Journalist beaten up while filming violent brawl among migrants

The incident happened in the railway station. “It’s my trade” says Luigi Costanzo (Il Giornale di Monza). Recovery is expected to take six days. He was rescued by the railway police. Solidarity was expressed by FNSI.

In the afternoon of the 30th July 2018 in Monza, Luigi Costanzo, a journalist with the Giornale di Monza was attacked and beaten up by a group of migrants whilst he was at the railway station. The reporter had received an indication: a violent brawl was underway between about thirty immigrants of African origin on the one hand and a young immigrant who had been stabbed and lay wounded on the ground.

Luigi Costanzo went to the place to document with photographs and video the brawl.

Having taken several photos at a distance, the journalist then moved in closer to record with his mobile phone the final stages of the conflict. A group of around fifteen migrants surrounded him in an attempt to take from him the mobile phone with which he was filming. Since he succeeded in putting the phone in his pocket, the migrants began to strike him and beat him up.

It was thanks to the local police that the journalist who by this time had fallen to the ground unable to put up any resistance, was able to seek refuge behind the counter of a tobacconist’s inside Monza station. The shopkeepers immediately requested the intervention of the railway police who rescued the journalist and accompanied him to the ambulance. At the hospital in Monza the diagnosis was a crania-cervical trauma, an edema in the left eye, various bruises and scratches and it was estimated that he would need six days to recover.

“I am very shaken by these events and despite many suggesting to me that I change my occupation, I will never stop being a journalist. – he told Ossigeno – To report the facts which happen around me has been my mission for more than 25 years and this episode will not stop me. For me nothing has changed. I thank again all those who have shown solidarity with me. Besides the solidarity shown by the world of politics, by my newspaper and by the municipality of Monza I am profoundly moved by the close support shown to me by ordinary people. I have been working in Monza for three years since I began working for the Giornale di Monza and all the expressions of solidarity have made me really feel at home.”

Solidarity has also been expressed by FNSI (the Italian National Press Federation), and the independent federation of transport workers of Lombardy.

IF