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Italy's deputy premier Matteo Salvini faces a potential 6-year prison sentence in migration trial

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Italy's deputy premier Matteo Salvini faces a potential 6-year prison sentence in migration trial
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Italy's deputy premier Matteo Salvini faces a potential 6-year prison sentence in migration trial

2024-09-15 17:55 Last Updated At:18:00

ROME (AP) — Italian prosecutors on Saturday requested a six-year prison sentence for right-wing League leader Matteo Salvin i for his decision to prevent more than 100 migrants from landing in Italy when he was interior minister in 2019. If convicted Salvini could be barred from holding government office.

The prosecutors in the city of Palermo have accused Salvini — who’s currently deputy premier and transport minister in the right-wing government led by Giorgia Meloni — of alleged kidnapping for leaving a migrant rescue ship operated by charity Open Arms stranded at sea for 19 days.

During the 2019 standoff, some of the migrants threw themselves overboard in desperation as the captain pleaded for a safe, close port. The remaining 89 people onboard were eventually allowed to disembark in Lampedusa by a court order.

“I would do it all again: defending borders from illegal immigrants is not a crime,” Salvini said on his social media on Saturday.

His lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno, will make her defense statement in Palermo on Oct. 18, and a first sentence could come by the end of the month. A conviction – which in Italy is definitive only at the end of a three-stage judicial process -- could bar Salvini from holding government office.

Meloni and several ministers of her government expressed solidarity with the League leader, defending his decisions. Since she stepped into power in 2022, Meloni has pledged a crackdown on migration, aiming to deter would-be refugees from paying smugglers to make the dangerous Mediterranean crossing.

“It is incredible that a minister of the Italian Republic risks six years in prison for doing his job defending the nation’s borders, as required by the mandate received from its citizens,” the Italian premier wrote on X.

Salvini maintained a hard line on migration in his tenure as interior minister in the first government of Premier Giuseppe Conte, from 2018-2019.

He imposed a “closed ports” policy under which Italy refused entry to charity ships that rescued migrants in distress across the Mediterranean and repeatedly accused humanitarian organizations of effectively encouraging people smuggling.

FILE - Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Matteo Salvini attends a press conference during the G7 transportation ministers meeting in Milan, Italy, April 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni, File)

FILE - Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Matteo Salvini attends a press conference during the G7 transportation ministers meeting in Milan, Italy, April 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni, File)

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The Berlin Wall: A divide that once shaped German women's lives still echoes today

2024-11-08 15:39 Last Updated At:15:40

BERLIN (AP) — Like many other young women living in communist East Germany, Solveig Leo thought nothing about juggling work and motherhood. The mother of two was able to preside over a large state-owned farm in the northeastern village of Banzkow because childcare was widely available.

Contrast that with Claudia Huth, a mother of five, who grew up in capitalist West Germany. Huth quit her job as a bank clerk when she was pregnant with her first child and led a life as a traditional housewife in the village of Egelsbach in Hesse, raising the kids and tending to her husband, who worked as a chemist.

Both Leo and Huth fulfilled roles that in many ways were typical for women in the vastly different political systems that governed Germany during its decades of division following the country’s defeat in World War II in 1945.

As Germany celebrates the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989 — and the country’s reunification less than a year later on Oct. 3, 1990 — many in Germany are reflecting on how women’s lives that have diverged so starkly under communism and capitalism have become much more similar again — though some differences remain even today.

“In West Germany, women — not all, but many — had to fight for their right to have a career,” said Clara Marz, the curator of an exhibition about women in divided Germany for the Federal Foundation for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Germany.

Women in East Germany, meanwhile, often had jobs — though that was something that “they had been ordered from above to do,” she added.

Built in 1961, the Wall stood for 28 years at the front line of the Cold War between the Americans and the Soviets. It was built by the communist regime to cut off East Germans from the supposed ideological contamination of the West and to stem the tide of people fleeing East Germany.

Today only a few stretches of the 156.4-kilometer (97.2-mile) barrier around the capitalist exclave of West Berlin remain, mostly as a tourist attraction.

“All the heavy industry was in the west, there was nothing here,” Leo, who is now 81 years old, said during a recent interview looking back at her life as a woman under communism. “East Germany had to pay war reparations to the Soviet Union. Women needed to work our own way out of that misery.”

By contrast, Leo said, women in the West didn't need to work because they were “spoiled by the Marshall Plan” — the United States’ generous reconstruction plan that poured billions of dollars into West Germany and other European countries after the war.

In capitalist West Germany, the economy recovered so quickly after the total devastation of WWII that people soon started talking of a Wirtschaftswunder, or “economic miracle,” that brought them affluence and stability less than 10 years after the war.

That economic success, however, indirectly hampered women’s quest for equal rights. Most West German women stayed at home and were expected to take care of their household while their husbands worked. Religion, too, played a much bigger role than in atheist East Germany, confining women to traditional roles as caregivers of the family.

Mothers who tried to break out of these conventions and took on jobs were infamously decried as Rabenmütter, or uncaring moms who put work over family.

Not all West German women perceived their traditional roles as restrictive.

“I always had this idea to be with my children, because I loved being with them," said Huth, now 69. “It never really occurred to me to go to work.”

