April 25 must be “a moment of collective reflection and national cohesion”. And in memory of the Resistance, Italy’s commitment must be reiterated “in favor of peace, respect for human rights and the construction of more just and supportive national and international societies”. Because if the “law imposed by those who consider themselves temporarily stronger” prevails, the result is “mourning and destruction”, in a “condition of permanent conflicts and barbarism in international life”.
On the eve of Liberation Day, Sergio Mattarella returns to tie together the threads of history, in a reminder without explicit references but clearly current. Like the thanks to Pope Leo for his trip to Africa, which «recalls the entire international community to the duty to tenaciously pursue the reasons for dialogue and collaboration between peoples».
Before the message to the pontiff, the President of the Republic speaks at the Quirinale, in front of the combat, partisan and arms associations, “guardians of the memory”, he says, which is a key factor for “forming aware citizens, capable of renewing the values that inspire our civil coexistence”. The stories of the protagonists of those years are a bridge through which young people can understand the sense of “freedom and peace”, as well as “the commitment and suffering that was necessary to obtain them”. Eight Nazi-fascist massacres marked San Severino Marche, a city awarded the Gold Medal for Civil Merit, where Mattarella on Saturday (after placing a laurel wreath at the Altare della Patria) will celebrate the 81st anniversary of the Liberation.
“Like many realities in our country, it represents a symbolic place of the Resistance”, he underlines on a day in which the alarm about the cut in funds for sites dedicated to the memory of the partisan struggle explodes and quickly returns. Cities, villages, valleys and mountains in which “one of the founding pages of republican history” was written, recalls the head of state: it marked the “moral and civil redemption of a people” who were able to express “the strength and ability to affirm the values of freedom, justice, peace, democracy”. Values ”engraved in our Constitution” and “foundation” of our “civil coexistence and of Italy’s presence in the international context”. And the “heavy price” paid, underlines Mattarella, “rigorously reminds us, every day, of the responsibility to defend and renew” that condition. Hence the call to “firm rejection of any form of oppression and any totalitarian drift, whatever the ideological matrix or the alleged religious reference that inspires it”. Even “more intense” in the “current international context, marked by conflicts, tensions and profound instability”.
Ukraine, Iran, Middle East, Africa. Mattarella avoids specific references, but denounces “in too many parts of the world” those “scandalous scenarios, in which human dignity is trampled upon, in which the violence of unjustifiable wars indiscriminately affects civilian populations, in which international law is openly violated and humanitarian law is disregarded”. The suffering of these peoples “strikes deeply and – he points out – reminds us how precious what we have conquered is”. And therefore, the final exhortation, “long live the Liberation, long live the Republic”.
After Mattarella’s words, the pro-Putin Russian journalist, Vladimir Solovyev, returns to attack Italy and this time he takes it out on the President of the Republic and the former Foreign Minister, Luigi Di Maio. “Maybe you don’t know, but I want you to know about the shame of your grandfathers and great-grandfathers who came to this land to kill Soviet citizens,” the anchorman said in his private broadcast.
«In Donbass you have imposed the rule that for one Italian killed, 80 Soviets are eliminated and I mean 80 – when your politicians such as your former minister (referring to Di Maio) says that our commander in chief is worse than an animal or when your current president compares our country to the Third Reich you don’t understand what you are talking about. Not even a little,” he adds.