Portella Della Ginestra Massacre
Twelve days after the left-wing election victory, the May 1 labour parade in Portella della Ginestra was attacked, culminating in the killing of 11 people and the wounding of over thirty. The attack was attributed to the bandit and separatist leader Salvatore Giuliano, intending to capture Li Causi. Nevertheless, the Mafia was suspected of involvement in the Portella di Ginestra massacre and many other attacks on left-wing organisations and leaders. The massacre created a national scandal.
The Communist-controlled Italian General Confederation of Labour called a general strike in protest against the massacre. The Minister of the Interior, the Christian Democrat Mario Scelba, reported to Parliament the next day that so far as the police could determine, the Portella della Ginestra shooting was non-political. Scelba claimed that bandits notoriously infested the valley in which it occurred. Li Causi disagreed and charged that the Mafia had perpetrated the attack, in cahoots with the large landowners, monarchists and the rightist Uomo Qualunque Front. The debate ended in a fist fight between the left and the right. Nearly 200 deputies took part in the brawl.
Read more about this topic: Girolamo Li Causi
Famous quotes containing the word massacre:
“It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)