Original article, in Italian: Paolo G. Parovel. “La Voce di Trieste” – March 14th, 2014: LINK
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SYNTHESIS OF THE OBSERVATIONS OF ABNORMAL ACTIVITIES OF SECTORS OF ITALIAN SERVICES TO COVER-UP QUESTION TRIESTE AND AGAINST “FREE TRIESTE”
[Links, note, and unofficial translation: SV]
Updated to March 13th, 2014
In the past months, we observed a slow, but constantly increasing of abnormal and inappropriate activities ascribable to problematic sectors of Italian services in operations that aim at covering up and misrepresenting the international Question of Trieste and at repressing the political movement, “Free Trieste”, which has opened it by presenting it to public opinion and political-strategic analysts as a destabilizing separatist initiative.
In truth, the international Question of Trieste and the Free Trieste Movement have nothing to do with Italian or European separatists, because they revolve on the enforcement of a Treaty-consolidated international legal status that is being violated by a special trust Government, which is the Italian Government.
Furthermore, it is that administering Government that uses those very violations to fuel in the region a well-known, hidden but active hotbed of nationalist claims against the two former Yugoslav neighbor States, and it results that those claims are connected, even on the operational level, with those of other European revanchist groups.
On the other side, activating Trieste’s legitimate legal status, including that of its international Free Port, would ultimately deactivate that hotbed for good, placing between the three most involved States an international neutral subject with an economic (maritime, commercial, industrial, financial) and not political role.
Indeed, since 1947, Trieste, its international Free Port, and five smaller municipalities in the surrounding area constitute the main area and present-day Free Territory of Trieste – Territorio Libero di Trieste, UN Member State established under UNSC Resolution S/RES/16 (1947) and art. 21 and annexes to the 1947 Treaty of Peace with Italy.
The question of the secondary area of the Free Territory, previously placed under Yugoslav administration, is ultimately closed since 1991-92, with the international recognition of the new independent Republics of Slovenia and of Croatia.
Annex VII of the Treaty rules that the Free Territory (now consisting in the main area and free port) a provisional regime of Government in the form of a special international trusteeship mandate, without time limits, originally entrusted to an Allied Military Government expected to last for a short time.
The purpose of this special trusteeship mandate is granting a correct political ad economic administration to the Free Territory, its sovereign people, the Free Port, and the pertinent interests of the whole International Community of States.
In 1954, since it became impossible for the military Government lasting for a short time, the special trusteeship mandate over Trieste and its Free Port was sub-entrusted to the Italian Government (not to the Italian State) under a specific Memorandum of Understanding. This temporary civil administration lasts to date.
This means that in this role the Italian Government is not acting as the Government of the Italian State, rather, it exercises the role of Provisional Government of the Free Territory, it must exercise its administration in the limits and for the purpose of the specific international instruments, and it is bound to respect them fully under both international laws, and the UN’s control, and under domestic laws, including the Constitution (arts. 10 and 117) and the Italian provisions enforcing and ratifying the 1947 Treaty of Peace (Legislative Decree of the Provisional Head of State No. 1430/1947 and Italian Law No. 3054/1952).
The problem arises because the Italian Government and State abused and are abusing of the special trusteeship mandate: they are treating the territory and its people as if they were under Italian sovereignty, repressing dissent, levying huge, undue taxes, paralyzing the development of the international Free Port in the name of Italian ports, denying and hiding to the people their rights. This means that the aforementioned actions of Italian authorities are against both domestic and international law.
Since 2011, the ongoing economic crisis has far worsened this situation, the locals (de)discovered their rights and are claiming them through the Free Trieste Movement, which attracts an increasing number of peaceful, but tired citizens. The Movement initiated political and legal actions, addressing both Italian authorities, embarrassing them, and international ones, which are becoming interested in the matter.
The embarrassment of the Italian authorities following the awakening of the administered people and their call for their rights is silent but pressing, because the Italian violations of international and domestic law are demonstrated, unjustifiable before international fora (be them Court or arbitral bodies), have caused severe economic and social damages, and are ongoing.
The individual and collective damaged parties are both the sovereign people of the Free Territory and the international subjects entitled with rights and interest as for the full and free use of the international Free Port of Trieste.
This means the Italian authorities are attempting to prevent the question from moving from the local to the international lever, and to do so they adopted a double defensive-aggressive strategy.
Their strategy consists in the Italian Government, State, and media maintaining maximum official silence about it, all while locally take place political oppositions in the political, judicial, and media sectors in order to intimidate the people and to delegitimize the theses and activities of the Free Trieste Movement both in Trieste and before international observers.
The analysis of said local contrast activities confirms to fundamental evidences.
