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Latest update: 15/02/2011
- demonstrations - Italy - prostitution - Silvio Berlusconi - women
Women take to Italian streets over Berlusconi sex scandals
Thousands of women took to the streets in cities across Italy on Sunday demanding the resignation of Silvio Berlusconi.The embattled prime minister is facing trial in connection with allegations that he paid an underage girl for sex.
AFP - Thousands of women took to the streets of Italian cities Sunday calling for "dignity" and greater rights after a series of lurid prostitution scandals involving Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
"We are defending the dignity of women," read a placard held up at one of the rallies in Palermo, where thousands of women marched through the city.
Thousands more rallied in Bari, Trieste and Venice -- with men also joining.
Solidarity protests by women abroad were also expected, with a small rally of around 100 women held outside the Italian consulate in Tokyo earlier Sunday.
"The importance of this rally is in the common participation of men and women, young and old, intellectuals and workers," Naples mayor Rosa Russo Iervolino said as she marched through the southern Italian city.
The initiative has been organised by sisters Francesca and Cristina Comencini, both actresses, who argue that Berlusconi's playboy antics and his sexist comments are part of a much wider problem in Italian society.
"Neither right-wing governments, nor left-wing ones have ever done anything," Cristina Comencini said ahead of the protests.
She also criticised "discrimination in the job market due to a lack of day-nurseries, family helpers and part-time jobs."
In Italy, where the birth rate is one of the lowest in Europe at 1.4 children per family, only one woman in two works -- compared to 59 percent in the European Union -- despite women being, on average, better educated than men.
The Italian leader's scandals have added to the resentment.
"Berlusconi has long shown a violent contempt for women with his misogynist remarks," Francesca Comencini said.
Berlusconi and Ruby, real name Karima El Mahroug, deny having sex but many people have been offended in the way the Italian leader has defended himself.
"I have never paid a woman," Berlusconi said in one interview last year.
"I have never seen the satisfaction that there could be in it without the pleasure of conquest," he said.
And in a speech in November he remarked: "It's better to be passionate about beautiful women than to be gay."
Berlusconi's supporters have condemned the rallies.
"The women taking to the streets today are not very numerous and are rallying only for political ends," Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini said.
Fabrizio Cicchitto, a member of Berlusconi's People of Freedom party, said participants "belong to the leftist anti-Berlusconi movement."
More than 50,000 women have signed the movement's manifesto in just a week.
It denounces "the indecent, repetitive representation of women as a naked object of sexual exchange" in newspapers, advertising and on television.
It also said that macho sentiment in Italy has become "intolerable".
And although those involved have been asked not to politicise the demonstration, several members of parliament who recently broke away from Berlusconi's centre-right ruling party had said they would be attending.
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Comments (5)
The Protest Marches by the Italian Women
Sir, while I support the right of all people to peacefull protest and free speech, and I do think Mr. Berlusconi was wrong to engage in such risky behaviour bearing in mind his position, he deserves some form of condemnation.
However, my disquiet is with the emergence of large scale one sided gender protestation and the potentially deleterious effect it may have on the future of Europe.
As an example of what may result, it should be noted that the beginings of Apartheid in South Africa are rooted in the protest action taken by Afrikaaner women in the early part of the twentieth century against the propensity for Afrikaaner men to engage in relationships with black women. One only needs to look at the very large so called "Coloured" population of South Africa in the present day to see that at one time there was no colour bar in South Africa.
The subsequent pressure by the women to enact laws to stop mixed relationships & marriages led to a raft of other equally odious laws being passed, and so began "Apartheid".
I bring this up because, as I look at the Europe of today and the fact that birthrates have dropped below the sustainability threshold, and the continued necessity to import guest workers, 95% of whom are Muslim. I foresee a day in our great great grandchildrens time when Europe will be majority Muslim. You only need to look at the very high birth rate among immigrants to see that this will happen eventually. Given that immigrant children and their children will be European citizens and the resolute adherence by first world peoples to Democratic principles, a Muslim majority is inevitable.
So, with all due respect to the women of Italy and Europe, be carefull what you wish for. You may open a Pandora's box which will see stronger and stronger laws being passed against the follies of men, celebrate your new found power and wake up one day to severly curtailed birthrates and a rapidly rising immigrant population. Maybe the solution is massive support for families to elevate the birthrate above the replacement level and/or polygamy.
Research by respected American universities carried out among primitive tribes, indicate the presence of a longevity gene in certain men who continue to procreate well into old age. It has been discovered that the presence of the small number of these men in the tribe are vital to the tribes long term survival, due to the high attrition rate among the young men due to war, disease and accident. Google it. Perhaps Mr. Berlusconi has the longevity gene, it would also explain his ability to become very, very wealthy and take Italian politics from the disaster it was, to 17 years of relative stability.
Thank you.
Denis Coghlan
Gaborone
Botswana
Italian Women Protest Berlusconi
Brava Italia!
Francesca and Cristina Comencini
Francesca and Cristina Comencini are not actresses, get info on them!
Berlusconi
Loose ministers 'document of shame' by Carl zero, le fichier de la hondte. Can be seen on youtubes iamnotanumberbnr1 channel.
Berlusconi
Don't you think that it is much better for France and Britain to consider the disastrous situation they have left in Africa instead of being interested in mr Berlusconi? In my opinion France and Britain should take all the immigrants coming from the African English and French speaking countries.
Good Luck!
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