Italy: Open letter to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in support of Roberto Saviano

Ahead of the hear­ing, PEN Inter­na­tion­al Pres­i­dent Burhan Son­mez urges Prime Min­is­ter Mel­oni to drop all crim­i­nal defama­tion charges against Saviano and to abide by Italy’s nation­al and inter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions to uphold free­dom of expres­sion. The let­ter is also avail­able in Ital­ian and was first pub­lished in La Stam­pa. PEN Inter­na­tion­al con­tact­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s Office on 4 Novem­ber; they had not yet respond­ed at the time of pub­li­ca­tion.

Dear Prime Min­is­ter Gior­gia Mel­oni,

I am writ­ing on behalf of PEN Inter­na­tion­al, the glob­al asso­ci­a­tion of writ­ers ded­i­cat­ed to pro­mot­ing lit­er­a­ture and defend­ing free­dom of expres­sion, to express my grave con­cerns for fel­low writer Rober­to Saviano, who faces up to three years in prison on crim­i­nal defama­tion charges. We urge you to drop the case against him and to do every­thing in your pow­er to sup­port inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism and inde­pen­dent media.

Saviano has been repeat­ed­ly tar­get­ed for peace­ful­ly express­ing his views. The lat­est charges against him are sad­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a wor­ry­ing trend in Italy, where jour­nal­ists and writ­ers work in the knowl­edge that they might be sued and impris­oned for what they say or what they write.

Despite calls by Italy’s Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court to under­take a com­pre­hen­sive review of crim­i­nal defama­tion laws, jour­nal­ists and writ­ers are still liable to prison sen­tences in case of defama­tion through the press. Crim­i­nal defama­tion law­suits exhaust their vic­tims. They rob them of their time, of their mon­ey, of their vital ener­gy. Cru­cial­ly, they are puni­tive and can lead to self-cen­sor­ship and dis­cour­age the inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism that is so nec­es­sary in a healthy and func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy. They con­sti­tute a threat to free­dom of expres­sion – which is enshrined in Italy’s domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al human rights oblig­a­tions.

As the Prime Min­is­ter of Italy, purs­ing your case against him would send a chill­ing mes­sage to all jour­nal­ists and writ­ers in the coun­try, who may no longer dare to speak out for fear of reprisals.

Saviano is not alone. We stand with him and will con­tin­ue to cam­paign until all crim­i­nal defama­tion charges against him are dropped, and his right to peace­ful­ly express his views is upheld once and for all.

Burhan Son­mez

PEN Inter­na­tion­al Pres­i­dent

Back­ground infor­ma­tion

Rober­to Saviano, 43, is the author of Gomor­rah, an inter­na­tion­al best sell­er that has sold over 10 mil­lion copies world­wide. Oth­er books include Beau­ty and the infer­no (2009), La paro­la con­tro la camor­ra (2010); Come away with me (2011), ZeroZe­roZe­ro (2013), La paran­za dei bam­bi­ni (2016), Bacio feroce (2017), In mare non esistono taxi (2019), Gri­da­lo (2020), Solo è il cor­ag­gio (2022). He wrote sev­er­al screen­plays and the­atre scripts and reg­u­lar­ly con­tributes to news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines such as Il Cor­riere del­la Sera, Sette, Fan­page, The New York Times, Newsweek, El Diario, Die Zeit, The Guardian, and Le Monde. He is the Win­ner of the 2011 PEN/Pinter Inter­na­tion­al Writer of Courage Award and of the 2019 Oxfam Novib/PEN Inter­na­tion­al award for free­dom of expres­sion.

In Decem­ber 2020, Saviano was asked on the polit­i­cal TV chat show Piaz­za­puli­ta to com­ment on the death of a baby from Guinea fol­low­ing the sink­ing of a boat car­ry­ing migrants in the Mediter­ranean Sea. Includ­ing in his remarks Mat­teo Salvi­ni – who was recent­ly appoint­ed Italy’s Deputy Prime Min­is­ter and who in a pre­vi­ous stint as Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter notably intro­duced a decree impos­ing fines of up to €50,000 on NGO res­cue boats bring­ing peo­ple to Italy – Saviano said: ‘I just want to say to Mel­oni, and Salvi­ni, you bas­tards! How could you have?’. Gior­gia Mel­oni, who had described NGO res­cue boats as ‘traf­fick­ers’ that need­ed to be sunk, sub­se­quent­ly sued Saviano for defama­tion. A judge in Rome lat­er ruled that he should be tried. Meloni’s lawyer is – at the time of writ­ing – Italy’s Deputy Min­is­ter of Jus­tice. Accord­ing to Saviano’s legal team, this sit­u­a­tion rais­es con­cerns about the inde­pen­dence of the judi­cia­ry.

This is not the first time Saviano is being tar­get­ed by the Ital­ian author­i­ties for peace­ful­ly express­ing his views and call­ing out anti-immi­gra­tion rhetoric. In 2018, Salvi­ni sued Saviano over a speech that described him as ‘Min­istro del­la Mala Vita’, a phrase bor­rowed from ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry anti-fas­cist Gae­tano Salvem­i­ni. Salvi­ni notably used the let­ter­head of the Inte­ri­or Min­istry, while the Gov­ern­ment, of which Salvi­ni was Deputy Prime Min­is­ter and Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter, remained silent. In his speech, Saviano accused Salvi­ni of ignor­ing the mafia stran­gle­hold on Italy’s south in favour of stir­ring up resent­ment against immi­grants.

PEN Inter­na­tion­al is active­ly cam­paign­ing on Saviano’s behalf and call­ing for all charges against him to be dropped. The first hear­ing has been set for 1 Feb­ru­ary 2023. Pre­vi­ous­ly in June 2018, Salvi­ni threat­ened to remove Saviano’s police escort. Saviano has been liv­ing under con­stant police pro­tec­tion since Octo­ber 2006, after receiv­ing threats from the mafia fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of his best­seller Gomor­rah.

Italy’s Min­is­ter of Cul­ture, Gen­naro Sangiu­liano, is also suing Saviano for a tweet in 2018 that crit­i­cized his appoint­ment as head of TG2, at the Ital­ian state-owned tele­vi­sion chan­nel Rai 2. Sangiu­liano is seek­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of euros in com­pen­sa­tion. The case is ongo­ing.

Arti­cle 595 of the Ital­ian Penal Code defines defama­tion as dam­age to the rep­u­ta­tion of a per­son through com­mu­ni­ca­tion with sev­er­al per­sons and car­ries up to three years in prison. In 2020, Italy’s Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court urged Par­lia­ment to under­go a wide and com­pre­hen­sive reform of the defama­tion legal frame­work – both crim­i­nal and civ­il. In June 2021, the Court how­ev­er ruled that Arti­cle 595 of the Penal Code was com­pli­ant with the Con­sti­tu­tion, as it allowed impris­on­ment in cas­es of ‘excep­tion­al sever­i­ty’.