The first evidence is that those have all the characteristics of professional-planned operations of certain sectors of Italian services, including the direct and indirect use of new and old contacts that are either willing or manipulated into participating. Part of those subjects are already included within a framework of influences and/or corruptions, across the board, that are known and operational also in disturbance operations that affect the neighbor States.
The second evidence is that those activities are not only against international law, but against the Italian Constitution and specific Italian domestic law, and go as far as to use for their activities also bodies of the Italian State and of the Italian Government, constituting the criminal at Italian Law No. 17/1982.
The structure of the Italian administering authorities’ contrast operation follows the patterns listed below, which are already been partially reported and denounced also to the competent Italian authorities in order to obtain their end:
a) claims and legal initiatives from certain particular local magistrates, amplified by the media that spread also confidential news regarding open investigations, with the purpose, and certainly with the effect, of scaring the supporters of Free Trieste, making them think that their opinions and request are being punished with political filing, criminal complaints, and the loss of jobs or pensions;
b) administrative judgments and other, abnormal judicial activities that deny the legal status of the Free Territory, of its citizens, and of the Free Port are amplified by the press and accompanied by political statements, press campaigns, and pseudo-legal conventions;
c) political campaigns, on the press and online, both general and targeted, to delegitimate the Free Trieste Movement and its leaders, systematically spreading fake of manipulated information (going as far as taking and misrepresenting declarations of UN officers);
d) activities carried out with particular subjects also in Slovenia (and probably in cooperation with elements of the Slovene services) to falsely represent the Free Trieste Movement as supporting political-territorial claims against Slovenia and against Croatia, and therefore is dangerous for international stability.
While disturbance substantially increases along those lines, since early 2014 we observed the development of a new, contrast line based on provocation, which aims at triggering tensions and disorders to demonstrate the actual danger posed by the Free Trieste Movement in order to isolate it internationally and justify its repression locally.
This new line employs also cooperators of different kind and level, and it seems to have started by creating and accrediting on apparently authoritative press the claim that Free Trieste is threatening or even preparing violent or terroristic actions, that it is connected with Russia’s interests, and therefore against Euro-Atlantic interests.
It results that this new disinformation line was initiated through manipulative articles on the subject published by Italian geopolitics magazine “Limes”.
Magazine “Limes” is related to official Italian circles and, despite the overall good level of its analyses, among other things, so far it has also remained silent about the operations of certain sectors of Italian services against Slovenia and Croatia before and during the dissolution wars in former Yugoslavia. It is the well-known operations so-called “Gladio 2” which were repeatedly interrupted in the 1990s upon Euro-Atlantic pressing, and yet, don’t result yet deactivated.
So far, the articles about the Free Trieste Movement hosted on “Limes” differ from the magazine’s official analytic framework because they fail to analyze not only the factual and legal elements of question Trieste summarized above, but also the Movement’s official document; instead, they instrumentally use both sensational press reviews produced by secondary sources, mostly hostile ones, and montages of claims, even paradoxical, extrapolated from their contexts, including from anonymous sources, in an increasing, artificial dramatization of the problem.
Indeed, the latest articles publishes claims of violent actions, attributes them to alleged armed activists of the Movement, which were immediately picked up and presented to the Italian Government by a particular local parliamentarian to seek and justify repressive actions from the Italian Ministry of the Interior.
At the same time, those claims were immediately spread for propaganda purposes by local daily press, which is controlled by the circles that promote the operations here under examination, all while the publications of critical comments to the articles on the “Limes” on line edition proved impossible to us.
The aforementioned new facts are accompanied by other circumstances and clues that would confirm the preparation, by the same sectors of Italian authorities, of a repressive escalation based on false flag operations and on the involvement of manipulated local subjects, aiming at increasing tension and eventual real or simulated violent acts to blame Free Trieste. National and local Italian precedent cases are numerous and well-documented.
Furthermore, the representatives of Italian authorities that have the legal duty to prevent and impede this illegal and anti-democratic escalation cannot claim to ignore their preparatory activities or consequences, and if they don’t take prompt action to prevent it, they become criminally liable for it even under Italian law (art. 40 of the criminal code).
Anyways, it is evidently clear that the local illegal contrast action proposed by sectors of Italian authorities in Trieste in an attempt to cover up their violations of the status and of the rights of the city, of the people, of the Free Port, and therefore also of the International Community, constitute not only a state of severe injustice and damage, but also a useless and inopportune disturbance in the former Yugoslav area’s direct European and international economic grafting point. The area is yet to be stabilized, while the economic point needs to be properly utilized.
Furthermore, it is still necessary assessing the responsibilities of not unimportant sectors of Italian national authorities in the failed liquidation of the aforementioned abnormal activities against Slovenia and against Croatia, as well as in the protected localization in Trieste, since 2007, of an international organized network of European revanchist nationalists that extends from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
Paolo G. Parovel