Mayor of Riace detained for his ‘civil disobedience’

The Mayor of Riace has implemented in his city a model of co-existence which should be reproduced everywhere and instead is punished by Italy’s right wing government

The mayor of Riace, Domenico Lucano, has been detained in the morning and put on house arrests. The prosecutor has accused him of favouring illegal immigration.

Riace is implementing since 1998 one of the most interesting and certainly unique co-existence project in Italy and also in Europe. Migrants and refugees have actually settled in the city, bringing it back to life, thanks to the efforts of Mayor Lucano who believed in communitarian projects.

The mayor was being harshly attacked by the right wing racist government of Italy.

In the speech he sent to the Kurdish rally in Dusseldorf last September, Mayor Lucano said: “On 20 September 2016 the Municipality of Riace, which I head, unanimously awarded the honorary citizenship to President Öcalan precisely to concretely support the international campaign for his release and above all to recognize that it was thanks to the arrival on 1st July 1998 in the Calabrian coast, at Riace marina, of a sailing ship with hundreds of Kurds, that in fact our experience of hospitality began”.

Lucano recalled that “Ours was a small town with many empty houses as people had been forced to emigrate and with the arrival of the ship a lot of homeless people began to arrive.

Thanks to the arrival of the Kurds, Riace has begun to repopulate and to demonstrate to Italy and fortress Europe that the arrival of migrants is not a problem but a valuable resource for the eco-compatible development of small and medium-sized centers”.

The mayor also underlined that “the Democratic Confederalism and the experiences of social self-organization in the liberated areas of Kurdistan are a precious stimulus for those in Europe who want to build a certain opposition to the spread of racist and fascist barbarism”.

Now the Mayor, who never hide is being a ‘civil disobedient’ activist, is confined to house arrest.