Third homophobic and racial attack in a few days in Bologna

Another homophobic attack, the third in a few days, in Bologna, the city that first saw the birth of a gay club, the Cassero, in the early 1980s, which has always been open and inclusive. But the climate is now getting tough.

The episode in which the protagonist was Giorgiomaria Cornelio, 29 years old, a poet originally from the Marche region, a writer for Repubblica, who lives in Venice but often frequents Bologna, tells the story. «Yesterday at lunchtime he was with two boys, one of foreign origin – explains Cornelio – at the crossroads between via Mascarella and via Belle Arti, right in the centre, in the university area. An already upset man with a bottle in his hand approached and first took it out on my friend, insulting him and shouting racial insults at him, then he began to rail against me too, "faggots, foreigners, I'll kill you, I'll cut your throat". He was touching his trousers and said he had a knife. He hit my friend, who was very scared, with a slap, shouting "my hands are itching". I called the police who then intervened, blocking him and explaining to us that he is someone who has been the protagonist of other violent episodes."

The point, however, Cornelio is keen to underline, is that someone who goes into a rage does so with racial and homophobic insults: «Unfortunately – he continues – the signal is precisely this, of a climate of violence that is vented against homosexuals and foreigners. It is symptomatic that it also happens in a queer place like Bologna has always been."