Free Trieste

Free Trieste: Italian military celebrations of May 24th are immoral and illegal

1915: our soldiers in Galitia

The Free Trieste Movement questions the political and military celebrations that the authorities of the Republic of Italy organized on May 23rd and the day after to celebrate that the Kingdom of Italy entered war in 1915.

It is immoral, grotesque and unprecedented celebrating the beginning of a military aggression with which a cynical, rapacious and corrupted Italian political class threw its people in the massacre that is World War I in order to seize the territories of other folks, the same lands in which, during the following 27 years, it committed crimes against the people who spoke Italian, Slovenian, Croatian and German, as well as against political opponents.

It is also offensive to the universal principles of military honor not recognizing that 99% of the soldiers from these lands – which were parts of Austria at the time:southern Tyrol (Trentino and Southern Tyrol), eastern Friûl, the area of Gorizia, Trieste, part of Carniola, Istria and Dalmatia – did not fight for Italy, but for Austria – Hungary, their motherland. and they fought courageously and fiercely enough that they entered Italian territory until the very last day of the war.

This is why Free Trieste has sent to the Chief in Command of Italian Armed Forces, the President of the Republic, Mr. Sergio Mattarella, a note of complaint, underlining that military celebrations in Trieste violate the demilitarization of the Free Territory of Trieste.

The instruments of law establishing Trieste’s neutrality are: UNSC Resolution No. 16/1947, the Treaty of Peace with Italy of February 10ᵗʰ, 1947 (Annex VI, Art. 3), and the Italian laws ratifying and enforcing that Treaty (Law No. 811/1947; Legislative Decree of the Provisional Head of State No. 1430/1947; Law No. 3054/1952). Furthermore, the very Italian Constitution (Artt. 10, sub-paragraph 1; 117, sub-paragraph 1) which does also repudiate war (art. 11).

The letter in Italian and in English.

Press Office of the Free Trieste Movement