100 years ago Matteotti was kidnapped and killed by fascists. Mattarella: “The Republic bows to his memory”
The President of the Republic placed a wreath of flowers on the monument in memory of the Honorable on the 100th anniversary of his death
ROME – On 10 June 1924, one hundred years ago, the socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti disappeared, kidnapped and killed by fascist assassins. The dismay of his party comrades in the words of Filippo Turati, addressed to Anna Kuliscioff, the following day: “We are in horrible pain regarding the fate of Matteotti… Yesterday at 4pm he left the house and I don’t know if he passed in the House, but none of us saw it, and has never been heard from since. While he lives largely in the Chamber, he has not collected either his correspondence from the post office or the notes we left for him at his place of refuge in the last room of the Library.” Matteotti’s body was found only on 16 August 1924, tortured, in Riano in the Quartarella scrub. It was the tragic but obvious epilogue of those weeks of anguish following the kidnapping, in which no trace of the socialist and anti-fascist deputy could be found. The body was in an advanced state of decomposition, so much so that a dental examination was necessary for its recognition. And there the sad confirmation, that was the body of Giacomo Matteotti, kidnapped and murdered on June 10 by fascist hitmen.
MATTARELLA: “LA REPUBBLICA BOWS TO ITS MEMORY”
“The kidnapping, one hundred years ago, of the socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti, which was followed by his cruel, barbaric killing, was an attack on Parliament and on the freedom of all Italians and represented a watershed in the national history“. Thus the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella who placed a wreath of flowers on the monument in memory of the Honorable on the 100th anniversary of his death.
“The violence that immediately characterized the actions of the fascist movement, after the attacks on workers organized in unions and cooperatives, against the institutions, from the Municipalities turned to Parliamentthat political assassination took on a peculiar historical and symbolic significance. The State was subservient to an armed party that became a regime, with the complicity of the Monarchy”, continues the head of State.
“Giacomo Matteotti, Secretary of the Unity Socialist Party, committed as it was for the redemption of the poorest classes, he belonged to the group of those who knew how the freedoms of the liberal State had to be able to translate into effective rights for all Italians”, recalls Mattarella.
“His anti-fascism was based on this vision, opposing the violence carried out against workers by squad actions. A manifestation of a commitment that would later find an echo in the Liberation struggle and in the republican choice by the Italian people – he adds – Matteotti saw the progressive with clarity. demolition of the freedoms guaranteed by the Albertine Statute by fascism and denounced its consequences and implications, while no similar awareness was making its way among the Italian ruling classes. The courage that animated his last, dramatic denunciation from the benches of Montecitorio constitutes not only a hymn to freedom and a political testament of perennial validity but, also, an act of loyalty to Parliament. That Parliament which constitutes the heart of every living democracy and which was humiliated by the regime, until its suppression“.
“The Republic bows to the memory of Giacomo Matteotti, defender of the social classes subordinates and martyrs of democracy“, concludes Mattarella.