Reacting to the death of an infant who was among migrants whose boat was shipwreck near the Italian coast, in 2020 Roberto Saviano called Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini, current Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, “bastards” .
Italian journalist and writer Roberto Saviano was fined Thursday, September 12, 1,000 euros for having defamed far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whom he had insulted in 2020 because of her anti-migrant positions.
The lawyer of the author of the international bestseller on the Neapolitan mafia Gomorra immediately announced its intention to appeal, even if the Rome court judging this case was satisfied with a symbolic sentence, while the prosecution had requested a fine of 10,000 euros. Giorgia Meloni’s lawyers, for their part, requested damages in the amount of 75,000 euros, estimating that Roberto Saviano had “used excessive, vulgar and aggressive language”.
“You are bastards!”
At issue in this trial were the statements of Roberto Saviano during a television program in December 2020 where he was asked for a comment on the death in a shipwreck of a six-month-old baby coming from Guinea. This infant, Joseph, who was one of 111 migrants rescued by the humanitarian ship Open Arms, died before he could receive medical care. In a video shot by rescuers and shown to Roberto Saviano during the show, the baby’s mother can be heard crying.
The writer, visibly upset, then pointed the finger at Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini, the head of the Anti-Immigration League who is now Deputy Prime Minister: “I just want to say to Meloni, and Salvini, you are bastards! How could you?” Giorgia Meloni declared in 2019 that the ships of humanitarian NGOs which rescue migrants “should be sunk”, while migrants saved by NGOs represent only 5% of the total arriving in Italy. Matteo Salvini, as Interior Minister that same year, blocked the arrival of these ships in Italy. The latter is a civil party to the trial.
“An attack on freedom of expression”
The writers’ association PEN International, which defends freedom of expression, sees in this judgment “an attack on freedom of expression.” Its spokesperson Sabrina Tucci denounced in a press release “a dangerous warning for all writers and journalists, a message inviting you to measure your own words to avoid risking long legal battles, financial difficulties, psychological suffering and prison”. She also recalled that Roberto Saviano was being sued in another defamation trial by Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of the populist and anti-migrant League party, which he had called the “minister of the underworld”.
PEN International had unsuccessfully urged Giorgia Meloni, now Prime Minister, in an open letter to withdraw her complaint, filed when the leader of the post-fascist Fratelli d’Italia party was still in opposition. Press freedom groups say such trials are symbolic of a culture in Italy in which public figures, often politicians, intimidate journalists with repeated lawsuits. Italy is ranked 41st in the 2023 world press freedom rankings published by Reporters Without Borders.