The smiling face of Willy Monteiro Duarte, a 21-year-old Italian with Cape Verdean roots, pops up everywhere in Italian newspapers, on news sites and especially on social media. Usually provided with the hashtag #giustiziaperWilly. Justice for Willy. For the perpetrators, there is #vigliacchi, aka cowards.
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The case stirs up a lot, says correspondent Anouk Boone. “It was an incredibly brutal attack, the boy was kicked hard in the head and in the body and then died. Racism may play a role and the four are said to have links to the extreme right. One of the relatives of the suspects would even have said” it was just an immigrant. “It is fueling the racism debate in Italy.”
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Fight
Willy Duarte worked as an assistant cook in a hotel in Artena, near Rome. On Saturday evening he went out with friends after work at a club in Colleferro. Exactly what happened is now being investigated, but according to the first reports, a former classmate of Duarte got into a fight and wanted to appease it.
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In the brawl that followed, Duarte was tackled hard. One woman who saw it happen tells La Repubblica newspaper, “I’ll never forget that boy’s screaming again. Enough, please, enough, he said. He said he couldn’t breathe. The poor boy. They were devils. , no people.”
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Held
The four violent perpetrators jumped into an SUV after the fight and took off. They were later stopped by the police while having a drink elsewhere. Willy Duarte has already been taken to hospital, where he succumbs to his injuries. AS Roma, the football club he was a big fan of, quickly posted this tweet:
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Duarte’s death has already been referred to by some as Italy’s ‘Black Lives Matter’ moment. Black Italians’ interest group NIBI said in a statement: “Enough violence, enough racism. Every life must be protected. Violence does not only occur in America. Black lives matter here in Italy too.”
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Racism
Politicians also condemn the senseless violence, by both national and regional politicians. For example, Luigi Di Maio, Minister of Foreign Affairs writes: “You can’t die like that. Being kicked to death by a bunch of criminals at the age of 21. Violence is disgusting and even worse when it is reinforced by racial discrimination.”
But the country has a difficult relationship with racism, says correspondent Anouk Boone. “Recently, Di Maio himself came under fire for allegedly encouraging blackface satire on social media.”
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Me too
The suspects come from the same place as Duarte, and according to Italian media were called the ‘gang of Artena’. Two of them are famous martial artists. They had previously been arrested for assault and drug trafficking. Alessandro, a friend of Willy’s, tells Ansa news agency: “Everyone here knew the two brothers. They beat people up like this for years, it has happened before.”
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The four suspects have been interrogated for four hours today. “They deny in all ways and say that they just wanted to intervene to calm an argument. They say they are now portrayed as monsters, who are now publicly pilloried. For many people they are guilty, but they are in in fact still suspects, ”said Boone.
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The hotel where Willy Duarte worked has started a fundraising campaign for his family. The governor of the Lazio region says a hotel industry training institute will be named after him. And an online petition has been started to give the boy a posthumous medal for bravery for trying to protect his friend.
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