Dear Domenico,
On behalf of the Progressive International, we thank you for your letter, as for your courage in the face of such brutal repression. We stand with you in this struggle.
As you wrote in your letter, solidarity is on trial in Italy. The courts do not intend to punish you alone, nor the 26 others implicated in your case. On the contrary, Matteo Salvini and the entrenched interests he represents intend to send a message that they will not tolerate such “crimes” of decency and hospitality. Exclusion and exploitation are the only laws they know.
Sadly, Salvini is not alone. Across the EU and around the world, governments are demonizing migrants and criminalizing those who give them shelter. From Emmanuel Macron in France to Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Greece, Nadrenda Modi in India to Joe Biden in the USA, politicians who claim to prize human rights have conducted pushbacks, constructed walls, built detention camps, and fenced their borders with barbed wire.
We believe that the Riace model is an inspiration for the world. When our governments built fortresses to keep migrants out, you welcomed them in. When local criminals and global corporations conspired to exploit their lack of legal protections, you built a global village and a Città Futura — a city of the future — where all residents could learn trades and find shelter.
We are unequivocal: Your 13-year sentence is both a travesty of justice and a blatant violation of the common principles of freedom, democracy, equality, peace and stability that the European Union claims to uphold.
The Progressive International demands that all charges related to your case are dropped immediately — that a thorough investigation is undertaken by the European Court of Justice and relevant Italian authorities into the connected interests that led to the original indictment — and that Prime Minister Mario Darghi take immediate action to safeguard the rights endowed by international law to all migrants and the humanitarians who come to their aid.
Progressive International