Italian authorities urged to give journalists more protection

Despite having police protection, Mimmo Carrieri was attacked on 5 July while Nello Trocchia is still awaiting police protection although he was threatened by the Camorra (the Naples-based crime syndicate) in early June. An environmentalist who reports for the online newspaper Viv@voce, Carrieri was insulted and roughed up for more an hour by around 20 campers while doing a photo-reportage on 5 July. “They took my camera, it was awful,” Carrieri told Ossigeno per l’Informazione (Oxygen for Information), an Italian NGO that monitors threats and violence against journalists and news media. Carrieri has often reported environmental abuses in nature reserves in the southern Apulia region and has repeatedly been threatened. His boat was sabotaged, his car was set on fire and he has received threatening letters. Since 2013, he has been getting protection from the police, who drive past his home and office several times a day. But he says this is not enough because he is a “moving target” who needs closer protection. Trocchia was been awaiting police protection for the past 50 days, ever since the police recorded a prison conversation about him in which a Camorra boss told his brother: “I’m going to smash that journalist’s skull.” The recorded conversations of these Camorra leaders, about whom Trocchia has written several articles for Fatto Quotidiano and Espresso, indicate that they are familiar with all of his activities and movements. The recordings have been passed to the anti-mafia prosecutor’s office in Naples but Trocchia is still getting absolutely no police protection. Last week, several parliamentarians expressed support for him and asked interior minister Angelino Alfano to intervene. “We firmly condemn any kind of threat to those who work to ensure freedom of information and we are outraged that no measure has been taken to protect Nello Trocchia,” Reporters Without Borders editor in chief Virginie Dangles said. “We remind the authorities that they have a duty to take action to guarantee the safety of journalists and we call on the anti-mafia prosecutor in Naples to see to this without delay. We also call on the authorities in Taranto to examine Mimmo Carrieri’s request for increased protection.” Reporters Without Borders has been concerned for months about the endemic violence against journalists in Italy, which is ranked 73rd in the 2015 freedom index, a fall of 24 places in one year. Ossigeno per l’Informazione reported 421 threats to journalists in Italy in 2014, an increase of around 10 percent on 2013.