Thousands of demonstrators marched down Rome’s famous Via Veneto and other streets on Saturday, some smashing their way into a union office and clashing with police as they protested Italy’s new “green pass” vaccination requirement for employees to enter their offices.
The certification is mandatory beginning on Friday, and applies to public and private workplaces. Employees and employers risk fines if they do not comply. Public-sector workers can be suspended if they show up five times without a green pass.
The pass is already required in Italy to enter museums, theaters, gyms and indoor restaurants, as well as to take long-distance trains and buses or domestic flights.
Photo: AP
The passes show that a person has had least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, or recovered from the virus in the past six months, or has tested negative in the past 48 hours.
The protesters first held a noisy, authorized protest on Saturday in Rome’s Piazza Del Popolo. Then they left the vast square and clashed with police as they headed through Villa Borghese Park and down the Via Veneto in an unauthorized march.
A few hundred protesters broke off and headed down another street in Rome’s historic main shopping district that ends near Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s office in Chigi Palace. Police formed a line, aided by police vans, and sprayed water to thwart access to the seat of the Italian government.
Police swung at some demonstrators with batons. Many protesters in the front lines outside Chigi Palace raised their arms to indicate non-violence as they faced off with police. Others raised clenched fists or waved Italian flags and shouted “Freedom!” One banner read “Get your hands off [our] work.”
Rai State TV said demonstrators numbered at least 10,000, while organizers claimed 100,000 people.
At least one protester was injured, Rai said.
Among the protesters were proponents of the neo-fascist Forza Nuova group, Italian media reported.
It is “evident that neo-fascist groups hide behind the so-called anti-vaxxers,” Italian Ministry of the Interior Undersecretary Carlo Sibilia said.
Some protesters, armed with sticks and metal bars, smashed their way into the headquarters of CGIL, a left-leaning union, and trashed its office.
Italy’s main labor federations have supported the green pass requirement as a way to keep factories and other workplaces operating safely during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has battered the Italian economy.
Meanwhile, Draghi pledged to go ahead with the government’s vaccination campaign.
“The right to demonstrate one’s ideas can never degenerate into acts of aggression and intimidation,” Draghi said in a statement.
He denounced as unacceptable any kind of intimidation against unions, whom he described as “a fundamental garrison of democracy.”
“We won’t let ourselves be intimidated,” Federico D’Inca, the minister for parliamentary relations from the populist 5-Star Movement, wrote on Twitter.
Draghi’s government has credited the green pass requirement for workplaces for a surge of recent vaccinations.
As of Saturday, 80 percent of people 12 and older in Italy — those eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine shot — have been fully vaccinated.
Former Italian deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, whose League party is a partner in Draghi’s wide-ranging coalition, pitched a plea on Saturday to partially ease the green pass measure.
“Lengthen the minimum term of the Green Pass from 48 to 72 hours,” Salvini wrote on Twitter, calling that a step to “avoid chaos.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese