May 24ᵗʰ: Free Trieste resists to extremist threats.
Trieste, May 24th, 2015. – Fanatic Italian nationalists (both right and left wing) are threatening the Free Trieste Movement for its public stand against the military celebrations of May 24ᵗʰ, 1915. This is the date of the Italian entry in World War I against its former ally, Austria-Hungary.
In facts, Free Trieste has sent a vigorous note of protest to the press and to the President of the Republic of Italy, Mattarella, which is also published on line, and it displayed on its balcony a huge writing: «24 MAGGIO 1915: VERGOGNA D’ITALIA» (May 24th, 2015: the shame of Italy). Leading to pressing and threats from extremists and nationalists, but also from authorities, to have it removed.
The Movement reacted by saying it will resist, as the writing represents freedom of opinion, but also a historical and ethical truth, shared not only by a wide majority of the people of Trieste and other former Austrian lands allover Europe, but also by most of the Italian people, who refuses the new and old indoctrinations of nationalism.
According to the Free Trieste Movement, May 24ᵗʰ is the celebration of «the beginning of a military aggression» decided by «a cynical, rapacious and corrupted Italian political class» that «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», all facts «denied to this day or hidden by censorship and nationalist propagandas».
The note of the Movement does as well define ad an offense to «the universal principles of military honor» refusing to recognize that during World War I, 99% of the soldiers of Trieste, Gorizia, eastern Friul, Istria, Dalmatia, Trentino and Southern Tyrol «fought bravely and with sacrifice to defend Austria-Hungary, not for Italy».
[F.W.]