Foibe Debate Cancelled at Rome Film School After Student Protests

Rome: A debate scheduled to take place at the Rossellini film school in Rome on Italy’s Day of Remembrance of the Foibe massacres was cancelled after a students’ protest. The debate, intended to commemorate the mass killings and deportations of Italians in regions extending from the Trieste zone in Italy’s Friuli Venezia Giulia region to the Istrian peninsula and Dalmatia in Croatia during and immediately after WWII, was set to be attended by Senator Roberto Menia, who drafted the 2004 law for the commemoration.

According to Ansa News Agency, Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara expressed his disappointment over the cancellation. He stated, “I hope the event can be reorganized soon,” and emphasized that his ministry will consistently work to ensure schools protect free speech and open dialogue.

The debate had been scheduled for Monday morning at the film-TV Institute Roberto Rossellini but was called off following a protest by left-wing collective students. The students voiced their opposition on social media, stating that “remembrance day is the perfect occasion for fascists to get out of history’s swamp and promote a vulgar form of historical revisionism, trying to make people forget about the crimes carried out by Fascism during its years in power – let’s build an anti-Fascist wall in every school.”

Italy on Monday remembered the massacre of thousands of Italians by Tito’s partisans in ethnic cleansing at the end of WWII. It is estimated that as many as 15,000 Italians, largely but not exclusively identified with Fascism, were tortured or killed by Yugoslav communists who occupied the Istrian peninsula during the last two years of the war.