Pasta firm sorry for 'Abyssinian rigatoni'

(ANSA) - CAMPOBASSO, JAN 5 - A southern Italian pasta maker said Tuesday it was sorry for marketing a new kind of rigatoni under the name 'Abissine rigate', recalling Italy's colonial Abyssinian campaigns in northeast Africa in the 1930s.
    La Molisana, based in Campobasso, apologised for "recalling in an unacceptable way a dramatic page of history".
    It said that while it could not cancel the mistake, it would give the pasta a new name based on its shape.
    The Second Italo-Abyssinian War, fought between Italy and Ethiopia from October 1935 to February 1937, is seen as an example of the expansionist policy that characterized the Axis powers and the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations before the outbreak of World War II.
    War crimes were committed by both sides in this conflict.
    Italian troops used mustard gas in aerial bombardments (in violation of the Geneva Conventions) against combatants and civilians in an attempt to discourage the Ethiopian people from supporting the resistance.
    By all estimates, hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian civilians died as a result of the Italian invasion, including during the reprisal Yekatit 12 massacre in Addis Ababa, in which as many as 30,000 civilians were killed.
    Crimes by Ethiopian troops included the use of Dum-Dum bullets (in violation of the Hague Conventions), the killing of civilian workmen (including during the Gondrand massacre) and the mutilation of captured Eritrean Ascari and Italians (often with castration), beginning in the first weeks of war.
    During the war, Italian troops seized Aksum, and the obelisk adorning the city was torn from its site and sent to Rome to be placed symbolically in front of the building of the Ministry of Colonies created by the Fascist regime.
    Later standing outside the new site of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), it was given back to Ethiopia in 2005. (ANSA).