Italian novelist and screenwriter Roberto Saviano (“Gomorrah”) has been sued for libel by far-right Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni. Saviano’s trial begins this Tuesday (15/11) in Rome.
Meloni sues Saviano for the comments he made on the current affairs program “Piazza Pulita” in December 2020 during a discussion on the issue of immigrants. Speaking of Africans who arrive on Italian coasts on small boats or rescued from shipwrecks at sea, Saviano called Meloni a “bastard” for her hard line and anti-immigrants.
At the time of Saviano’s comments in 2020, the image of a six-month-old girl who drowned after the boat she was traveling on capsized had caused a sensation in Italy. The child was among six people who died that night. In the same year, the total number of people who died trying to cross the Mediterranean exceeded 1800 victims.
On the eve of the tragedy, Meloni and the leader of the Nationalist League, Matteo Salvini, criticized the ships that patrolled the Mediterranean to rescue people in danger of dying at sea, calling them “migrant taxis” and saying they should be hijacked and scuttled. Namely, that people would have to drown without the help of benevolent rescuers.
Speaking of the dead child and his mother, Saviano vented: “Remember all that nonsense that was said about NGOs, about the fact that they were ‘sea taxis’, ‘cruises’. All that comes to mind are bastards. For the Meloni, to Salvini, you bastards, how could you? How was it possible to describe all this pain like that?”
Saviano did not hold back and continued to hit Meloni and her new government, recently condemning their immigration policies and the enactment of a law that provides for prison sentences of up to six years for organizers of clandestine raves.
The judge handling the case decided that the “epithet bastard” had gone “beyond the rights of political criticism”, and therefore put the case to trial.
The trial is seen as a test of Italy’s freedom of expression and the government’s increasing use of libel charges as a means of press censorship.
In a recent interview with Rome’s Radio Capitale, Saviano revealed that Salvino and the new Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano, have also filed a defamation complaint against him. He suggested they were targeting him to alert other journalists who wanted to criticize members of his government and coalition parties.
“They were all libel suits, related to me voicing my very harsh criticism of them. They are beating me to get the message across to my colleagues and more importantly to manipulate, to make it sound like a harsh and scathing criticism of a politician can be taken in the same context as a comment you make to an ordinary citizen,” he said.
“There is another hidden mechanism at play here, which is: ‘if you criticize me, you go against democracy itself because it is the vote that allows me to do what I do. So your behavior is illegitimate.’ on voting, which is a fundamental and founding segment of democracy, but it is above all based on respect for criticism, “she continued.
Writers’ association Pen International has published an open letter online and in the Italian newspaper La Stampa calling on Meloni to drop the allegations.
“As prime minister of Italy, pursuing your case against him would send a chilling message to all journalists and writers in the country, who may not dare speak out for fear of reprisals,” wrote PEN International president Burhan Sonmez. .
“Saviano is not alone. We stand with him and will continue to campaign until all criminal defamation charges against him are dropped and his right to peacefully express his views is protected once and for all,” he added.
Saviano is internationally known for his investigative work exposed in the book “Gomorra” (2006), which narrated the story of the Italian criminal organization Camorra. The book drew the ire of crime bosses and resulted in numerous death threats against the author, who requested police protection.
The work was adapted for the cinema in 2008, with a screenplay written by Saviano himself and directed by director Matteo Garrone. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
The “Gomorrah” series, conceived by Saviano and lasting six seasons, was also born from the book.
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Source: Terra
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