-Caveat Lector-
Friday February 19 4:10 PM ET
Teaching The World To Tame Organized Crime
By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Sicily plans to teach educators from around
the world how to fight the Mafia, a move that would have brought
laughs if not bullets a decade ago.
``We exported for many many years a disease,'' Palermo Mayor Leoluca
Orlando told a news conference Thursday. ``Why not export therapy that
comes from our experience -- experience is the name we give to our
mistakes.''
The occasion is a June conference in Palermo -- the Sicilian capital
that gave the world the word ``Mafia'' -- for educators and civic
groups to discuss how to make democracy and the rule of law work in
their own countries.
The meeting, from June 18-22, is sponsored by Civitas International, a
U.S. and European-based network to promote civic education, the
Italian and U.S. governments and some United Nations agencies,
David Dorn, an official with the American Federation of Teachers and
the chairman of Civitas, said he expected delegates from all
continents, including eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union,
where a new kind of organized crime is forming.
Palermo was chosen to show that the struggle against crime did not
have to take generations or involve a police state.
The Mafia has by no means disappeared in Sicily or elsewhere and still
controls illegal businesses, Orlando said. But it no longer dominated
its institutions.
``The Mafia needs dark and silence. In Palermo we have so much light,
so much noise,'' he said.
``What is correct for Palermo can be correct for any other country in
the world. ``It is not possible to have a democratic constitution if
organized crime gets the primacy,'' he said.
Tourism has returned and in 1998 there were seven murders in Palermo
compared to 200 in 1992. The Teatro Massimo Opera, Europe's largest
classical stage, reopened after 23 years, churches were rebuilt and
tourism has returned.
First appointed mayor in 1985, Orlando, a law professor and member of
the European parliament, held various posts in Sicily before becoming
the city's first mayor chosen by a direct election in 1993.
Orlando pointed out that Italy's U.N. ambassador, Paolo Fulci, himself
a former Mafia fighter, was a Sicilian, adding: ''We can't all be
perfect.''
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