A woman whose photograph was used in a poster campaign by Italy’s far-right League, a member of Giorgia Meloni’s ruling coalition, has said she will consult lawyers, describing the images as “racist”.
Anna Haholkina, a Ukrainian-Italian model who lives in Rimini, said she was shocked to see her face on the posters that have sprung up in Milan in recent weeks as the League, which is led by the deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, intensifies its anti-Islam stance in the run-up to next month’s European elections.
The posters feature the images of two women, one with the photo of Haholkina used to represent a “free” western woman, and the other of a woman wearing a niqab who is “forced to cover the face”. A slogan reads: “Which side do you want to be on?”
The League is resorting to familiar themes of immigration and Islamophobia as it fights for political survival in the June ballot for European parliamentary elections. The party won more than 34% of the vote in the 2019 elections, but in the most recent national polls is hovering about 8%.
Salvini has referred to the elections as “a referendum on the future of Europe” to decide “whether [it] will still exist or whether it will be a Sino-Islamic colony”.
Meanwhile, a law proposed by Brothers of Italy, Meloni’s party, to shut down hundreds of Muslim prayer spaces that were not mosques was passed in the lower house of parliament on Tuesday.
The photo of Haholkina came from a stock image provider and was intended to be used to promote beauty products. She told Corriere della Sera newspaper that although she signed a photo release waiver, the provider’s rules stipulated that the images could not be used for electoral or political campaign purposes.
“Nobody contacted me to ask my permission. I will make [a legal] complaint,” she said. “I live in Rimini but often come to Milan for work and when I saw the posters, I was shocked. I don’t want to be associated with any party, but above all because these electoral posters are racist.”
In March, Muslim associations in Italy appealed to the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, to put an end to the League’s “campaign of hatred, denigration and discrimination towards our religious community” in response to another of the party’s poster campaigns that stigmatised Muslim women.
Some politicians have exploited the Israel-Gaza war in an attempt to bolster their anti-Islam campaign. The most high-profile example is Anna Maria Cisint, the League’s mayor in Monfalcone, who banned prayer in the northern town’s two Islamic cultural centres. Cisint is running in the European elections with a promise to “stop Islamisation”.
More than 1.6 million people in Italy are Muslim, although Islam is not an officially recognised religion. There are less than 10 officially recognised mosques in the country.
Meloni has also long railed against “Islamisation” in Europe.
“The situation for Muslims in Italy is really, really bad,” said Bou Konate, the president of the Darus Salaam Muslim cultural association in Monfalcone that is challenging the prayer ban through an administration court. “But it is worse now because the League and Brothers of Italy are in sync and nobody in the coalition government is opposing them.”
