Rome: Acca Larentia two reporters threatened

Threatened by an exponent of the far right who then damaged the camera. Expressions of solidarity from fellow professionals and politicians.

“You can’t film! Don’t you see that I’ll smash your camera?” said Andrea Antonini, Casapound vice president to journalist Wendy Elliot and a video operator the LaPresse news agency. Antonini struck the camera, but two other protesters restrained him and sent him away.

It happened on January 7^th 2020, in front of the headquarters of the Italian Social Movement in via Acca Larentia, during the demonstration organized to commemorate the two young Youth Front activists killed on January 7^th 1978 at the same place. Hundreds of far-right militants were participating in the demonstration in the street who, when the names of the victims were read out, chanted in chorus shouting “Present” raising their arm stretched out in the Fascist salute.

SOLIDARITY to journalists was expressed by the national press federation and the unions of journalists (read here). The undersecretary to the Prime Minister Andrea Martella also commented on the incident, expressing his close support for the journalists (read here).

PREVIOUS INCIDENTS- A year ago on the same occasion, during a mass commemoration at the Rome cemetery of Verano, the journalists of the L’Espresso, Federico Marconi and Paolo Marchetti had been attacked and robbed. For those events the leader of Forza Nuova, Giuliano Castellino is on trial, accused of aggression and unlawful detention of a person. Ossigeno was made a civil party. Federico Marconi and Paolo Marchetti (L’Espresso) are being defended free of charge by Ossigeno’s legal aid service. The next hearing will take place on February 20^th 2020.

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