Roberto Saviano: “When we attack writer, we attack words that we don’t want to hear”

attacked in court by Giorgia Meloni for remarks made in 2020, when the current president of the Italian council was deputy, the author of “Gomorra” appears for defamation, Tuesday, November 15, in Rome.

Interview by Allan Kaval (Rome, correspondent)

Roberto Saviano is 43 years old, of which sixteen passed under police protection. In 2006, Gomorra’s publication, an investigation into the Neapolitan Camorra and the global ramifications of this criminal organization, earned him death threats that pursue him until today. Despite his “armored life” which limits his trips, he regularly intervenes in the great debates that cross Italian society. Very committed to the hostile policy carried out by the Italian State with regard to non -governmental organizations invested in the sea rescue of migrants who are trying to join Europe, it is a recurring target of the extreme right.

Tuesday, November 15, when a new crisis is tied around the action of these NGOs, it must appear for defamation, in Rome. In question: comments made in 2020 against Giorgia Meloni, then deputy, and former Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini, whom he described as “bastards”. The one he had insulted because of his opposition to the NGOs which help the migrants, which she accuses of “illegal transport of human beings”, has already become president of the Council.

You Compare for attackers Giorgia Meloni for his position on the rescue of migrants at sea, at the very moment when this subject returns to the front of the stage, until creating a diplomatic crisis between Paris and Rome. Did the discourse against NGOs that help migrants settle as a structuring trait of the Italian public debate?

The subject of migrants is the only one on which the extreme right has come to power with Giorgia Meloni has a certain freedom of speech and a small political room for maneuver. It allows him to simply take communication shortcuts by fueling fears that are unfounded. It is a strategy whose political costs are zero since it uses as scapegoats those who have no rights, no voice, no representation.

Confrontation with NGOs is not, however, specific to the political family of M me meloni. It is said that his government is the first far -right executive since the end of the Second World War, but its policy has taken root in an Italian approach to the migratory question that does not depend on the ruling parties. The action of NGOs disturbs the tacit agreements passed by the European Union with Libyan militias to which it subcontracts its management of borders, arrangements which were put in place by a government government in 2017.

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/Media reports.