ROME: The spectrum of Italy’s political class has condemned a group of protesters who Friday vandalized the main office of Turin-based newspaper La Stampa.
The condemnations came from far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the head of the main center-left opposition party Elly Schlein, as well as from the non-political President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella.
This is a “very serious act which deserves the strongest condemnation,” Meloni said in a statement Friday, after phoning the editor-in-chief of the paper, Andrea Malaguti, and adding that “freedom of the press and information is a precious good.”
Mattarella on Saturday condemned a “violent attack,” while Schlein, quoted by La Stampa, called it a “serious and unacceptable act” and said that “every newsroom is a bastion of freedom and democracy.”
According to the daily’s website, around a hundred people participating in a demonstration in Turin against the government’s budget plans broke away from the main march and forced their way into the newspaper’s offices, which were empty that day due to a nationwide strike by Italian journalists.
