These are not new questions. Far from it, they are questions that have been posed for twenty-five years. First in line to demand the truth have been the injured and the families of the victims of Bologna, and all the other massacres of the era: Piazza Fontana, Peteano, the Questorship in Milan, the train 'Italicus', and the other attacks that continued through to the early '90s. Second in line have been the State investigators and magistrates honestly carrying out their work. Italian citizens have a right to know the truth, and it's their duty not to let it slip away. Fioravanti and Mambro as well, if their continued claims to innocence are true, have the right to know the truth, though in their case it might help if they were to fully detail the intrigues behind Nar and its various associations from the '70s… Or perhaps, as some suggest it's better to let sleeping dogs lie?
One thing is certain. There are people, in Italy, who do know the truth about these attacks, but they're not talking.
Life Senator Francesco Cossiga has announced that on the occasion of his seventy seventh birthday, on the 1st of January 2006, he'll stop speaking publicly, backbiting and lambasting in the name of politics. Wishing him long-life and fortune in this endeavour, one could hope that before honouring his promise, in these five remaining months before his self-imposed silence, he will reveal that which, in his capacity as Prime Minister of two governments in 1979-80 and President of the Republic from 1985 to 1992, he knows about the affair. By his own admission, Fioravanti and Mambro are not the real culprits, leaving us to presume that he has further information about the identity of those who are. And along with him, there is an entire political class, of every colour, that has governed Italy, through bad and good, over the last twenty-five years that undoubtedly must have plenty of information about how and why these massacres, this murders happened and the details that could explain the reasons behind this continuing injustice.
Today: rhetoric isn't enough, nor the accusations against politicians and party hacks
&ldquoMore than half of Bologna's students don't know who carried out the massacre at Bologna's train station on the 2nd of August 1980. According to a survey carried out by the Association of the Families of the Victims of Bologna, Cedost, Censis and Landis, in the Emilian capital, only 22% of secondary school students indicated fascist terrorists as the authors of the attack. 34% said they didn't know, and 21.7% even indicated the Red Brigades. For 72% of those interviewed the family is the primary source of information” [Corriere della Sera, 8th July 2005]” Chilling.
On Tuesday [02 august 2005] many will go to the main square, to remember the 85 victims and the many injured that day, 25 years ago. The official speeches of the President of the Association amongst the families of the victims of the Bologna train station massacre on 02 august 1980, Torquato Secci first, then Paolo Bolognesi, have grown longer and longer since 1981 when Secci inaugurated this sad anniversary celebration. The content thought remains the same: not to forget, because it is unjust that the victims and the injured only receive silence for their sufferings, because we search for the truth, we want justice.
Where will it end, this energy and tireless dedication on the part of Secci, Bolognesi, and all the members of the Association, who have worked to arrive at least at a definitive sentence? Isn't it time, some say, to lay to rest the past and to let go of the ghosts for good? &ldquoA society that doesn't examine it's past, fully, is condemned to relive it,” Paolo Bolognesi pointed out in his speech in 2002. His words sound almost prophetic in today's climate, after the attacks in New York, Madrid, London and Sharm El-Sheik, and the reiterated threats against Italy. Normal people ask, some rhetorically, 'but what can I do? These are things that are bigger than me, I don't have the power to change them'. Maybe though there is a way. Politicians, those appointed tomake the laws, those who govern Country must account for what they do and don't do for their citizens. And only voters can make them do so. &ldquoThey continue to use, in vital positions of the State, compromised men. Men that have a double loyalty to the State and masonry, how can they be faithful servants of the State?”, Paolo Bolognesi asked in his speech of 1998. These are practical questions that we all should ask ourselves.