Sanremo, the NGO “Un Ponte Per…” sends an open letter to Amadeus to invite Russian and Ukrainian conscientious objectors to the festival

ROME – “Invite Russian and Ukrainian conscientious objectors to the Sanremo Festival”: this is what Alfio Nicotra and Angelica Romano, co-Presidents of the Italian organization write A bridge for, in an open letter addressed to Amadeus, conductor of the Sanremo Festival. “We have learned with pleasure – write the two Co-Presidents of the humanitarian organization – that during the days of the Sanremo Festival space will be given to the terrible ongoing war triggered by the invasion of the Ukrainian territory by the Russian Federation and which has been reaping, for almost a year, tens of thousands of victims”.

“Dear Amadeus…” “Dear Amadeus – reads the letter – you have chosen as co-host of your evenings a person like Gianni Morandi, who had the courage to sing a song against the war in Vietnam:”There was a guy who like me”. That boy, those boys, are still there, even today. They are the Russian and Ukrainian conscientious objectors. Invite them to the Festival, give them a voice”.

Cameras also for conscientious objectors. “This is not the place – specified Nicotra and Romano – to discuss the merits of whether or not to give space, in a televised demonstration followed all over the world, to the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky. We limit ourselves to noting that Zelensky already enjoys unprecedented media coverage. On the contrary, it seems to us that the testimony, expressed at the risk of their lives and freedom, of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian conscientious objectors, has been completely ignored by public TV and by the Italian and European mass media system”.

“The logic of weapons the repudiation of war”. “After having crossed the battered territory of Ukraine several times with humanitarian aid and pacifist caravans, A bridge for has launched a campaign in support of Peace Buildersof the objectors’ organizations and of the pacifist movements of both countries, to cover the legal costs of the trials”, continued the two co-Presidents, thus underlining the importance of giving space to voices such as those of the Russian objector Alexander Belik, or of the Ukrainians Vitaliy Vasyliovych Alekseienko and Andrii Kucher, who “in the delirium of nationalist hysteria choose to put the repudiation of war before the barbaric logic of arms”. their own courage”, write Nicotra and Romano again, who ask the conductor of the Festival, in fact, to give them a voice and visibility.