President Jair Bolsonaro will be received on Monday (1) in Anguillara Vêneta, a city in northern Italy where his great-grandfather was born, with protests against the granting of the title of honorary citizen offered by mayor Alessandra Buoso, linked to the far-right Liga Norte party .
The act is being organized by various groups, including the Democratic Party, the Communist Refoundation Party and the CGIL —the biggest union in Italy—, as well as NGOs and the local population.
While waiting for Monday’s act, protesters linked to the environmental group Rise Up 4 Climate Justice have already begun to act. The city’s city hall building dawned on Friday (29th) with a large amount of manure at the entrance, and the facade was graffiti with the phrase “Outside Bolsonaro” and stained with colored paints.
According to the group, “the president represents the capitalist, predatory, destructive and colonialist model against which we are fighting.”
Floriana Rizzetto, president of the Padua session of ANPI (National Association of Partisans of Italy), which also leads the demonstrations against the Brazilian, told the sheet that the police “are doing everything they can to prevent Bolsonaro from seeing the deed”, as the protest was only allowed to take place from 9 am to 11 am.
“But we are very pleased that the progressive forces have even joined the church. So much so that the bishop of Padua, Claudio Cipolla, will not receive him, as well as the priests of the church of St. Anthony,” said Rizzetto. “We also found great solidarity with some democratic mayors, such as Sergio Giordani, in Padua, who will also not receive Bolsonaro.”
The activist also stated that the justification by Buoso, mayor of Anguillara Vêneta, to pay homage to the Brazilian, that the honor refers to Italian immigration in Brazil, is a lie. “She needs to explain.” The city allocated 9,000 euros (R$59,000) to receive the president and his entourage.
Italian news agency Ansa Buoso said he had thought “about the people who migrated to Brazil and built a life until they reached the presidency, taking the name of Anguillara Vêneta to the world.”
The protest is scheduled to take place in Matteotti Square, a reference to an Italian socialist politician assassinated by fascists in 1924, which, according to Rizzetto, “gains more important meaning if we think about what Bolsonaro represents to the world”. In addition to housing a square that honors the anti-fascist politician, Anguillara Vêneta has held, since 1993, the title of “city of peace and human rights”.
Brazilians who participated in an act held last Monday (25) in front of the Chamber of Aldermen, at the time of the vote to approve the tribute to Bolsonaro, will also be at the protest on the 1st. The proposal to grant the title of honorary citizen to the Brazilian president was urgently voted on, and the population only learned about the process thanks to Vanessa Camani, vice president of the Democratic Party in the region, who published a post on her social networks.
“Bolsonaro delayed the start of the vaccination campaign [contra o coronavírus] for months, promoting alternative treatments with untested efficacy, such as hydroxychloroquine, and on more than one occasion minimized the danger of the virus that caused havoc especially among the indigenous population,” she wrote.
In the local Chamber, the tribute proposal received nine votes in favour, three against and one abstention. An online petition with more than 2,600 signatures claimed that the honor would not be granted.
In Rome, where the president arrived this Friday (29) to participate in the G20 summit, Brazilian activists created the menu of “Ristorante da Bolsonaro” to be distributed in restaurants in the Italian capital.
The menu, printed in green and yellow, with a gun-shaped hand over the Brazilian flag and the slogan “since 2018”, features “a selection of dishes born out of the despair of the Brazilian unemployed”, as well as mentions of environmental problems and the pandemic situation in Brazil.
“The Ristorante da Bolsonaro in Rome is a work of fantasy. The despair of the Brazilian people, on the other hand, is real,” says the menu, which says that the country cannot be considered a member of the G20.
Anti-Bolsonaro activists planned to stage a demonstration in Navona Square, where the Brazilian embassy is located, where the president is going to stay. The security reinforced by the Italian government, however, led organizations, including the Free Lula Committee, to opt for the new strategy.
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