Press Release

2 June in Coltano against the new military base

Un Ponte Per adheres to the demonstration on 2 June in Coltano (Pisa) and invites all citizens to
participate numerous

Pisa, 30 May 2022

2 June is the feast day of the Republic that repudiates war as a means of settling international disputes and as an offence against the freedom of other peoples. For too many years, attempts have been made to change the meaning of this holiday by transforming it, with military parades, into something profoundly different.

2 June must once again become a people's holiday in which we remember the affirmation of the Republic at the institutionalreferendum of 2 June 1946, when the majority of Italians preferred it to the Savoy Monarchy, which had given Italy the carnage of two world wars, several colonial wars, the use of gas against civilians in Ethiopia and the infamous racial laws in Italy.

'Empty the arsenals and fill the granaries': the statement by partisan President Sandro Pertini is as relevant today as ever. The Russian invasion of Ukraine adds to the more than 30-year-long 'world war in pieces' that has bloodied so many countries on the planet and caused global military spending to double in the last 20 years. The more one spends on arms and armaments the more insecure and unjust the world becomes. The more you increase the military budget, the more you sow death and destruction for humanity. A change of course is needed.

The path chosen by the Italian government to build a new military base in the San Rossore nature reserve is certainly not the right one to follow , all the more so as it subtracts resources from the PNRR, money that was supposed to be used for the ecological reconversion of our economy and to relaunch public health after the Covid-19 pandemic.

These are the numbers of the operation: 190 million of public money subtracted from social spending; 73 hectares of land subtracted from the community; 440,000 cubic metres concreted over to build runways, terraced houses for the military of the Tuscania Regiment, swimming pools, gyms, and other buildings.

A new base that will rise in an already unbearably militarised territory, which is becoming a strategic hub of war, decided secretly in the rooms of the Palace that are increasingly distant from the demand for peace that comes from the majority of the Italian people.

We must stop the war in Ukraine and wherever it is being fought against the peoples of the world. We must invest in peace and start a true season of disarmament. Less military pacts and more bridges of solidarity and peace.

Let us make this popular will be felt loudly on 2 June in Coltano!

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