More than three decades after Germany’s unification, a new generation of women is barely aware of the different lives their mothers and grandmothers led depending on which part of the country they lived in. For most, combining work and motherhood has also become the normal way of life.

Hannah Fiedler, an 18-year-old high school graduate from Berlin, said the fact that her family lived in East Germany during the decades of the country's division has no impact on her life today.

“East or West — it's not even a topic in our family anymore,” she said, as she sat on a bench near a thin, cobble-stoned path in the capital's Mitte neighborhood, which marks the former course of the Berlin Wall in the then-divided city.

She also said that growing up, she had not experienced any disadvantages because she's female.

“I'm white and privileged — for good or worse — I don't expect any problems when I enter the working world in the future,” she said.

Some small differences between the formerly divided parts of Germany linger on. In the former East, 74% of women are working, compared to 71.5% in the West, according to a 2023 study by the Hans-Böckler-Stiftung foundation.

Childcare is also still more available in the former East than in the West.

In 2018, 57% of children under the age of 3 were looked after in a childcare facility in the eastern state of Saxony. That compares with 27% in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia and 44% in Hamburg and Bremen, according to Germany's Federal Statistical Office.

Germany as a whole trails behind some other European countries when it comes to gender equality.

Only 31.4% lawmakers in Germany's national parliament are female, compared to 41% in Belgium's parliament, 43.6% in Denmark, 45% in Norway and 45.6% in Sweden.

Nonetheless, Leo, the 81-year-old farmer from former East Germany, is optimistic that eventually women all over the country will have the same opportunities.

“I can’t imagine that there are any women who don’t like to be independent,” she said.

Jan M. Olsen contributed from Copenhagen.

Seamstresses work th the VEB clothing factory "Fortschritt",1987 in Berlin. (Zentralbild/DPA via AP)

Seamstresses work th the VEB clothing factory "Fortschritt",1987 in Berlin. (Zentralbild/DPA via AP)

Women work in the former East German Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaft (LPG) an 'Agricultural Production Cooperative' in Golzow on April 13, 1981. (Heinrich Sanden/DPA via AP)

Women work in the former East German Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaft (LPG) an 'Agricultural Production Cooperative' in Golzow on April 13, 1981. (Heinrich Sanden/DPA via AP)

Mealtime at the kindergarten on Wieckerstrasse in the Berlin district of Hohenschönhausen, in November 1987. (Zentralbid/DPA via AP)

Mealtime at the kindergarten on Wieckerstrasse in the Berlin district of Hohenschönhausen, in November 1987. (Zentralbid/DPA via AP)

Clara Marz an Organizer of an exhibition about women works on the photos in her office in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Clara Marz an Organizer of an exhibition about women works on the photos in her office in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Clara Marz an Organizer of an exhibition about women attends an interview with the Associated Press in her office in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Clara Marz an Organizer of an exhibition about women attends an interview with the Associated Press in her office in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Solveig Leo, 81, former head of a large state-owned farm shows an old photo of herself from her youth during her interview with the Associated Press in the northeastern village of Banzkow, Germany, Monday, Oct. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Solveig Leo, 81, former head of a large state-owned farm shows an old photo of herself from her youth during her interview with the Associated Press in the northeastern village of Banzkow, Germany, Monday, Oct. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Solveig Leo, 81, former head of a large state-owned farm attends an interview with the Associated Press in the northeastern village of Banzkow, Germany, Monday, Oct. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Solveig Leo, 81, former head of a large state-owned farm attends an interview with the Associated Press in the northeastern village of Banzkow, Germany, Monday, Oct. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Solveig Leo, 81, former head of a large state-owned farm feeds her horse after the interview with the Associated Press in the northeastern village of Banzkow, Germany, Monday, Oct. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Solveig Leo, 81, former head of a large state-owned farm feeds her horse after the interview with the Associated Press in the northeastern village of Banzkow, Germany, Monday, Oct. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Solveig Leo, 81, former head of a large state-owned farm looks at her old photos album during her interview with the Associated Press in the northeastern village of Banzkow, Germany, Monday, Oct. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Solveig Leo, 81, former head of a large state-owned farm looks at her old photos album during her interview with the Associated Press in the northeastern village of Banzkow, Germany, Monday, Oct. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Claudia Huth walks in front of her house in Egelsbach, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Claudia Huth walks in front of her house in Egelsbach, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Claudia Huth shows old photos of her children and herself in her house in Egelsbach, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Claudia Huth shows old photos of her children and herself in her house in Egelsbach, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

A repro of a photo pictured in Egelsbach, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024 shows Claudia Huth and her children. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

A repro of a photo pictured in Egelsbach, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024 shows Claudia Huth and her children. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Claudia Huth poses next to a painting showing herself and painted by her son in her house in Egelsbach, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Claudia Huth poses next to a painting showing herself and painted by her son in her house in Egelsbach, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Claudia Huth shows an old photo of her family and herself in her house in Egelsbach, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Claudia Huth shows an old photo of her family and herself in her house in Egelsbach, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Repro of a photo pictured in Egelsbach, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024 shows Claudia Huth and her children. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Repro of a photo pictured in Egelsbach, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024 shows Claudia Huth and her children. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Claudia Huth poses next to a painting showing herself and painted by her son in her house in Egelsbach, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Claudia Huth poses next to a painting showing herself and painted by her son in her house in Egelsbach, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

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