ROME (AP) – Italian restaurant owners and others upset that they have been closing their businesses for weeks due to the virus blockade clashed with police on Tuesday during a protest in front of Rome’s parliament, while in the south, hundreds of protesters blocked an important highway.
An officer was wounded in the fight, the Italian news agency LaPresse said. RAI state television said seven protesters had been detained by police.
Many of the crowd of several hundred protesters in front of the Chamber of Deputies lowered their masks to shout “Work!” and “Freedom!” Some threw smoke flames or other objects.
Meals and drinks at restaurants, bars and cafés are currently banned at least until April. Only delivery or delivery services are allowed.
Officers charged several protesters after they tried to break a police cordon. Members of a far-right political group have joined business owners in protest, according to Italian news agency ANSA.
Among the protesters was Hermes Ferrari, the owner of a restaurant in Modena, a city in northern Italy. He boasted that he had defied the authorities for months in opening his headquarters for meals that violate government decrees.
Even though the fines accumulated, “I was able to pay my workers,” Ferrari said, keeping the business open.
Ferrari shouted at fellow restaurant owners in protest to follow suit.
“You have to open because no one can tell you to close,” he shouted.
Italy’s current and previous governments have allocated millions of euros in aid to those particularly affected by the pandemic’s restrictions.
Business owners insist that it must reopen permanently. Restaurants and cafes in regions with a lower incidence of cases and intensive care units less affected by hospitals – the so-called yellow areas – sometimes allowed to eat and drink before evening.
But a current rise in infections, caused mainly by virus variants, has seen new cases of tens of thousands and hundreds of COVID-19 deaths a day for months. This led the Italian government to temporarily remove the name of the yellow zone before the Easter holidays until the rest of April.
Expressing his solidarity with the injured police officer, the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Interior, Carlo Sibilia, declared that “violence will not be tolerated”.
However, Sibilia, from the 5-star populist movement, called on the government, in addition to focusing on launching the vaccine, to provide “immediately, new compensation funds for economic activities closed or penalized by recent restrictions.”
Sibilia has called for government loan guarantees, a moratorium on mortgage payments, a cessation of evictions and compensation for lost revenue due to COVID-19 measures.
A few hours earlier, near the southern city of Caserta, another protest blocked traffic on the A1 motorway. Hundreds of protesters included those working in open-air markets and owners of gyms and restaurants, Italian news agency LaPresse said. The gym has been closed for months.
The Minister of Interior, Luciana Lamorgese, considered unacceptable protests that become violent or that disturb the citizens.
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AP journalist Gordon Walker from Rome contributed to the report.
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