Monday January 13, 2025, Benefit for the family of Moussa Balde. Food served from 7pm, no reservation.
Todays voku will be to raise funds to allow Moussa Balde’s sister, brother and mother to take part in the first hearing of the trial of two responsible for his death. Moussa, originally from Guinea, was held as a non-European and irregular person on the territory, and for this reason he died in the isolation of a cell. Moussa’s death was neither “fatal” nor the fruit of a chain of inadvertence, but the consequence of structural racism. This hearing will be held in Turin on February 12.
The family members are represented by lawyers Gianluca Vitale and Laura Martinelli.
The funds are needed to pay for travel costs and the expensive visas for Italy, as well as the expenses while their stay.
During their visit to Italy of about a month, the family members would like to take part actively in various contestation events against CPR throughout Pemonte (Torino) and Liguria (Genova, Imperia, Ventigmiglia).
WHO WAS MOUSSA BALDE?
He was a friend and comerade, who died in the night between 22 and 23 May 2021 after 10 days spent in a cell in the isolation area, called Ospedaletto, inside the Turin CPR corso Brunelleschi. On May 9 he was beaten up in Ventimiglia by three Italians. After a short stay at the hospital he was held in the detention center, ignoring his serious physical and psychological condition.
To read more about the processes and his history, you can visit this blog (in Italian) under the category “Moussa Balde” https://parolesulconfine.com/ > Moussa Balde
NOW
On 12 February in Turin, the preliminary hearing of the proceeding for manslaughter will be held against the former director of the CPR and the medical director of the structure at the time of Moussa Balde’s death.
In February 2023, this very same CPR on corso Brunelleschi went on fire and remained closed until now. Yet it’s about to reopen.
Between June 2019 and December 2022, ten people lost their lives while being held in administrative detention. At the beginning of February 2024, the young Ousmane Sylla, who turns out to be a neighbor and friend of the Balde family, committed suicide in the CPR in Rome.
The presence of the family is crucial, not only for this legal procedure against this particular structure, it is also essential to strengthen a wide movement against the opening of more of these prisons in Liguria (as in Diano Marina) and in every Italian region.
AGAINST THE REOPENING OF TURIN’S CPR, WHERE MOUSSA BALDE DIED
AGAINST ALL CPR
FOR FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
JUSTICE FOR MOUSSA […Lees verder]
The public image of this film is that of a portrait of a neorealist Sicily in the past, with a vein of nostalgia. And a homage to cinema, for the many citations of classics, especially American films. But it is much more than that. Cinema Paradiso tells the story of cinema as a unique experience: in each projection, the projected film is only part of the story; the audience plays an essential role in the experience, transforming the film, and even a role plays the projectionist, often forgotten. In the latter, this film tells us about a form of art and poetry that disappeared with digitalization. In the background, many political messages, such as those of the Communists in Sicily, were at the margins of a society where poverty was an everyday reality. This makes us question what we are ready to sacrifice to escape misery.
