After the fact of Beatrice Belcuorethe 25-year-old carabiniere Rieti of Castelnuovo di Farfa who took her own life in the school Cadet Marshals of Florence (laws), the parents’ letter to Unarma (laws) and the union’s response (laws) one new testimony – anonymous, of a student marshal in the third year of the Carabinieri Marshals School of Florence – delivered to Unarma he reported the endured harsh rules of the Florence training school. Among the problems cited are the absence of clean water, long, punishing waits, lack of sleep and humiliating treatment.
Below is an extract from the complaint, the full letter at the end of the article.
In the past, the trade union association UNARMA had already interested the Minister of Defense and the General Commander of the Carabinieri regarding reports of atypical procedures and sanctions imposed on attendees of the Cadet Marshals School. No answer has ever arrived and nothing seems to have changed since those first timid signs of unease which, after Beatrice’s holocaust, begin to become bolder and more precise.
Today, another witness who prefers to remain anonymous due to the real fear of retaliation talks about the rules and customs of what seems like a world apart rather than a barracks of the Republic, an anachronistic enclave of an old absolute and totalitarian state, where the the value of the person is practically eliminated due to senseless deprivation and excessive procedures compared to the training objectives.
Thus, in a model military school, our children would have undergone treatment exceeding the Army’s training purposes. The policeman narrates that while waiting for lunch, to be eaten in ten minutes, the students were forced to remain in static standing positions, motionless, in the cold, heat or in the rain. Even the counterplay ritual, at a late hour and with exhausting times, had to be waited standing. In the first months of the course, the students would have suffered from very dangerous dehydration, caused both by the ban on purchasing water at the barracks shop and by the reduced time for consuming lunch and dinner: they either ate or drank!
The lack of sleep due to the scarcity of time was associated with the impossibility of recovering psycho-physical energies, not being able to enjoy adequate time for rest and leisure: free exit limited by overlong and exhausting reviews, breaks during activities training sessions pulverized by commitments, possibility of spending the weekend at home (overnight stay) conditional on training success or even not having suffered illness during the leave enjoyed in the previous weeks. At times, the lack of time made even daily hygiene difficult.
Many girls would have suffered menstrual irregularities, excessive hair loss and even eating disorders.
May this page close soon! May militarism be removed from the suffering and unnecessary deprivations of our children, to bring it back to values, commitment and respect for the rules.
UNARMA, while dutifully continuing to forward to the Judicial Authority every writing it receives on the issue, considers it a priority to condemn an anachronistic, excessive and non-inclusive training system, promoting every effort to bring it back within the perimeter of the democratic spirit.
It does not intend to condemn men, trainers not trained for training, who were mere cogs in an archaic training tradition.
It is necessary to follow the path of a new humanism, not limited to educational institutions alone, but extended to all departments of the force, in order to restore to each carabiniere a renewed dignity, protected from mistreatment and harassment.
In this battle of legality and justice, the Carabinieri Beatrice, to whom we have sworn our commitment not to let her sacrifice fall into oblivion, looks at us and enlightens us from above.
THE FULL LETTER
Photo: RietiLife ©
