(see related)
Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi
said Tuesday the Fascist salutes made on Sunday by about a
thousand participants at a ceremony commemorating the murder of
two right-wing militants during Italy's 'Years of Lead' of
political violence in the 1970s and 80s is cause for
indignation.
"There is no doubt" that what happened at the demonstration
commemorating the 1978 Acca Larentia massacre in Rome "arouses
indignation", Piantedosi told a hearing of the Senate's
Extraordinary Commission against intolerance, racism,
anti-Semitism and incitement to hatred and violence.
"It is contrary to our acquired culture," he continued.
"And the indignation is transversal," said the minister, adding
however that "bans and non-observance" of demonstrations "is
counterproductive and less fruitful".
Earlier the centre-left opposition Democratic Party (PD)
announced that it had filed a bill to better counter the
promotion and glorification of fascist ideology and symbols,
which is a crime in Italy.
"As deputies and senators of the PD, we have filed a bill to
make the repression of apology of fascism and neo-fascist
subversive phenomena more effective," said PD lawmaker Andrea De
Maria on X, formerly Twitter.
"If the entire parliament supported it, it would clarify the
existing legislation and strengthen it," he added.
The PD on Monday led opposition outrage at Sunday's Fascist
salutes episode during a ceremony recalling the Acca Larentia
massacre in which two members of the youth wing of the
neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), Franco Bigonzetti and
Francesco Ciavatta, aged 13 and 17, were shot dead, allegedly by
far left militants, outside the party's Rome headquarters in the
street named after a Roman goddess.
A third MSI youth wing member, Stefano Recchioni, 19, was
fatally injured by a stray bullet during ensuing clashes by
members of the youth wing, the Fronte della Gioventù, who rioted
after the deaths, and police.
Then Fronte della Gioventù leader Gianfranco Fini, later a
foreign minister in Silvio Berlusconi's second government from
2001 to 2006, was wounded by a gas canister.
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