Italy: day of protests in 200 cities against Berlusconi

[Joanne98]

Source: The Telegraph

Hundreds of women will take to the streets of Italy’s cities today calling on scandal hit Premier Silvio Berlusconi to resign after prosecutors requested he be sent to trial for having sex with an underage prostitute.

Protesters say evidence leaked from the probe into Berlusconi, 74, allegedly paying for sex with then 17 year Moroccan belly dancer Karima El Mahroug, and show he has little respect for female dignity.

Wiretaps leaked from more than 600 pages of the prosecution file suggest he surrounded himself at parties at his home with starlets and other women hoping to use their looks to gain positions in politics or within his Mediaset TV empire.

Protests are scheduled to take place in 200 cities and towns across Italy as well as London and New York, with the largest due to be held in Rome and Milan and counter demonstrations by activists from Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party area also planned.





Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/...

[alp227]

1. The Guardian: Silvio Berlusconi the focus of day of protests by Italian women

On Sunday, Italians dismayed by the prime minister and his antics got a chance to show their feelings in a way that even his television network will find difficult to ignore. Thousands of them assembled in piazzas from the foothills of the Alps to the tip of Sicily and in cities from Auckland to Zurich.

"We're more than a million across the world," the actor Angela Finocchiaro told the crowd in the Piazza del Popolo. And though that claim may be disputed, there was plenty of evidence to suggest the numbers ran to several hundreds of thousands.

The posters for the demonstration proclaimed it was being held in support of "a country that respects women". That the need should be felt for such a protest in Europe, 11 years into the 21st century and several decades after Italy spawned one of the continent's most lively feminist movements is, in part at least, evidence of the impact of Berlusconi and his media empire.

Full story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/13/silvio-berl...

[struggle4progress]

2. More than a million protest against Berlusconi in over 200 Italian cities

English.news.cn
2011-02-14 05:24:54

ROME, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) -- As many as a million Italians protested against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi Sunday in what the Italian media hailed as the largest anti-government demonstration in years.

Calling their movement "If not now, when?" the mostly female protesters gathered on the streets of more than 200 Italian cities and towns to protest against what they said was a kind of ingrained sexism that has come to be symbolized by Berlusconi's alleged sex parties and his headline grabbing relationship with a Moroccan-born cabaret dancer named Karima el Mahrough but best known by her stage name "Ruby."

The women carried signs and banged pots and pans to protest against the prime minister's habits they say distract him from the affairs of state, and many called for him to resign from office.

Berlusconi's allies held their own counter-protests in a few large cities earlier in the weekend, but they were dwarfed in size compared to the anti-Berlusconi protests, where estimates ranged from a minimum of half a million to over a million ...

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-02/14/...

[pampango]

3. Italy’s women show the politicians how to humble Berlusconi

http://www.euronews.net/2011/02/13/italy-s-women-show-t... /

One section of society that has provided Silvio Berlusconi with much of his support appears to have had enough of him. Women. Hundreds of thousands marched in cities all over Italy on Sunday, from Trieste in the north to Naples in the south to complain that his antics have hurt their dignity and reinforced outdated gender stereotypes.

Once again the internet played a key role, as the marches were organised around an online petition that brought women out in more than 200 cities, and also in communities abroad from the USA to Greece.

Banners in Rome included “Italy is not a brothel”, or “I love my boyfriend for free”; references to Berlusconi’s alleged sex parties and use of prostitutes.


Throughout his career Berlusconi has been accused of promoting women more for their looks than their abilities. His media empire boomed using scantily clad glamour. Be a sex object, his philosophy seems to say, and you will avoid being part of the one-third of Italy’s young unemployed.

[Alexander]

4. Here's hoping this brings him down for good.

He's already been tossed out twice and re-elected twice.

[Overseas]

5. Glad to hear it! //nt