The far-right government of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has proposed a new security decree that would criminalize non-violent protests that block roads and resisting a police offer in prison or in a migrant reception center. The opposition has dubbed the legislation “anti-Gandhi” for targeting the forms of peaceful resistance advocated by the Indian civil rights leader.
The law approved by Congress on September 18, and just needs to be passed by the Senate, where the government wants it to be on the top of the agenda. The security decree creates up to 20 new criminal offenses or aggravating circumstances and increases prison time for offenders.
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Participating in road or railway blockades can lead to a month in prison, but if it is done in a collective mobilization, a person could face between six months and two years. What’s more, the security decree introduces an aggravating factor, which increases the penalties by up to a third. In view of the recent protests against the Messina Strait bridge and high-speed trains, a defendant will receive a longer prison time if their actions were aimed at preventing “a public work or a strategic infrastructure from being completed.”
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The League [the right-wing political party that forms part of Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni’s government] also proposed for chemical castration for rapists and pedophiles. Matteo Salvini’s populist party has managed to get at a technical commission approved to study the possibility of chemical castration for convicted sex offenders, provided they voluntarily accept the procedure. Under the plan, they could receive suspended sentences in exchange for hormone-blocking treatment. It is a measure that is applied in Russia, Poland and some Scandinavian countries, but there is debate about its effectiveness.
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Meloni’s security decree has been met with unusually strong opposition from the country’s judiciary. Fabrizio Vanorio, a public prosecutor from Naples, warned: “It provides for technically fascist rules. If approved, it would return Italy to an authoritarian criminal law similar to that of the Mussolini years or, to give a more modern example, yo that of Orbán’s Hungary.”
