Ardea: a correspondent of La7 carried away like a sack of potatoes

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She had been conducting for PiazzaPulita an investigation in the Le Salzare neighbourhood into commercial activities based in illegally constructed buildings which do not pay taxes to the municipality

On the 7th February 2018, at Ardea (Roma) in the Le Salzare neighbourhood, a collaborator with the television news programme PiazzaPulita of the La7 network, has been bodily carried away from the courtyard adjacent to the offices of a company which manages lighting equipment for the municipality of Ardea (Roma).

The reporter, Chiara Proietti D’Ambra was making recordings to document the presence of commercial and industrial activity housed in illegally constructed buildings. It was presumably somebody who works for the company who carried her away. The man grabbed her and dragged her away. Proietti D’Ambra had been seeking information for her inquiry into illegal construction in the area. The television report on what happened was broadcast on the 22nd February 2018 (view here).

The man after having repeated several times to Proietti D’Ambra “if you don’t go away I’ll take you in my arms” was as good as his word and loaded her on to his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “It was humiliating. I wriggled until I put my feet again on the ground” Chiara Proietti D’Ambra reported to Ossigeno, “but he held me by the arm and dragged me to the entrance gate.”

The investigation had started from a declaration by the mayor of Ardea who explained the financial instability of the administration from tax evasion due in large part to commercial activities based in illegally constructed buildings.

Several days before, on the 1st February, the same reporter had been threatened in the same area in front of an engineering workshop. A man had said to her, “if you don’t go away we’ll do like in Ostia” with clear reference to the head-butting of the journalist Daniele Piervincenzi.

The precedents in Lazio – From 2011 until today, in Lazio, Ossigeno has identified 720 serious violations of press freedom and freedom of expression committed by acts of violence and abuses towards journalists, bloggers, video operators, photo-journalists and editors whose names are published in the Observatory Table. In 2017 141 names have been added to this list.

COA (wt)