The announcement of the release of Silvia Romano in Mogadishu was given on May 9th in Italy.
Silvia is a 24-year-old girl cooperating in Kenya with the “Africa Milele” NGO. She had moved at the age of 22 to take care of orphans on behalf of the NGO. On the 20th of November 2018, she was kidnapped in Kenya, in the village of Chakama, 80 kilometers from Malindi. According to her own story when she was repatriated, she was kidnapped by a group of bandits affiliated with the Al Shabaab terrorist group in Somalia where she was later transferred. On May 10th, after 18 months of captivity, she returns after an operation of AISE, the Italian external intelligence services, conducted in collaboration with the Turkish and Somali ones. The Italian press that goes to welcome her arrival in the presence of the Prime Minister Conte and Foreign Minister Di Maio celebrates the work of the Intelligence, but immediately underlined the conversion of the girl to the Muslim faith. She comes down smiling from the plane dressed in the jilbab, hugging her parents tightly and greeting everyone from the cameras.
That green jilbab was enough to announce her conversion and to open an obscene debate in the country. Hate, controversy, clichés, attacks on the co-operative sprang up everywhere, between social networks and various media. The girl had been looking for it, almost like a rape victim who comes out in a miniskirt, she was just an “ungrateful” in front of the ransom paid to get her back home. Suddenly the victim became complacent and almost a collaborator of the executioners. Her conversion to Islam mixed with the membership in an NGO questioned the whole work of the Intelligence, raising controversies of all kinds.
Among Salvini (the leader of “Lega Nord”), who invokes “never again ransom payments”, to the “Lega Nord” deputy Alessandro Pagano who calls her “neo-terrorist”. Yet only in 2019 three other Italian hostages were freed from terrorist groups. Nobody took care of their person, or the redemption of liberation: Sergio Zanotti kidnapped in Turkey in 2016 and freed in Syria in 2019, Alessandro Sandrini kidnapped in 2016 between Syria and Turkey and freed in 2019, Luca Tacchetto kidnapped in Mali in 2018 as a tourist and freed in Burkina Faso in 2019. Luca had also converted to Islam. What was strange about Silvia’s release? Italy has always paid ransoms to free its hostages. Very often it has helped other foreign services, including American ones, to free their hostages by paying the ransom. Repaying money for hostages after long negotiations is a common practice when prisoners are not exchanged as in the case of Israel and Palestinian political prisoners.
Why, in this case, unlike the previous three last cases in 2019, have politicians wanted to make a spectacle of the liberation by throwing Silvia to the mercy of social media and the discussions in parliament, thus provoking reactions of shame in thousands of Italians? Why has Silvia been considered by the most severe as “neo terrorist” and “ungrateful” and by the most benevolent as a converted girl by force of whom we must discuss the details publicly? Why has the conversion of Luca Tacchetti never been discussed in these terms?
Collective anger against a woman belonging to an NGO in defense of migrants had already been experienced in Italy with Carola Rakete. So being probably a woman in 2020 in the secular West makes you more fragile and weaker, even in the face of the same trauma suffered by a man. Sovereignism, sexism, hatred for Islam have come together in this story. As the case of Lucca Tacchetti tells, there is always a gender issue. It is not easy to forgive an independent woman whose go to work for cooperation, she is not forgiven even in the case she is kidnapped and so the State has to pay a ransom (here the life of a woman takes less value than that of a man), it is not forgiven to a woman even the conversion to an “enemy” religion because she belongs to the terrorists, also transforming her into “ungrateful” or at best in “mentally disturbed” on her return dressed in that jilbab. The attack on his ingratitude was actually an attack on Islam: a culturally and uncivilized inferior faith in the face of Western values. The “best” phrases like “she was forced, otherwise why flaunt her dress?” is not that the usual pejorative judgment towards the other faith, the appeal in having to choose how to practice it in order to be accepted by the West. In pretending to accept Islam at the basis of that western left there is nothing but exclusion and discrimination. Obviously none of us neglect what Silvia had to suffer in her 18 months of captivity. But shouldn’t this have been an aspect treated by the professionals of the field without invading Silvia’s private sphere? Simply as has been done for other cases.
The story of Silvia Romano could serve to reflect on what it means to bring aid to Africa today, on the role of NGOs in the cooperation and the relationship they must have with States and diplomacies, as must be the preparation of people who want to work in extreme conditions or other. Instead, it was preferred to use violent and stale language which within a few hours brought to the surface the poor consistency of the elementary liberal principles, the commonplaces on which the beliefs of many are based, the falsity of all those so-called left speeches, the will to take away freedom from women in the West.
