Minister Roccella challenged at the Book Fair, complaints to activists dismissed

All complaints against the people who had contested the Minister for the Family Eugenia Roccella at the 2023 Turin Book Fair were archived. The minister was interrupted by around fifty activists from the feminist movement Non Una Di Meno together with the environmentalists Extinction Rebellion and Fridays for Future. On that occasion, the regional councilor Maurizio Marrone had filed a complaint for private violence against the identified people. The prosecutor, however, archives everything: “There is no trace of violent conduct.”

During that occasion the activists sat in the audience, and then interrupted the minister’s speech by standing up and holding up signs with the words “Hands off the bodies and the earth”. Roccella had invited some activists to go on stage: “I can’t accept anyone being taken away, given that the sit-in protest was part of my journey and I too was kicked out on several occasions.” The activists responded with a statement: “It is painful to see how at the Book Fair they decide to give space to these positions without, for example, talking about the climate crisis.”

In the days following the demonstration, several political leaders had denounced “acts of violence”. Minister Roccella herself, in one of the numerous interviews given, spoke of the aggressiveness of the demonstrators, while Matteo Renzi went as far as to cite Pasolini’s “the fascism of the anti-fascists”. PmSellaroli’s request for dismissal, however, appears in stark contrast to all the statements released in those days. “There is no trace of implicitly or explicitly threatening, violent or intimidating conduct carried out by the demonstrators” reads the dismissal decree. “No grossly threatening behavior was carried out, other than chanting and drowning out the voices of the speakers with one’s own voice.”