TURIN: Between 3,000 to 4,000 people gathered Saturday to protest against the Turin book fair’s decision to showcase Israeli writers, an AFP photographer at the scene said.
“Free Palestine organizers put the demonstration’s attendance at 10,000, while police said 1,500 had turned out to criticize the book fair’s choice to highlight 60 years of the Jewish state as its central theme.
“Boycott Israel, support Palestine, read a banner at the head of a cortege heading for the former Fiat factory that is hosting the booksellers’ exhibition.
Around 1,000 police were mobilized to shepherd protesters who denounced “the continuing terror and daily raids which have, these last few years, killed 5,050 Palestinians and destroyed 32,000 houses.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano inaugurated the Turin fair, while new Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Friday that Italians are closer to Israel than any other people, saying protesters who targeted the fair earlier in the week represented “0.00 percent of the population.
The demonstrators were supported by Italy’s 1997 Nobel prize winner for literature, playwright and director Dario Fo, for having “raised the problem of the absence of the Palestinian question at the fair.
The Paris book fair in March, which also cast a spotlight on Israeli literature, drew similar Palestinian protesters. -AFP
