The harassment at the gatherings of the Alpine troops has been going on for quite some time
When on May 10 the leader of the Lega Matteo Salvini published a post of solidarity with the Alpine troops underlining that there was no complaint against them, it became clear to everyone that Pandora's box was about to be opened. In recent years, the former Minister of the Interior has shown an ability to err on the side of all predictions and to err on the side of timing and in fact a few hours after his post, a 26-year-old filed the first formal complaint. Meanwhile, reports of harassment have increased to hundreds, but in the last few hours the affair has grown further as dozens of other episodes dating back to the 1980s have surfaced. So much so that there is more and more talk of a problem of systemic and cultural male chauvinism and sexism within the body of the Alpini.
Decades of harassment by the Alpini Only with regard to the gathering of the Alpini in Rimini and San Marino, which took place in the first weekend of May, reports of harassment, abuse, homolesbobitransphobic discrimination and sexist attitudes of various kinds reached over 500. The victims are mostly women who work in the hospitality and catering sectors, who have had to deal with groping, sexual innuendo, cat calling and squalid comments of all kinds having the sexual sphere as the lowest common denominator.
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But in the last few hours, stories from the past have begun to emerge, which lead to the assumption that the facts of Rimini and San Marino are only the tip of the iceberg. That similar episodes had already occurred in 2018 at the Trento rally is known, although those facts had not received the echo they are having now. A superficial reading might suggest that on that occasion the harassment was to a lesser extent, in reality it is very likely that in the absence of the spotlight that is only now turning on the phenomenon many women have not been pushed to report. But the new context that has arisen, with associations such as Non una di less that have made legal and psychological support available to the victims of abuses perpetrated in the context of the Alpine gatherings, is changing the cards.
Also in 2015, in the meeting of the Alpini in L'Aquila, harassment and abuse were not lacking. And a specific episode ended up in court, that of a 15-year-old lured by an Alpine and a friend of hers, induced to drink alcohol and then forced to have sex with both of them in a secluded place. The two men were sentenced to four years in prison in the first instance but the final sentence has not yet arrived, so much so that, as Simona Giannangeli, the victim's lawyer, tells the newspaper Domani, "the girl was even resented during the appeal phase and this left me perplexed. She had been believed, but she had to go over the whole experience ”. A process that risks leading to secondary victimization, in which the victim is called into question to the point of being induced to self-blame, exactly what Italy is under international observation for for non-compliance with the Istanbul Convention on violence against women.
But that's not all. In the mailboxes of journalists and anti-violence associations, testimonies are arriving that also concern many other Alpine gatherings held in recent years and even decades. From verbal harassment also against minors and pregnant women, passing through real physical abuse such as those towards a woman forcefully loaded onto a truck in Turin in 2011 or a woman with a five-month-old baby girl pulled in Milan in 2019 with comments on breastfeeding and so on. In the midst of all this, there has even been a report of an abuse that occurred in the 1980s.
A cultural problem While petitions were launched to stop the next gatherings of the Alpine troops and parliamentary questions were also presented, it started the usual scapegoat hunt of the Rimini and San Marino events, but also of previous editions.
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Before it was the turn of the young, according to the old formula whereby the new generations do not hit one from every point of view, whether in the world of work or in respect for others. A version that is denied by reading the allegations of harassment, according to which in many cases the abuses would have come from members of a certain age of the Black Feathers. At that point it was tried to say that the violence was perpetrated by non-Alpini who were simply dressed as Alpini thanks to the gadgets on sale during the gathering. Versions that do not even deserve comments but that make it clear, also in light of the chronicity of the complaints and despite the fact that the leadership of the National Alpine Association has turned around, that there is a problem of silence and justification that has a cultural nature. br>
Those who took the side of the Alpini also thought about confirming all this. “Do you want to see that the crime of military comradeship will be invented in accordance with the politically correct? What did the Alpine troops do wrong during their historic gathering? Of course, if making an appreciation of the forms of a woman who passes in front of them is a crime, I do not think that a single Alpine can be left out of jail. A harmless way of being and a tradition have been accused ”, Stefano Zecchi, president of the Muse-Museum of Sciences of Trento, wrote in Il Giornale. An analysis that sees harassment and abuse as a custom that has always been going on and that instead of realizing the problem ends up diminishing it, reducing it to boutade. A bit of what the National Alpine Association itself has tried to do up to now, bringing up the usual speeches on "rudeness" and "a few bad apples". The resonance of the events in Rimini and San Marino has however brought to light a rottenness that is much more widespread temporally and spatially than what one wanted to believe. The time has come for the Alpini corps to come to terms with itself.
