The Italian Government of Giorgia Meloni has decided to send 500 soldiers to Milan to guarantee the security of the city after two consecutive nights of chaos and looting in the center. This was announced by the vice president and leader of La Liga, Matteo Salvini, from Milan, this Monday afternoon as part of a decree with new security measures that the Council of Ministers will approve on Tuesday. Meloni has held a meeting with several ministers and security officials to agree on some decisions, such as extending preventive arrest to minors, a recently approved measure that allows suspects of possible violent acts to be detained before a protest.
The day after the riots in the center of Milan, for the second night in a row, the Duomo square is full of police vans on Monday. In the early afternoon, riot police wait with their shields on the corners. When the sun begins to set, fear and tension grow, among the bustle of tourists, because it is not known if there will also be a third night of incidents. Milan is a traumatized city, after seeing violent scenes of groups armed with iron bars that broke shop windows and looted clothing stores to take brand-name sneakers, or mobile phones in telephone stores, or attacked supermarkets to steal cakes and even took bicycles from the Decathlon in Piazza Cairoli.
At the moment, around seven in the afternoon there was a brawl on Corso Vittorio Emanuele, where a group of right-wing sympathizers had placed a banner with the phrase "We will remigrate you all", since some of the participants in the riots were second-generation Italians, born in Italy to immigrant parents. The disdainful nickname they are called, specifically those who dress in sports clothing and a certain street style, is “maranza”. A group of young people approached them to scold them for the banner and started a fight with insults and the throwing of firecrackers. The police had to intervene.
Some statements by the famous Milanese rapper Marracash, who is not a kid, he is 47 years old, but he is a reference for thousands of young people for his letters of denunciation, have contributed to further heating up the atmosphere and on social networks he has written: "I have been expecting this reaction for a long time and I think we are only at the beginning. You don't change things simply."
Most of the luxury brand stores on Monte Napoleone Street, the most exclusive in Italy, have closed at two in the afternoon. Versace, Gucci, Prada, almost all of them. In the so-called fashion quadrilateral, many stores of all kinds have also closed their doors.
On Torino Street, the large commercial street that leaves Piazza del Duomo, you can see broken shop windows on Sunday night. “They started breaking everything, we had to put the customers inside and close the doors,” says a waiter at the Granaio bar, who is putting up the half-broken glass screens on the terrace. But many other bars clear the tables later in the afternoon.
Between a Foot Locker store and a Champion store, which were looted and are closed, plainclothes agents search seven boys. All dressed in black with sports clothing, the uniform of these mobilizations. All of them looking like they were minors or almost. Several of them, second generation Italians. The surroundings of the Duomo are full of street police, this Monday the objective is to prevent the kids from gathering in the square, to stop them first.
But the problem, as the authorities explain in the media, is that it is not clear where these young people come from or what they want, they do not have political messages, they are not organized, they respond to calls through messages on Tik Tok and Telegram, and then they move spontaneously in dispersed groups touring the city. The hashtag that has mobilized them is simply “#italiainpiazza” (Italy in the street). In fact, Italian flags, but also Palestinian flags and those of other countries, such as Albania, Morocco and Tunisia, have been seen in the riots.
Many are from the outskirts of Milan, a city increasingly torn by social inequalities, and arrive at the weekend by train from the northern municipalities to the Milano Centrale station. In other northern cities, such as Bergamo, Brescia, Turin and Verona, altercations were also reported on Saturday night, as well as in Bologna, the only city further south where there have been incidents.
On Sunday night, around 2,000 young people gathered around the Duomo in Milan, according to law enforcement. Of them, 271 ended up detained and 220 were minors, 80%. The majority are Italian and 60 are foreigners. To understand who they are, a good place is the door of the Fatebenefratelli street police station, where since early in the morning dozens of fathers and mothers were waiting to be released. Italians, Egyptians, Tunisians, Ukrainians. Worried, many of them very angry, wanting to tell their son off. Some discovered that their son was detained with the location of the cell phone. Others even saw it in videos posted on social networks, which showed him being arrested.
The prosecutors' orders in which they ask the judge for precautionary custody of at least 11 of the detainees use harsh words: they have shown "a significant criminal capacity" with "improvised destructive actions and rare violence." The accusations are of devastation and looting, which carry penalties of up to 15 years in prison.
The Milanese chamber of commerce estimates that the damage has caused damage worth one million and denounces the damage to the city's image, which is causing cancellations in hotel reservations.
