MEDITERRANEA Saving Humans responds to accusations by 'Panorama' and 'La Verità

Today a vulgar and shameful operation is being carried out against Mediterranea and some of our comrades by 'Panorama', 'La Verità' and their director Maurizio Belpietro, using defamatory and insulting lies. We have already instructed our lawyers to take legal action to denounce those responsible before the competent judicial authorities.

But it is important to understand how this well-oiled machine works to attack those who support civil aid, in this case the Church of Pope Francis. In our country, there are apparatuses that have access to the interception of personal conversations and emails, the contents of which are protected by investigative secrecy when they are part of judicial investigations. How many times have we heard about the 'press trial scandal', from the same pages from which today's media lies against us are launched?

What you see today in 'Panorama' and 'La Verità' is a press trial. Without a judge, without a court, without lawyers, without cross-examination, in full Inquisition mode: the gentlemen who sign this filth are above any law and crawl far below any decency. The article, the cover, every word written, has only one objective: to discredit the people and the movements that support their struggles, to intimidate, to send a mafia-style message: we will beat you, you and all those who dare to support you.

The technique is always the same: phrases taken from wiretaps are skilfully reassembled in order to construct the "monster" and put it on the front page. Lies and falsehoods have been written, as we will of course prove in front of a judge. People very dear to us, such as Pope Francis, who has never abandoned us in these years when we dared to disobey the hatred and indifference towards our brothers and sisters who are dying by the thousands in Libyan camps financed by Italy, or at sea because of the deliberate failure to rescue them, in this new and cruel war against humanity, have been mentioned.

None of us has ever become rich, on the contrary, but it is easy to see. It is easy to prove - the accounts of our association are public and searchable - that 90 per cent of every single cent raised goes to the missions, not to individuals. The remaining ten per cent is used to run an association that has thousands of members, over 40 local groups and is expanding in Europe. This is extremely annoying for those who have made their fortunes by spreading poison and inciting racial hatred.

It has become dangerous to save the other, to show solidarity with those who are rejected, raped, discriminated against, annihilated and destroyed by violence, abuse and torture. We have never been afraid of the courts, of trials, of investigations, from which we do not shy away, using a parliamentary immunity that we do not have and do not want. The long series of acquittals we have collected, on charges that have always been designed to stop us, speaks for itself. But that is not the point.

Such an apparatus, made up of public officials who use public money to wiretap and stalk for years and then provide smug pen-pushers with material to organise a press trial, is a serious problem that undermines the foundations of democracy and our constitutional freedoms. When the work of the police, the services and the Guardia di Finanza is put at the service not of the Constitution but of the interests of governments, it is a problem for democracy. When public subsidies for publishing, paid for by citizens' taxes, are used to write falsehoods and attack people's dignity, it is a problem. For democracy. Lies will certainly be monetised, as will slander.

Those who are attacked by what is written, like Pope Francis, have the solidarity and fraternity of us and of multitudes of people in every part of the planet, and are certainly not afraid. We will persevere, we will continue to do what they do not want us to do, to save and be saved from the horror that surrounds us.

They will continue to hate, we will continue to love.

Bologna, 29th November 2023