Members of Giorgia Meloni's rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party on Monday called for the removal or resignation of a museum chief in Puglia after heposted a photo showing the prime minister upside down.
Ostuni museum president Luca Dell'Atti came under fire from local, regional and national party representatives for the Instagram story that also included references to the Foibe, them mass killings by Yugoslav Partisans of Italians living in the area that stretches from the Trieste zone in Italy's FriuliVenezia Giulia region across the Istrian peninsula to Dalmatia in Croatia during and immediately after WWII, and controversy over the appeal made on Saturday evening by a Sanremo SongFestival contestant to "stop the genocide" in the Middle East.
FdI provincial coordinator and regional councilor Luigi Carol described the gesture as "shameful" and "unprecedentedseriousness".
"The mayor of Ostuni and the administration must immediately revoke the position given recently to the person who published that photo," he continued, insisting that "whoever decides to take up a role must do so in a balanced and serene manner with respect for the institutions".
Justice Undersecretary and FdI lawmaker Andrea Delmastro also weighed in, calling on the centre-left opposition to take stand.
"Will the Left break the wall of silence this time? Will they demand the resignation of a person whose profile is evidently more suited to frequenting the Askatasuna social center than to directing a municipal museum? Or in Brindisi, as in Turin, will the Left sanctify those who propose violence as a method of political struggle?," Delmastro said in a statement.
Meloni on Saturday blasted decades of "unforgivable" silence about the Foibe as she took part in a ceremony on the nationalday of remembrance for the thousands of Italians tortured or killed by Yugoslav communists in anti-Fascist uprisings during the last two years of the war.
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