118 CHA

The Italian Senate gave the green light on Wednesday to the so -called ‘Security Decree’ promoted by the Giorgia Meloni government, which increases protection for order forces and severely punishes the peaceful demonstrations. In the midst of strong opposition protests, which was planted before the Upper House with a symbolic sitting in the hemicycle, the text was approved with 109 votes in favor of 69 against and one abstention.

The decree reached the Senate after being validated previously in the Chamber of Deputies with a motion of trusta ploy frequently used by the Meloni Executive to accelerate the processing of a norm in Parliament and prevent the discussion of the amendments presented by the opposition.

Among other measures, the text introduces new crimes, sanctions and aggravating penalty in the face of civil disobedience or peaceful resistance such as road or railway roads. It is, the latter, an especially critical issue in Italy that, according to the detractors of these regulations, is expressly intended to silence the protests against the high -speed train line that will link Turin and Lyon, in France, as well as the construction project of the Messina bridge, which will connect the Italian peninsula with the island of Sicily.

The new law also includes the “specific legal protection” for police or military “investigated or charged with service related to the service”. These “may continue working and the State will cover their judicial costs up to a maximum of 10,000 euros for each phrase of the process,” Meloni said after the Council of Ministers that emanated the regulations, before it reached Parliament.

The rule also establishes jail sentences for passive resistance actions by prisoners in prisonsincludes stricter convictions against the irregular occupation of housing and introduces new types of crime of terrorism.

One of the most controversial parties that aroused during the process is that Pregnant women or with children under one year can be imprisoned with the minor, instead that the penalty is suspended until it reaches the minimum age, as is the case today. A measure driven by the League, which sold it ‘as a rule against foreign porterists operating in the Metro lines of the main cities, but will affect many others in vulnerability conditions. “Women who have children to steal are not worthy of doing so,” Senator Gianni Berrino, from Brothers of Italy, said of the parliamentary discussion, which caused the outrage of the opposition.

“It is an absolute shame that reveals the idea that the right has of security and dissent in the country,” said the Senators of the opposition Democratic Partywhile the leader of the group, Francesco Boccia, denounced: “I don’t think there is anything but to add to what we have heard. This is the meaning of the aberrant idea that Giorgia Meloni’s party, ‘woman’, ‘mother’, ‘Christian’, has security.”

The opposition considers that the new regulations restrict the right to demonstrate peacefully. A criticality that have also denounced humanitarian associations and even the Commissioner for the Human Rights of the Council of Europe, an independent body of the EU. Michael O’Flaherty warned in a letter addressed to the president of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa, which the text reduces the rights of imprisoned persons and could excessively expand the state’s ability to intervene in public meetings, such as protests or demonstrations. The president of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, also pointed out several objections to the text for constitutionality reasons, which forced the government to rewrite it.

The opposition parties, unions and numerous organizations demonstrated last Saturday in Rome against the controversial decree, with the motto “in front of a fascist government, until victory.” And this Wednesday, before starting the final vote, a group of senators protested sitting on the floor of the Senate, in front of the government’s seats and the shout “Shame, shame!”.

Meloni, meanwhile, defended the approval of the new law as “A decisive step to reinforce the protection of citizenship, the most vulnerable groups and our uniformed men and women”.