Lettera A The Economist

L’ALTRA SICILIA – DUBAI (EAU) Associazione al servizio della Sicilia e dei Siciliani della diaspora

Dubai, October 22nd 2007 To the Editor of The Economist 25, St James's Street London SW1A 1HG United Kingdom Fax +44 (0) 20 7839 2968/9 [email protected] Dear Sir, let me first introduce our organization to you: L'Altra Sicilia (The Other Sicily) is an international association whose objective is to defend the rights of Sicilians around the world and that is fighting for the re-establishment of legality in Sicily and in Italy supporting the full application of the Sicilian Autonomy Statute, which is part of the Italian constitution. While our main offices are in Bruxelles, we are also present in Sicily, Italy, Holland, US (New York), United Arab Emirates, Kenya and soon in London. Our affiliates come from tens of countries around the world, as the Sicilian diaspora spread through the world to escape the dire economic conditions of the island from 1860 until today. I will now come to the point of this letter. In the last decade your journal has fought a bitter and probably political war against the Italian former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. In all this battle, Sicily has come to the fore because it happens to be the main vote reservoir for the Italian media tycoon. All of this has been done through the age-old accusation of connections with the so-called Mafia (accusation not proven, up to this day). While we do not have any sympathy for Mr. Berlusconi and we could not care less about his problems with justice (apart from what it may concern our Motherland, Sicily), we do believe that also in politics there are limits and that when you cross these limits you may well be wandering about in the realm of thuggishness. Your last article about the “ third world island of the EU”, as you like to define it, entitled “Face Value – Offers refused” in the October 13th - 19th issue, is a good example of what we are saying.

Sede legale : Bvd. de Dixmude 40/bte 5 – (B) – 1000 Bruxelles Tel & Fax 0032 2 2174831 Dubai , Jumeirah Beach Residence (U.A.E.) – Tel +971 050 1213306 www.laltrasicilia.org

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L’ALTRA SICILIA – DUBAI (EAU) Associazione al servizio della Sicilia e dei Siciliani della diaspora

Surely MOST of the things your correspondent said are true. The problem is that they are not the ENTIRE truth. As you surely know, all the fuss about sending troops to Sicily stems from two different “offers refused”: one refused from Mr Venturi, and one from Mr Vecchio, in the city of Catania. Mr Vecchio's business suffered in a short time 3 assassination attempts that he duly reported to the police. In a few days the criminals responsible for the acts were arrested. Without entering into much detail, we say that, given your correspondent strange reluctance in covering this second and most important episode, your reporting has been heavily biased so that the final statement “It is not the police, nor magistrates, but the Mafia that controls Sicily” appears to be true while it is obviously not, and giving us the strong impression that you are voluntarily trying to damage the image of Sicily in front of the world opinion. There are other minor (but only apparently...) pieces of information that you give and that we think must be taken into consideration: first of all, you are citing “a survey that tried to measure the risk of extortion in Italy's different provinces, Caltanissetta ranked second, after a province in Calabria”. Is it possible to know which survey are you talking about? We have evidence that this report is not telling the truth, and we would like to compare it with our data. Second, you point out that Mr Venturi is not Sicilian. Of course this is just the truth (as it is the truth that Mr Vecchio is a Sicilian...), but we remain under the impression that your deliberate attacks against Sicily are walking on a dangerous fine line that borders with racism. More, your “cannot do” attitude towards our struggle against organized crime, and your spotlights that never point towards the many success stories, going instead in search of an isolate and TEMPORARILY unsolved matter, are leaving us in the tremendous doubt over which side you are on in this struggle. Not demanding any excuse from you and not expecting one, we are sure that you will prove us wrong with a more balanced reporting in the near future, and we remain at your complete disposal for any clarification regarding this issue or anything else that might concern our organization.

Yours Sincerely, Antonio Santagati, L’Altra Sicilia – Dubai

Sede legale : Bvd. de Dixmude 40/bte 5 – (B) – 1000 Bruxelles Tel & Fax 0032 2 2174831 Dubai , Jumeirah Beach Residence (U.A.E.) – Tel +971 050 1213306 www.laltrasicilia.org

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