CAORLE – Last summer, while he was operating for the summer season in the emergency room of Lignano Sabbiadoro, a patient had refused to be treated by him for skin colour. Today the doctor of Cameroonian origin, Andi Florin Nganso Fenjiep, aged 35, after 16 years, has become an Italian citizen. Ngaso, well known and appreciated in the area, a couple of days ago received the Constitution from the hands of Marco Sarto, mayor of Caorle, where he resides, officially swearing and to ensure that his “commitment to social justice will not end” adding: “I dedicate this day to the million Italians without citizenship”.
On 17 August a 59-year-old man, PBA, formerly a seasonal worker in Lignano Sabbiadoro, residing in Treviso, where he appeared to be “homeless”, arrived at the emergency room of Lignano and had refused to be treated by a black doctor and indeed he had protested with such vivacity that he brought a Carabinieri patrol, who had reported on the case, for an evaluation by the magistrate of the Udine prosecutor’s office. Andi Nganso had filed a lawsuit not “out of a desire for solely personal justice”, but for “the need to demonstrate an act of resistance to a hatred and racism that not only exist in this country, but which grow stronger when the proximity of an electoral appointment suggests that certain positions will be protected,” he explained at the time.
Today the doctor explained that he was “born in Varese, my city”, then that he was “born a second time in the classrooms of the medical faculty at the University of Insubria” where he had had the opportunity to “strengthen a complex identity, mixed, elaborate and proud. They have been years of struggle, acceptance and the acquisition of awareness». Italy, he concluded, «is the nest from which I have decided to allow my energy to flourish throughout the world. I am happy to be able to do it with greater serenity from now ».