Vittorio Arrigoni has been found murdered today in Gaza. He had been kidnapped yesterday and his body was found this morning.
I will let Matteo from our No-more-war-team explain the significance of Vittorio:
He was a volounteer and althought he wrote articles from gaza and also a book RESTIAMO UMANI (we remain human) which collected all his articles written during the Israely attack on gaza of December 2009 and January 2009 he never made a cent off it. All the revenues went to the organizzation FREE GAZA… the laptop from which he wrote has a gift and he was many things but among all a FULL TIME VOLUNTEER OF ISM resisting the siege of Gaza. He lived in Gaza since 2008 and through his articles and blog we gathered information that was not avaible anywhere else. We will miss the man, but among all we will miss this voice of freedom that broke the wall of silence of the mass media. In that sense too he is unreplaceable. A journalist of a media or a main stream newspaper will be replaced by another collegue, but Vittorio was a unicum. He was there on his own.
Somebody once told the story of UTOPIA.
See the horizon (the skyline)… You take one step toward it, and it moves one step away, stays at the same distance… you take two step and it move two steps… and so on… it’s unreachable…so what is the use of the horizon? someone may wonder? well it’s there so we have a reason to keep walking… well utopia is like that…
Today I would like to add that in the dark days when we have the temptation to fall to the easy hate of Others, we will have a memory to stay true to our creed WE REMAIN HUMANS!
saluto di pace Matteo
There is a video recording of an interview with him from 2009:
SCI Italy published the following statement the following (translated by Matteo):
FOR VICTORY, FOR THOSE WHO RESIST
Vittorio Arrigoni was killed, a pacifist, a non-violent.
He was killed by those who want to destroy the possibility of building a new world together. Vittorio in recent years had exceeded every wall, that of the misinformation, that of indifference, the wall of those who want to separate people by fomenting hatred and violence.
Vittorio, as well as Juliano Meir Khamis killed just 10 days ago, believed that fighting for a just peace in places like Palestine, meant to tell, to do, but above all ”be there”.
Who killed him want to destroy that hope.
But no, we will continue to stand against war, violence, indifference, misinformation. We will continue to be there, in Palestine as anywhere in the world where there is injustice.
We’ll do it for Vittorio, who called himself ”a citizen of Utopia”.
We remain humans
SCI ITALY
Luca Galassi from the peacereporters-webpage also wrote about him:
http://en.peacereporter.net/articolo/28014/Vittorio%2C+the+good+hero
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