Italy’s Minister of Regional and Autonomous Affairs sentenced for racist insults

June 2 () –

The Italian Justice has sentenced this Thursday to seven months in prison the Minister of Regional Affairs and Autonomies Roberto Calderoli, of the far-right Italian League, for making racist insults against Cécile Kyenge, the former Afro-descendant prime minister of the country.

A court in Bergamo has confirmed the sentence for aggravated defamation for racial origin against Kyenge, after Calderoli, in 2013, when he was vice president of the Italian Senate, compared the then minister to an orangutan during a rally of his party in Treviglio, in northern Italy.

The Italian judiciary has already sentenced the now minister on appeal, but the judges had annulled the previous sentences against Calderoli for lack of recognition of the legitimate impediment.

However, the Constitutional Court indicated that Calderoli cannot enjoy inviolability, despite the fact that the authorities had declared that the senator’s opinions were “expressed by a member of Parliament in the exercise of his duties” and, therefore, “unquestionable “.

According to the TC, the opinions expressed outside the specific exercise of parliamentary functions are covered by inviolability only if they assume a purpose of disseminating parliamentary activity. Thus, the prerogative “cannot be extended to insults”