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ECONOMY

Covid-19: Protesters clash with Italian police over business closures

Protestors clashed with police in Rome for a second week running on Monday as small business owners and employees demonstrated against continued Covid-19 closures across the country.

Covid-19: Protesters clash with Italian police over business closures
Riot police block protesters from heading towards the prime minister's offce in central Rome during a demonstration on Monday. Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP

Around 200 people tried to reach prime minister Mario Draghi’s office, but were held back by lines of police in riot gear, Reuters reports. 

Some protesters hurled stones and bottles at the police and let off fireworks, filling the street with smoke.

Protesters during skirmishes with riot police in Rome’s Piazza San Silvestro on April 12th. Photos: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP

There were similar clashes with police last week during a protest outside parliament, organised by the same group.

Some Italian media reported that far-right groups including Casapound had hijacked the protests, triggering the violence on both occasions.

The demonstration in the city’s central Piazza San Silvestro had initially been organised by a movement called ‘Io Apro’ (meaning “I will open”), which includes restaurant, bar and other business owners who have said they’ll reopen despite the rules currently forbidding them to.

“The problem is we just don’t know what to do. They tell us that we can only do take-aways, but in my neighbourhood with a population of 3,000, what kind of take-aways can I do?” said Silvio Bessone, a chef from the northern Piedmont region.

Chefs prepare to take part in the protest central Rome on Monday. Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP
People holding placards reading “The Puppet Show has ended (Opera de Pupi Finiu)”, “In a world of dragons the restaurants are burning”, a play on words with the surname of current Italian prime minister Mario Draghi. Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP

The whole country remains under tough restrictions meaning bars and restaurants can only serve takeout and delivery, while other businesses such as bars and gyms must remain closed.

While Italy’s first national lockdown in March 2020 was widely accepted, there have been protests since October over renewed measures.

There has been growing unrest in recent weeks after the government said current tight restrictions, which amount to a lockdown in many areas, would stay in place until at least April 30th.

The Italian government has not yet provided a clear plan for the country’s exit from the current lockdown.

Member comments

  1. With opening things up, spare a thought for the hospital staff and first responders, many who have died or been left with long term damage due to COVID-19. Italian hospitals were last year overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients and watching it all unfold from Australia was heartbreaking, listening to medical staff. I don’t understand why the public would want to put hospitals and their staff under that sort of pressure again.

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ROME

Rome square filled with coffins in protest over Italy’s workplace deaths

A thousand coffins filled one of Rome's most famous squares on Tuesday as a trade union made a powerful statement on Italy's high number of deaths in accidents at work.

Rome square filled with coffins in protest over Italy's workplace deaths

“Every year, one thousand people go to work and don’t come home,” read a large sign displayed next to the 1,041 cardboard coffins set up around the obelisk in the centre of the Piazza del Popolo.

“Zero is still too far away,” read another sign in the square as curious tourists took snapshots.

Last year, 1,041 people died in workplace accidents in Italy.

“We brought these coffins here to raise awareness, to remind everyone of the need to act, to not forget those who have lost their lives,” Pierpaolo Bombardini, general secretary of the UIL union behind the protest told AFPTV.

The protest was also intended “to ask the government and politicians to do something concrete to prevent these homicides” he added.

“Because these are homicides. When safety rules are violated, they are not accidents, but homicides.”

Cardboard coffins fill Rome’s Piazza del Popolo on March 19th in a protest by the Italian Labor Union (UIL) intended to draw public attention to the number of deaths at work in Italy. (Photo by Tiziana FABI / AFP)

Fatal accidents in the workplace regularly make headlines in the Italian press, each time sparking a debate on risk prevention. Most recently a concrete structure collapsed on the construction site of a supermarket in Florence last month, killing five people working at the site.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni denounced it as “another story… of people who go out to work, who simply go out to do their job, and do not come home”.

Bombardini called for an increase in the number of inspections and inspectors.

“Companies that violate safety standards must be closed down,” he added. According to Eurostat’s most recent statistics, from 2021, on EU-wide workplace fatalities, Italy had 3.17 deaths per 100,000 workers.

That was above the European average of 2.23 per 100,000 works but behind France at 4.47 and Austria at 3.44.

The European Union’s three worst-faring countries are Lithuania, Malta and Latvia, while work-related fatalities are lowest in the Netherlands, Finland and Germany.

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