Leftist groups in Italy demanded the Italian government take concrete steps to ensure the safety of Ilaria Salis, an Italian anti-fascist activist who has been incarcerated in Hungary for almost a year. The 39-year-old school teacher was arrested on February 11, 2023 and is facing three counts of attempted assault and is also accused of being part of an extreme leftwing organization. She was arrested after an anti-fascist counter demonstration to a neo-Nazi rally in Budapest in 2023.
Salis was produced before the trial court in Hungary on January 29 in handcuffs and shackles which triggered widespread outrage in Italy and across Europe. Days later, on January 31, Italian newspaper Repubblica published a letter written by Salis in October 2023 denouncing the inhumane treatment and appalling conditions she has been subjected to during her nearly one-year stint in Hungarian prison.
In the letter she wrote that she was denied contact with her family for the first six months and throughout her time in prison she has systematically been denied translation and interpretation services by authorities for key aspects of her legal process. She was also denied access to Hungarian classes. She has also been denied proper access to medical care. With regards to her physical conditions, she described dirty cramped quarters teaming with mice, cockroaches, and bed bugs and only being permitted one hour outside her cell a day.
Groups such as the People’s Union (UP), Communist Refoundation Party (PRC) Potere al Popolo, Communist Youth Front (FGC), Italian Communist Party (PCI), and others, have expressed solidarity with Ilaria Salis and condemned her treatment by Hungarian authorities. They have also condemned the callousness of the far-right Giorgia Meloni-led Italian government for not providing necessary support to Salis. The groups have demanded the Italian government take immediate action to bring her back to Italy.
In response to international and domestic pressure, even from non-left opposition parties like the Five Star Movement, Meloni called far-right Hungarian leader Viktor Orban on January 30, a day after the photos circulated of Salis wearing shackles in court, and urged him to intervene in the case on behalf of the Italian citizen to uphold her basic rights. Meanwhile, Italy’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Tajani dismissed the pressure on the government and stated that a legal case should not turn into a political spectacle. Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini even criticized Illaria Salis for participating in an anti-fascist rally that countered the neo-Nazi ‘Day of Honor in Budapest on February 11, 2023.
On February 9, a representative from Potere al Popolo told Peoples Dispatch, that “Ilaria Salis has been held in a Hungarian maximum-security prison for nearly a year, has been subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, and faces a 24-year prison sentence. Her rights of defense and due process have been severely compromised and her prison conditions do not meet minimum standards of legality.”
They continued: “The Italian government and diplomatic authorities have intervened late and not incisively enough. We ask that Salis, who has pleaded innocence and is awaiting trial, be released or, at the very least, placed under house arrest in Italy, a possibility provided for by European law but which, to date, still seems far off.”
Potere al Popolo and the Communist Youth Front (FGC) have criticized the hypocrisy of Antonio Tajani who has called for legal resolution of Ilaria Salis’s case as it was Tajani who even asked the EU to terminate trade relations with India following an incident in February 2012 when two Italian marines who were detained in India for shooting two Indian fishermen in February 2012.
Anti-fascism is not a crime
Salis’ arrest took place amid the fascist-organized “Honor Day” commemoration in February 2023. Neo-Nazi groups from Hungary and other parts of Europe gather annually in Budapest in the second week of February for “Honor Day” which commemorates the Nazis who were killed during the Siege of Budapest by the Soviet Army in 1945.
Parallel to the neo-Nazi commemoration, anti-fascist groups in Hungary and abroad also gather in the city to organize counter-demonstrations against fascism and the attempts to rewrite history and celebrate Nazis. Progressives in Hungary have accused the Viktor Orban government and police authorities of covertly supporting such neo-Nazi events that glorify Nazi war criminals and their collaborators.
