Venice’s Bangladeshi community has threatened a strike or a large demonstration if the city keeps refusing permission to build a mosque in Mestre. Il Post reported the story on 28 August.
The project
The site is a former sawmill near Mestre station, bought by the association “Giovani per l’umanità” (Youth for Humanity): it costs about €1.5 million and a €150,000 deposit has already been paid. Building there requires a zoning change from commercial use to collective-interest use, which the city council must approve.
The previous administration had opened talks. The new mayor, Simone Venturini, elected at the end of May, has blocked the project, asking first for “concrete steps” towards integration, particularly regarding women.
A large community
More than 10,000 Bangladeshis live in Venice, many working at the Fincantieri shipyard in Marghera and in restaurants. The association’s president, Prince Howlader, has written to President Sergio Mattarella invoking the constitutional right to freedom of worship.
Background
There are no mosques in Veneto: worshippers pray in about 119 Islamic cultural centres in rented or purchased premises, partly because of a 2016 regional law with very strict criteria for new places of worship.
