Foibe, Brothers of Italy want to remove Tito’s honor. But the left opposes

Today the bill for the revocation of the Italian State’s highest honor to Marshal Tito who after 1943 ordered the massacres in Foibe will be discussed in the Chamber’s Constitutional Affairs Committee. The Yugoslav communist dictator, in fact, in 1969 was awarded the Grand Cross of Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, decorated with the Grand Cordon. Remedying this error “is the minimum wage for all people who still suffer from having lost their loved ones”, explains FdI deputy Walter Rizzetto, first signatory of the bill that was merged with two other similar ones presented by Fabio Rampelli ( FdI). and Massimiliano Panizzut (Lega). To repeal it, it will be necessary to amend a 1951 law that prohibits making decisions of this type in relation to the deceased. «For decades these thousands of victims were excluded from the historical and public narrative, but today that the truth has been reestablished, it is absurd that the Italian Republic, on the one hand, recognizes the foibe tragedy and celebrates the memory of its victims on Remembrance Day and , on the other hand, includes among its most illustrious honorees precisely those who ordered the ethnic cleansing of Italians in Istria and the eastern Adriatic”, adds Rizzetto, who recalls the importance of a law in this sense, precisely in these days when we are preparing for celebrate Remembrance Day, on January 27th, for the victims of the Holocaust (initiatives sponsored by the Prime Minister were presented yesterday) and Remembrance Day, on February 10th, for those of the foibe. However, the left does not is completely convinced that it is appropriate to remove the honor from Tito. The deputies of Pd, Alleanza Verdi Sinistra and M5S have already expressed their opposition in the session on November 30th in which the issue was preliminarily addressed. As the commission’s report states, Dem Gianni Cuperlo «fears that this is an indication of a partial and political use of the past, while the country would need a conscious awareness of the complexity of history, which certainly does not emerge from reading the illustrative reports. that accompany legislative proposals”. Therefore, «we ask ourselves if the conditions exist to undertake a more serious reflection on a historical, cultural, political and human level». Interviewed by Il Tempo, Cuperlo explains that all this “does not in any way consist of defending Tito”, but “these are lands on which it is not advisable to move superficially, because there is a risk of not understanding the complexity of the history of these lands”. In the same tune is his party comrade Federico Fornaro, who on November 30th highlighted how the extraordinarily positive role played by the Yugoslav resistance in the fight against Nazism should also be remembered. That is why we must “ to avoid opening a debate in a useless way that does not take into account the correct transmission of memory.” Although the year in which the Italian State granted the great honor of Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic to Marshal Tito Grillino Alfonso Colucci harbors the suspicion of a “political use” and “stigmatizes the fact that, although the Commission should address issues of primary interest for the lives of citizens, the majority feel the need to get involved in issues of this nature, which express nothing more than an attempt at political exploitation.” Even more sensational were the words of Filiberto Zaratti (Avs), who highlighted how Tito never received convictions for crimes against the community by the European Court of Justice. “I neither absolve nor condemn,” he added, and when questioned by the Huffington Post concluded: “There is a lack of evidence.” For Rizzetto, the positions of the left speak for themselves, because in the face of the massacre in Foibe «there can be no “but” or “if”». The FdI deputy remembers when in 2020 the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella held the hand of his Slovenian counterpart Borut Pahor at Basovizza foiba. On that occasion he said: «History cannot be erased and the painful experiences suffered by the populations of these lands cannot be forgotten. Precisely for this reason, the present time and the future require a sense of responsibility.” The majority bill aims precisely at this objective.