There are inspiring stories that give hope, like that of Vito Alfieri Fontana. Following a striking conversion, this Italian manufacturer of antipersonnel mines became a deminer. “I had to do something to try to fix [le tort que j’avais commis] », he explains to Duty.
Until its closure in 1993, the family company Tecnovar — which Vito Alfieri Fontana headed for many years — manufactured, among other things, 1.3 million anti-tank mines and 1.5 million anti-personnel mines. Evil weapons that mutilate and kill long after wars end.
“This type of production was very profitable,” indicates the former arms manufacturer in writing. “The factory belonged [à l’origine] to my father, who started working in this field in the early 1960s.” Until 1977, Tecnovar supplied mines to the Italian army. Then, in 1978, the company in the Bari region of southern Italy began selling mines and mine components to other countries, primarily Egypt.
” I suppose [que nos mines ont été utilisées] in all wars in which the Egyptian government, according to its foreign policy, has been directly or indirectly engaged,” he specifies, citing in particular Egypt’s involvement in the Iran-Iraq war and the assistance provided to the Taliban against the Soviet invasion in the 1980s.
Awareness
It was when his son, then eight years old, began to ask him questions about his work that Vito Alfieri Fontana began a devastating realization. “Dad, I know a lot of people make guns, but why you? Are you a killer? » the boy had said to him.
Then, in an assembly, a young man asked him what he dreamed of at night. “Let another war break out so you can produce more mines and make even more money? » A second terrible blow which advanced his thinking.
At the time, the man was also contacted by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and the Catholic movement Pax Christi. “They pushed me to make a decision about what the victims were going through. » Mines above all sow terror among civilians, he recalls. “I understood that 90% of victims [des mines] were civilians and not soldiers. Once you understand that, it’s a shame. »
Closing the family business, however, was not enough for Vito Alfieri Fontana, who decided to act directly on the ground to try to redeem himself. At the end of the 1990s, the arms manufacturer, now repentant, became involved with international organizations by becoming a mine clearer in the Balkans. “I worked as a field director for several mine clearance teams [de 1999 à 2016], he explains. It was hard work. »
In the book Ero l’uomo della guerra (which means “I was the man of the war”), which Vito Alfieri Fontana, now 72 years old, recently published in Italy by Éditions Laterza in collaboration with the journalist Antonio Sanfrancesco, the former businessman sums up his life like this:
“I designed, manufactured and sold two and a half million antipersonnel mines. I removed thousands, over nearly twenty years, all along the mined ridge of the Balkans, from Kosovo to Serbia to Bosnia, restoring homes, schools, factories, farmland, aqueducts and stations. These numbers symbolically summarize the two lives I have lived. From a numerical point of view, the results are uneven. From the point of view of my conscience too, because the evil committed remains. For ever. »
Banning antipersonnel mines
Vito Alfieri Fontana’s conversion also led him to campaign for the banning of antipersonnel mines. In 1997, a few years after closing his business, he was invited by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines to attend the Oslo conference. “On this occasion, the articles of the Ottawa Convention were drafted and I helped to clarify and clarify the technical issues,” he emphasizes.
The Ottawa Convention, officially called the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, bans the use, stockpiling and transfer of mines and calls for their destruction. To date, 164 countries have signed the text.
“It was a great success,” said Vito Alfieri Fontana. Even though the largest mine-producing countries have not signed this treaty, it is certain that they have stopped developing new types of mines. Without new “surprises” on the ground, deminers can improve, year after year, the speed of demining operations. »
In the months that followed, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines won the Nobel Peace Prize. From weapons manufacturer to mine clearance, Vito Alfieri Fontana has thus contributed, through a transformation at human level, to a significant advance for humanity.