to the Italian authorities.