Protesters Deface the Statue of Italian Journalist who Bought an Eritrean Child
A statue of Italian journalist Indro Montanelli in Milan has been painted red and sprayed with the words “racist” and “rapist.”
There is a petition to have the statue removed from the park in the city center. When Montanelli was 26 years old in 1935, he was a journalist covering the war in Eritrea, where the Italian military were trying to conquer the country. There he bought a 12-year-old girl and married her. He died in 2001 at the age of 92.
“In Milan, there is a park and statue dedicated to Montanelli, who until the end of his days said with pride that he bought and married an Eritrean child of 12 years to turn her into a sex slave during the fascist regime’s aggression against Ethiopia,” the I Sentinelli group said on social media. Montanelli’s statue has been targeted before. On International Women’s Day in 2019, it had pink paint splashed over it.
Montanelli, who died in 2001 at the age of 92, was one of the most decorated and influential Italian journalists of the 20th century, founding the Il Giornale newspaper and serving at the Corriere della Sera.
