It was the main course of the Rototom Social Forumthe Benicàssim reggae music festival: the event in support of the Australian activist Julien Assangealthough he finally fell off the list of speakers Stella Assange, his current partner. He also came charged with controversy, due to the pronouncements of one of the guests, the former deputy of the 5 Star Movement Alessandro di Battistain favor of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Finally, the ex-partista grillista has admitted in the past to having praised the Kremlin leader, although he has flatly rejected being a Putinist. “This does not make me a Putinist, nor does it make me against of sending arms to Ukraine”, he stressed.
Di Battista has justified his past praise to the president of the country who has ordered the invasion of Ukraine in the situation of the moment. “It was in the past, during the syria warbecause I thought that the West in Syria was the same way of acting as in Iraq, Afghanistanand Libya; and it was tragic for the people,” she emphasized. Syrian civil war began in 2011 with a popular revolt against the regime of bashar el assad. The UN has been able to count and document more than 320,000 deaths, although it admits that the real figure is much higher. The Syrian Human Rights Networkclose to the opposition, calculates that the number of civilians who have lost their lives could be around 230,000. Of these, some 200,000 have done so at the hands of the regime’s forces and some 6,000 at the hands of Russian troops. Islamic State would take third place on the podium with about 5,000. That is to say, about 90% of those killed have been at the hands of the Damascus regime or its ally, the Russian Federation.
Asked about his trips to Russia, and his interviews with politicians such as the then vice-president of the Duma, Sergei Zhelezniak, the inspirer of notable laws that curtailed press freedom in his day and the possible contradiction that his participation in a dedicated forum could entail to this essential right, Di Battista tiptoed. “It is true; I have never denied it (that in Russia there is no freedom of expression) but I do not live in Russia, I live in Europe, and what causes me scandal is the double standard: if Julian Assange If he had been a Russian journalist and had uncovered scandals there, all European politicians would place the issue as their priority,” he stressed. “But Assange works on the US and Europe, and most journalists forgot a colleague,” he continued.
Repression in Russia
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Of his trips to Russia, one of which he made after the invasion of Ukraine in the midst of an increase in political repression, he assures that he does so with the aim of knowing the opinion of the Russians. “The Russians have a vision and it is important for me to know it; I think many journalists in Italy should go there because many lies were written,” she charged. He ex-parliamentarian grillist made no mention of his controversial statements in favor of the recognition of the annexation of Crimea by Russia, or episodes attributed to him in the past, such as asking the headquarters of his parliamentary group for the help of “the Russian embassy” to get the ‘no’ vote to be imposed in a referendum to reform the Constitution in 2016 proposed by then Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and center-left Democratic party.
Support for the figure of Assange was unanimous, recalling the WikiLeaks revelations about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And the conviction that it was necessary to increase the campaign to avoid his extradition to the US, where, according to the speakers, “he would not have a fair trial.” “Assange is a symbol of the freedom of the press,” Di Battista stressed. The deputy of the M5S also participated in the debate Sabrina Pignedolli and spoke from the United Kingdom via videoconference Joseph Farrel, WikiLeaks ambassador.