Marching not to forget.
The rain, which fell heavily and persistently on Crotone, did not stop the mobilization of those who wanted to demonstrate support for the survivors and families of the victims of the gulet "Summer Love", which, loaded with migrants, at dawn on 26 February 2023, it crashed into a shoal about a hundred meters from the beach of Steccato di Cutro, leaving behind it a toll of 94 victims, 35 of whom were minors, and a dozen missing.
Many responded to the appeal of the "26 February Network" which, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the shipwreck, announced a series of initiatives which will end tomorrow morning at 4am with a torchlight procession and a vigil on the Steccato beach so as not to forget and reclaim 'truth and justice'.
And 'truth and justice' and 'no more deaths at sea' were the slogans chanted throughout the procession in Crotone, opened by a large banner with the words "no more massacres of migrants in the Mediterranean", which started from Piazza Pitagora , reached the museum named after the philosopher and mathematician.
The secretary of the Democratic Party, Elly Schlein, took part in the procession, having previously been in Steccato di Cutro where she had paid homage to the victims, on the beach in the San Leonardo area on which some signs of that enormous tragedy are still visible, placing a cushion of flowers and gathering in meditation together with the fishermen Vito, Antonio and Teodoro Grazioso and Vincenzo Luciano and the Civil Protection volunteers Antonio Lorenzano and Gaetano Rossi, who were among the first rescuers to reach Steccato immediately after the shipwreck.
Rescuers with whom he also had a closed-door conversation, assuring them "attention to the investigations into what happened so that this matter does not end up forgotten".
"For a year - the leader of the dems then said, speaking to journalists in Crotone - we have been asking the same question: how was it possible that the Coast Guard patrol boats did not come out to help a vessel that had been known for hours to be Was he in trouble?"
"I am here - added Schlein - to give support to the '26 February Network' and to all the associations that are still close to the families of the victims and the survivors".
In the morning, with the ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in Rome, Khaled Ahmad Zekriya, also present, the 'Garden of Ali' was inaugurated, a space at the entrance to the city which will host 94 plants, as many as the victims, including tamarisk, callistemon, feijoa and arbutus, which the Municipality of Crotone wanted to create in permanent memory of the dead of the Steccato massacre.
"These were very hard days - said the mayor Vincenzo Voce - those we lived through, but the Calabrians, the people of Crotone, demonstrated extraordinary solidarity and humanity. The garden - added Voce - is beautiful. We have wanted to dedicate it to Alì, a child who remained one of the few unnamed victims, marked with the acronym Kr16m0, and then identified. We thought of him to create a place that symbolizes, through the trees we planted, the rebirth of the city" .
For further information Agenzia ANSA Cutro, one year after the massacre of migrants - Indices - Ansa.it On the night between 25 and 26 February 2023, a gulet departing from Turkey, with around 180 people on board, broke in two, running aground between the violence of the waves against a shoal a few meters from the coast of Steccato di Cutro, in the province of Crotone.
It's a massacre: 94 victims, with 34 children.
A judicial investigation is still underway (ANSA)
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