Antonella Baccaro (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
Palso through the sentences, the emancipation of women who grow up in Italy in families coming from countries where their rights are not recognized.
It is the case of a 27 year old Bengali girl, in Italy since she was a child, sold for five thousand euros from an uncle to a cousin, with whom she had to marry in 2013. A husband who mistreated and enslaved her and who ended up on trial for this, in Brescia.
The news concerns the acquittal of the violent husband requested by the public prosecutor. Reason: «The actions of compressing the moral and material freedoms of the accused are the result of the cultural system and not of the conscience and desire to annihilate and debase the spouse to achieve supremacy over her, given that the disparity between men and women is a result of its culture which the same offended party had even originally accepted”.
Let the judge deem the husband who has mistreated the woman almost unaware, and therefore not punishable, by virtue of the culture he is imbued with. Steps, but not much, because mistreating a human being is the result of a choice even when law and custom make it possible.
What doesn’t add up is because the same criterion of unawareness cannot also apply to her: according to the prosecutor, had the woman accepted a marriage agreement so she knew it consciously or in accordance with her own culture? Why, if the criterion of unawareness also applied to the wife, then her traditional marriage would already be invalid.
But there is another principle that the judge, who will have to express his opinion in October, will hopefully keep in mind: the one according to which anyone residing in a country that guarantees rights cannot deny them. Otherwise we should also consider those immigrants who take the law into their own hands in Italy to be unpunished, repeating behaviors that are commonplace in their countries. (even if severely punished by law).
The young Bengali girl, who grew up in our country, claims her rights, like poor Saman it is the seed of a free and aware generation that we must preserve. By all means. Sentences included.
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