Eelam Tamils in Italy took part in a multicultural peace festival in Valdilana earlier this month, using the gathering to raise awareness of the Tamil genocide and to press their demand for justice.
The fourth edition of Valdilana's Festa della Comunità was held on 4 July under the theme "Tessere la Pace: storie di comunità sul cammino della responsabilità", or "Weaving Peace: stories of communities on the path of responsibility".
Organised by the municipality of Valdilana, a town in the wool textile district of Biella in Piedmont, alongside local partners and associations, the event centred on inclusion, social transformation, community cohesion and environmental sustainability, and was built around a peace march, a roundtable discussion and a multicultural evening gathering.
Members of the Eelam Tamil community joined the day's events under their Tamil national identity and with their calls for justice for the genocide.
Tamil participants walked in the Passi di Pace, or Steps of Peace, march, which set out at 8.45am from the Mercato Coperto in Ponzone and finished at the Ponzone sports hall at 11am, where the Lamp of Saint Francis was lit.
They went on to attend the roundtable discussion at 5pm and the multicultural gathering at 7pm. Young Tamils mounted a visual exhibition documenting the Tamil genocide and handed out leaflets to those attending, drawing the gathering's attention to the Tamil struggle for justice.
Tamil community members said representatives of the municipality praised the community's continued contribution to local initiatives and the way it had carried out the responsibilities entrusted to it.
Among the special guests was Flavio Lotti, one of Italy's leading peace campaigners.
Lotti directs the Coordinamento Nazionale Enti Locali per la Pace e i Diritti Umani, the National Coordination of Local Authorities for Peace and Human Rights, an association he helped found in 1986 that now brings together some 700 Italian municipalities, provinces and regions.
He is also the organiser of the Perugia to Assisi peace march, the largest of its kind in Italy, and president of the PerugiAssisi Foundation for the Culture of Peace.
According to Tamil participants at the event, Lotti said he would seek to bring Tamil history and the genocide of the Tamil people to schools at a national level in Italy.
Lotti founded and directs the Rete Nazionale delle Scuole di Pace, the national Schools of Peace network, which has worked since the mid-1990s to embed peace and human rights education permanently in the curricula of Italian schools at every level, and which draws in schools from across the country's regions.
