ResQ People back to sea. On Saturday 9 October, the NGO ship will set sail from Porto Empedocle (Agrigento) directed towards the search and rescue area of the Mediterraneo central. On board a crew of twenty people from four different countries. For the NGO born in 2019 this is the second mission. In the first, last August, 166 people they were rescued from the water and taken to a safe harbor.
Just Friday 8 October Cecilia Street opened the academic year ofUniversity for Foreigners of Siena. “It seems to us that Resq,” the Italian ship “that plies the Mediterranean to save” human beings, laws and rights “, of which Cecilia is spokesman, both among the lights on in the eternal night of the Republic, ”said the new rector Tomaso Montanari in his inauguration speech.
Here is a large passage and the conclusion of Professor Montanari’s speech
“We asked Cecilia Strada to open this academic year, because it seems to us that Resq,” the ship of the Italians “sailing the Mediterranean to save” human beings, laws and rights “, of which Cecilia is the spokesperson, is among the lights on in the eternal night of the Republic. Italians who welcome foreigners: and who tear them from the sea to welcome them, so that they are not returned to Libyan prisons – to torture paid with our tax money. Resq saves our own identity: “Refugee … poor, unknown, I wander among the deserted places of Libya / from Europe … rejected”: these are the words of the first song of the Aeneid, it is Aeneas who speaks.
“Refugee … poor, unknown, I wander among the deserted places of Libya / from Europe … rejected”: if this is the founding myth of Rome, how could we be more faithful to the traditio, to the change of hands of culture, if not with the presence, the testimony, the word of Cecilia Strada? We are foreigners in Italy: always mestizos, fused, different, mixed blood, bastards. This is our story: this is our project for the future. This, in a university where you learn to become a foreigner, is really our everyday job.
The Resq ship says of itself, we have heard, that it saves not only the bodies, but also the laws. Yeah, the laws.
Today I would like to remind you that by building the cultural foundations to open ourselves to foreigners, our university is on the side of law, of order. It should be remembered, in an Italy where law and order seem to have become flags of those who kidnap migrants on ships, or would like to sink them on boats. Nadia Fusini – who honors us today with her presence – gave me the still unedited translation of a passage from Thomas More, this drama written in England in the early seventeenth century by a collective of authors, one of whom was none other than William Shakespeare.
And precisely in one of the passages so evidently his, we read words that seem written for today. Tomaso Moro, chancellor of the kingdom, is called to quell the tumult of the people who would like to drive out foreigners who steal jobs from the British. This is how he addresses them:
Let’s say they are expelled, and let’s say this protest of yours
Come to harm the majestic dignity of England.
Imagine seeing wretched strangers,
With children on their shoulders, their miserable baggage,
Struggle to ports and coasts to embark,
And you seated on your throne, now masters of your desires,
Authority stifled by your fights,
You, dressed up with your opinions,
What have you got? I’ll tell you: you will have taught
To make insolence and a strong fist prevail,
And how order is annihilated. But according to this scheme
None of you will reach old age:
What other rogues, at the mercy of their fantasies,
With that same punch, with the same reasons, and the same right,
Like sharks they will attack you, and men, hungry fish,
They will feed on each other.
…
Do you want to trample on strangers,
Kill them, cut their throats, take over their homes,
Put the leash on the majesty of the law
To then incite her like a dog. Alas! Let’s say the King,
Clemente with the repentant traitor, he answered
Not commensurate with your great guilt,
Banning yourself: where will you go?
Which country, given the nature of your mistake,
Will he give you asylum? Whether you go to France or
In Flanders, in any Germanic province,
In Spain or Portugal,
Anywhere that is not a friend of England:
Well, you would necessarily be foreigners there. Maybe you would like it
To find a nation of such barbaric temperament
That unleashing with unprecedented violence,
He denied you refuge on earth, indeed
Sharpen detestable knives for your throats,
Casting you out like dogs, as if it were not God
What made and created you, as if the natural elements
They didn’t even serve your needs
But should they be reserved for them? What would you think
Of such a treatment? This is the case with foreigners,
This is your mountainous inhumanity.
Whoever chases the foreigner, whoever persecutes him, who insults him destroys the law and the only possible order, the human one. Shakespeare’s words are even more true in Italy today, governed by a fundamental law, the 1948 Constitution, which makes our common human being the very foundation of every law. And, as you can see, from the study of history and languages, from philology, from translation we continually extract, as from a treasure, new and ancient things. Here, then, is our job: to keep these things in tension. The old and the new, the past and the present: that humanistic tradition that can still make us human.
“Our homeland – Carlo Rosselli reminded us – is not measured by borders and guns, but coincides with our moral world and with the homeland of all free men”. It is a strong, very strong invitation to be present. To be present, against all forms of indifferentism. Today we are also happy because we can finally be here in the presence – while keeping, as is our duty, distances, masks, open doors and prudence. Our commitment is that this physical presence is a sign and announcement of a moral, cultural and human presence of the University for Foreigners: in the city of Siena, in Italy and in a world that, for us too, coincides with the homeland of all women and all free men.