Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi defends the government's stance on the handling of the demonstrations and rejects accusations of repressing dissent. In an interview with Corriere della Sera, the Interior Minister praises the effectiveness of the preventive measures implemented by law enforcement, including searches and preventive detentions, adopted to prevent organized groups from infiltrating the demonstrations and causing disorder.
"As long as there are demonstrations, I will be here, precisely because the right to demonstrate is an integral part of democratic life and will always be guaranteed," he says. " What concerns us is the recurring attempts by organized groups to exploit demonstrations to fuel tensions, provoke incidents, and create disorder . This is what we will continue to focus on, through prevention efforts that our police forces carry out daily with great professionalism and which, if I may, are beginning to have an effect."
The hundreds of preventive stops and searches (also in the Cagliari area, with two suspects and in Serramanna the seizure of a modified pistol) «are the main elements of the growing results obtained so far in preventing accidents».
"Since this season began," he continues, "no demonstration has been banned; we've even allowed those that weren't previously authorized. Despite the hundreds of thousands of people who took to the streets, there have been virtually no injuries to protesters, unlike those of law enforcement. Any suggestion of repression seems fanciful to me, at best . Rather, it seems to me that sometimes there's a tendency to confuse, even instrumentally, the sacrosanct right to protest with the pretense of being able to engage in violent or unlawful behavior. These are two profoundly different things. The police don't intervene to repress opinions, but to prevent crime and ensure everyone's safety, starting with those who demonstrate peacefully. And I believe this distinction should be a shared heritage."
(Unioneonline)