“Prison for those who soil cultural heritage”: the FdI bill against “eco-vandals” arrives

Fratelli d’Italia declares war on eco-vandals and does so with a bill that aims to strengthen the measures for the protection of decency, as well as the penalties provided for by the penal code for those who damage cultural or environmental assets. In recent times, the demonstrative actions of the young climate activists of the Ultima Generazione collective have intensified: just think of the black liquid spilled into the Barcaccia fountain in Piazza di Spagna or the orange paint thrown by two activists against Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, the same used in January to smear Palazzo Madama, seat of the Senate of the Republic.

Initiatives strongly stigmatized by Giorgia Meloni’s party, which now wants to run for cover with an ad hoc bill that sees Senator Marco Lisei as the first signatory. The draft of the text – which Adnkronos has already been able to view – is still being finalized and consists of a single article, containing amendments to decree law number 14 of 20 February 2017 and to article 635 of the penal code. In detail, for those who have reported one or more complaints or have been convicted – even with a non-definitive sentence – for vandalism or willful damage to protected cultural assets, there is a ban, for a minimum of six months to a maximum of one year, to approach at a distance of less than 10 meters the buildings subject to protection. Transgression of the prohibition entails a fine ranging from 500 to 1,000 euros. The FdI bill also punishes with imprisonment from six months to three years even those who disfigure or deface public or religious buildings and buildings subject to protection as cultural assets.

In the explanatory report accompanying the bill, the rapporteur Lisei highlights how “the right to choose to carry out actions of civil disobedience” should not be “absolutely confused with the non-right to carry out acts of vandalism to draw people’s attention to this or that problem or need»: for the FdI senator it is «a non-principle that cannot be legitimized in any way». Lisei lists a series of events that occurred in the last year, which would demonstrate that “the deterrent objective does not always obtain the desired result”: “just think, for example”, continues the senator, “who drove the vehicle , a Maserati SUV for hire, on the Trinità dei Monti stairway, for anyone who has traveled a part of the archaeological park of the Pompeii excavations on board a scooter, also for hire, for anyone who has water-skied in Venice on the Grand Canal, to the graffiti on the walls of the Colosseum, to the paint on a facade of Palazzo Madama and on other buildings of public institutions. Such actions – Lisei remarks again – have their own seriousness and cannot be labeled as “bravado”: they are serious in the social sphere because those who committed them either did not consider them a behavioral anomaly at all or committed them knowing that they were a anomaly but they absolutely didn’t take care of it.’