VITA was born just over a month ago. On 8 December 1994 the newborn “Espresso del sociale”, then a weekly magazine, was released on newsstands and by subscription with an issue entitled “We slaves of Italy”. This is the summary: «From Africa, from the East, from Albania, thousands of minors arrive in our country. Kidnapped, tortured and forced into prostitution at just 15 years old. Our correspondents have collected evidence of the market for new slaves.”
Mirella Pennisi wrote from San Benedetto del Tronto in the opening piece: «Yes, slavery lives here. And we are not in the mines of South Africa, in the Amazon forest, much less in the cotton fields of the southern states, after having completed a fantastic yet unlikely journey through time. But here, on the opulent and touristy Adriatic coast. Here, where the highest percentage of drug addicts gathers and “Italy of the good” is waiting to gather and burn in the summer sun. Slaves, or rather, slaves. Here in San Benedetto del Tronto we can say “slaves”. Little girls kidnapped, or tricked into coming to Italy, then forced into prostitution, with the violence that only “human” beings know when they forget they are human. The carabinieri defeated an entire gang. Twelve Albanians whose arrest was validated on charges of “enslavement”.
And in the corridors of the Ascoli court it is said that even the public prosecutor would agree. If this rumor were confirmed, for the first time in Italy a court would find itself judging on the basis of article 600 of the penal code: “Whoever reduces a person to slavery, or to a condition similar to slavery, is punished with five years’ imprisonment at fifteen.” After all, the evidence here is overwhelming. The Carabinieri of the San Benedetto operational unit, commanded by Lieutenant Luca Luini, found Mirela, 15 years old, hogtied in the bathroom, having been segregated for three days now. Her pubis burned by cigarettes, her body swollen. She really didn’t want to prostitute herself and that was the punishment. She had left a small village in Albania a few months earlier, convinced, like many other girls, that she would find a job as a waitress… ».
An atrocity like that suffered by another slave from our Italy: Satnam Singh, the laborer left to bleed to death in the Latina countryside. Today, as 30 years ago, entire sectors of the Italian labor market (legal and illegal) are based on the exploitation of people, in particular those with a history of migration. Thirty years that give us the photograph of an inadequate, but democratically elected policy (let’s not forget this).
