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CHARLEROI FREEZES OUT ITALIAN FASCIST MINISTER The Belgian city of Charleroi froze Italian government minister Mirko Tremaglia, 74, a long-term fascist militant and a member of the fascist Alleanza Nazionale (AN), out the official commemoration of a massive colliery disaster in August. Forty-five years ago, 262 miners lost their lives in a deep mine at Marcinelles near Charleroi. A hundred and thirty-six of the coal miners killed were Italians and the tragedy, which was caused by inadequate safety measures and shocked public opinion in Belgium and throughout Europe. eventually led not only to improved safety procedures and working conditions but also to an historic agreement between the Belgian and the Italian government to "exchange" Italian workers for Belgian coal. Charleroi¹s Socialist mayor Jacques Van Gompel, commenting on the city¹s decision to give Tremaglia the cold shoulder, said: "taking in account his political past we have decided not to organise an official reception like we always do when a foreign authority pays us a visit." As a result of this principled move, Tremaglia was welcomed by anti-fascists and furious trade union activists instead of getting the official reception he had hoped for. The aging minister, visibly shaken by the extremely hostile atmosphere and the public rejection of his presence, told a Flemish journalist: "I don¹t understand what¹s going on at all" as his first foreign mission since being appointed collapsed around his ears. Tremaglia, a retired lawyer from Bergamo, has always been a faithful disciple of fascist ideology. At the age of 17, he served, alongside the Nazi Wehrmacht and Waffen SS, in the fascist army of the so-called ŒSalò republic¹ in Northern Italy when Allied forces had already liberated Sicily and the southern region of the Italian peninsula. After the war, he became an active member of the fascist MSI and, in 1972, he was elected an MP for his party. In the Berlusconi government elected earlier this year, he was appointed "Minister of Italians in the World", a post regarded as a sop created by Berlusconi to please the AN’s leader Gianfranco Fini. Tremaglia’s position was also created, however, to win support and votes from the enormous Italian Diaspora for the Berlusconi government and for the fascist AN in particular. Belgium is an interesting country from that perspective because it has, since the end of World War II, hosted a huge number of Italian workers. Fifty years on, more than 250,000 Belgian citizens are considered to have Italian roots. Because most of the Italian miners killed in the 1956 Marcinelles disaster were either members or activists of the former Italian Communist Party, it is hardly surprising that their families were so outraged at the prospect a visit to a such commemoration by minister belonging to a fascist party. Wim HAELSTERMAN In SEARCHLIGHT, octobre 2001 Collaborateur flamand de "RésistanceS" et de la revue antifasciste anglaise "Searchlight"
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RESISTANCES:
THE ENGLISH PAGES RésistanceS wishes to make a practical contribution to the fight against fascism, racism, xenofobia, extreme nationalism and the paralysing "pensée unique". RésistanceS is fully independent and is not linked to any political organisation whatsoever. RésistanceS is put together by a team of volunteers with different ethnical and socio-cultural backgrounds from all over the country (Brussels, Wallonia and Flanders). Our primary objectives are: to expose the extreme right, to analyse the conditions allowing neo-fascism to develop, to prove the worthlessness of right-wing extremist ‘alternatives’, to denounce the influence of neo-fascism on mainstream politics, to establish an anti-fascist network for individuals and organisations Write RésistanceS 9, Quai du Commerce B1000 Bruxelles Belgium |