THE FREE TERRITORY OF TRIESTE: A SPOIL OF WAR
The Italian Tax Revenue Agency, with its right-hand Equitalia, continues to collect undue taxes in the present-day Free Territory of Trieste. It get worse by the day. The Italian Republic’s enforced recoveries are unbearable. An economic slaughterhouse indeed.
And the butchers do as they please, since the local nationalistic lobby protects them all. Tax authorities and local Courts convict the people of Trieste and order them to pay undue taxes. The police takes care of enforcing the convictions, supporting Equitalia.
Since decades, the local Italian authorities are breaching the Italian Peace Treaty. Which is also an Italian law.
Indeed, Italy lost its sovereignty over Trieste on 15 September 1947, when that Peace Treaty came into force (art. 21):
1. There is hereby constituted the Free Territory of Trieste, consisting of the area lying between the Adriatic Sea and the boundaries defined in Articles 4 and 22 of the present Treaty.
The Free Territory of Trieste is recognized by the Allied and Associated Powers and by Italy, which agree that its integrity and independence shall be assured by the Security Council of the United Nations.
2. Italian sovereignty over the area constituting the Free Territory of Trieste, as above defined, shall be terminated upon the coming into force of the present Treaty.
The Peace Treaty rules that Trieste and the surrounding area (former zone A/present-day Free Territory) be exempted from the payment of the Italian public debt (Annex X, art. 5) and therefore enjoys its full political and economic independence.
Trieste’s people are joining forces, and they oppose, despite intimidations and threats, to the arbitrary enforced recoveries. They are facing arrogant authorities willing to trample on law itself. Because again, Italy recognizes the Free Territory of Trieste.
The choice is either losing everything to the hands of Equitalia, watching as that destroys families and people, or standing against those predators of human dignity, who subvert their own laws. And to stand against the local traitors who support them.
Because the people of Trieste stand, with law as their only shield, against nationalistic politicians who want to deprive them of their very land, cancelling its past, and destroying its future.
This battle of good versus evil is well visible before the judiciary.
The Court of Trieste is the citadel of Italian judicial authorities who enforce Italian laws and simulate Italian jurisdiction. In truth, they should enforce Trieste’s laws exercise the Free Territory’s own jurisdiction, pursuant to the Italian Government’s obligations under the 1954 Memorandum of Understanding regarding the Free Territory.
This is why the Free State’s people oppose to the deeds of public authorities – colonized by the “italianissimi” – facing their own persecutors with exceptions regarding jurisdiction. Because, again, the only legitimate jurisdiction here is Trieste’s own.
In tax proceedings, the opponents are always the Tax Revenue Agency and Equitalia. Their lawyers never miss a chance to ridicule Trieste’s people, shielding behind the immunities of the judiciary itself.
A judiciary that is often made of honorary magistrates. In other words, fellow lawyers. Many of those lawyers are Triestines themselves, some are also from the local Slovenian community. True “Italian patriots” who always side with those in power. Even when it comes to trampling on law itself and their fellow citizens.
According to Equitalia’s lawyers, the Peace Treaty does no longer apply because it is “too old”.
Too bad that the Italian Constitution itself, which those people claim to defend, directly comes exactly from that Peace Treaty. Or that it is only a few months newer, because it came into force on 1 January 1948.
They do also claim that Italy gained sovereignty over Trieste after signing a political agreement with Yugoslavia. But those are two third Countries, without any authority to claim titles over the Free Territory. Indeed, at art. 7 of their agreement, they confirm that their Governments do administer Trieste under the 1954 MOU!
So according to those lawyers, a defeated State as is Italy can unilaterally amend – and with the support of a State labeled by its politicians as a despicable communist dictatorship – a Peace Treaty that is still a cornerstone of the rules-based international legal order. In the face of its more than 20 signatories, no less.
Equitalia’s lawyers claim:
“there is no doubt that Trieste is an Italian city. Indeed, coming here anyone can infer it from many evidences, even before opening some international Treaty” and then they dismiss the people advocating for their birthrights as people of the Free Territory of Trieste as “the result of historical-legal delusions”.
That’s it. According to Equitalia, the right to collect undue taxes in Trieste justifies the breach of the rules-based international legal order and the dismissal of history. A thorny history about a Fascist State and its crimes. Crimes that Trieste and its people are still subject to.
Tratto dal blog “Ambiente e Legalità” di Roberto Giurastante