Procession in Rome, photos of Trump, Meloni and Nordio burnt. The minister: 'Aggressive excesses do not intimidate me'

Rome armoured for the march against the referendum on justice on 22 and 23 March. On the afternoon of Saturday, 14 March, around five thousand people, according to police estimates, and twenty thousand for the organisers, took part in the demonstration promoted by various radical left-wing and grassroots unionist organisations, including Potere al Popolo and Unione Sindacale di Base. The protest march wound along some of the main streets of the capital, from Piazza della Repubblica to Piazza di Porta San Giovanni, and ended with a final rally in front of the basilica. The mobilisation was to support the No vote in the referendum on the constitutional reform of justice, but demands against the war and the international situation also converged along the procession.

One of the most 'heated' moments occurred in Piazza dell'Esquilino. Here some demonstrators set fire to two symbolic images with smoke bombs. The first depicted Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni holding Justice Minister Carlo Nordio on a leash, shown with a muzzle. Next to it was the inscription: 'No to your referendum'. Shortly afterwards, a second poster was burnt, again depicting Meloni shaking hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Underneath was the phrase: 'No to your genocide, 75,000 civilians killed, 2 million displaced'. Another symbolic gesture was made in via Cavour, where a group of protesters, in front of a pro-Cuba banner, set fire to a poster with the US flag and a photo of US President Donald Trump.

The burnt images provoked immediate institutional reactions. Senate President Ignazio La Russa spoke of 'incomprehensible and unacceptable acts of hatred' and expressed solidarity with Meloni and Nordio. Solidarity was also reiterated by Chamber of Deputies Speaker Lorenzo Fontana, who called for the referendum debate to remain on the merits of the issues.

"We express our solidarity with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Justice Minister Carlo Nordio for what happened at the procession in Rome. Our invitation to lower the tone during this referendum campaign has always been and will always be valid for anyone and regardless of their personal and collective orientations'. Thus the National Association of Magistrates in a note.

The Five Stars distanced themselves from what happened. "The M5S is against all forms of violence and gestures that recall it. This is why I condemn without hesitation and firmly what happened a short while ago in the square in Rome, where the pictures of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Minister Carlo Nordio were burned. This government must go home with the force of ideas and democracy, not with hate and violence. We are only a handful of days away from the referendum, to those who take to the streets today and in the coming days I say: let us continue to explain and reiterate the reasons for the NO vote democratically, with open discussions. We all reject demonstrations of violence, which on the contrary lend themselves to instrumentalisation by those who want to portray the vast NO crowd as an indistinct collection of hatred and intolerance'," Giuseppe Conte, president of the 5 Star Movement, said in a statement.