Free Trieste

Trieste, Sunday, 12th day of June. Free Trieste is holding its latest sit-in on the Free Territory of Trieste’s border. We started on 10 February, with the official request, presented by Free Trieste to the Commissar of the Government, to restore the road signs that mark the border of State between the Free Territory of Trieste and its neighbours (Italy and Slovenia).

Four months of intensive work, which passed rapidly. Hundreds of people of Trieste stood on the border with the Republic of Italy, and they were not alone.

For the first time in 62 years (so since the Allied Military Government left the Free Territory of Trieste in 1954) the border os marked again. We owe this to Free Trieste’s activists and volunteers: they tracked, on the northern side, the main trigonometric points, as well as restoring some of the most important boundary stones, like the Triborder Stone where Italy, Slovenia, and Trieste meet.

As citizens of the Free Territory of Trieste, we have become aware of our rights, and now we are defending our State with the peaceful arms of Law and Right.

And our presence on the border of State is the demonstration of our firm will to never give up. That border is our freedom: it is the tangible evidence of the freedom and independence of our State, the Free Territory of Trieste.

During the past four month, we did also face one disturbance, to convince us to give up on out road signs, which show the existence of the border of State.

Twice it was the police to attempt removing our signs, always with some excuses: indeed, nobody can officially deny the existence of the Free Territory of Trieste – or the many laws recognizing it.

This is what our signs are all about: they are there in place of “official” ones, those that the Commissioner of the Italian Government should restore.

At the same time, our flags of State, flying near to both border crossings, were removed by unknown persons. People who did go as far as destroying the masts, and breaking their supports.

But during each new sit-in, the citizens of the Free Territory of Trieste placed the same signs once again, the same flags, without allowing such intimidations to scare them.

The fact that the flags of the Free Territory of Trieste bother Italian nationalists was well-clear during the latest sit-in, on 12 June. This time two provokers in black shirts, disregarding the many police forces at the sit-in, attempted to tear away one of Trieste’s halberd flags from the frontier line.

Free Trieste’s volunteers stood firm, averting the “raid” of the goofy nationalists; Italian police ended up pushing away the two “black shirts”.

The battle of legality continues on the border of the Free Territory of Trieste.

Translated from blog “Ambiente e Legalità” – “Environment and Legality” by Roberto Giurastante

The police pulls two far-right, Italian nationalists is black shirts away from Free Trieste’s sit-in. They had tried – and failed, thanks to the Movement’s activists, to to steal the Free Territory of Trieste’s State Flag.