The EireneFest event, a book festival on nonviolent culture, peace, antimilitarism, dedicated to conscientious objection, ended on Sunday 5 May in the setting of the Castello Svevo Angioino of Bisceglie.
The author Claudio Pozzi with his “A slice of heaven behind bars” recalls the passionate choice of conscientious objection well before 1972, the year of birth of the civil substitute service. Therefore, the memory of the arrest and the stay in the military prison of Gaeta. A path of great ethical depth that Claudio Pozzi left in Bisceglie amidst the applause of those present.
It then fell to the writer Giulio Di Luzio to explain his experience as a conscientious objector in the 1980s. The journalist from Bisceglie, now a collaborator of the independent TV Byoblu and author of 15 books including essays and novels, exposed the political mutation that has matured in recent decades, today refusing to recognize himself as nonviolent, pacifist and antimilitarist. A change of direction well illustrated by Di Luzio when, by way of example, he recalled the massacre of Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila in 1982, associating it with the genocide taking place in the Gaza Strip, thus finding the weakness of nonviolent thought. However, he fully vindicated the choice of that effervescent political season.
Vito Micunco of the Bari Peace Movement reiterated the need to continue to give space to different voices and pluralism, which is found in the complex archipelago of pacifists. The meeting was moderated by Prof. Michele Lucivero and brilliantly presented by a student of the scientific high school “L. Da Vinci” of Bisceglie.
Monday 6 May 2024
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