MOSCOW, April 7 (RIA Novosti), Daria Chernyshova – Venice’s self-determination movement seeks to create a new free and sovereign country in Europe, Alessio Morosin, a founding member and leader of the Indipendenza Veneta movement told RIA Novosti.
“The exercise of the right to self-determination is aimed at achieving a total institutional, political and administrative independence for the Venetian people,” Morosin said over the weekend.
Morosin, who has been involved in Venetian independence issues for two decades, said that Italy has treated the Venetian region like an African colony, as the fruits of hard working taxpayers are being siphoned off by the central government.
On Sunday, thousands of protesters gathered in the streets of Verona, a city in the region, demanding the release of 24 activists arrested last week and calling for the region’s independence from Italy.
The demonstrators blew whistles, set off smoke bombs and waved the flag of the Venice region, Veneto.
According to police, the 24 detainees modified a bulldozer with a makeshift cannon in a plan to assault St. Mark's Square in Venice. The scheme resembled the 1997 seizure of the square's bell tower by armed activists calling for an independent Venetian republic.
“Veneto no longer wants to be aggregated and to continue to be part of a state system that feels foreign to its own history and remains deaf to requests for local self-government,” Morosin said.
Activists are seeking an independence referendum that would return the city and the surrounding area of Veneto to the status of an independent republic, which it held for over 1100 years before Napoleon deposed its last leader in 1797.
Calls for self-determination found a political home in the Indipendenza Veneta movement, formed in May 2012 “with the sole purpose of obtaining statutory independence for the lands of San Marco,” Morosin explained.
Last month, local independence activists and parties launched an online vote to secede from Italy and declare an independent Republic of Veneto. Eighty-nine percent of respondents voted for Veneto to break away from Italy. The vote was not recognized by Italian authorities, but activists believe it will help them legitimize calls for an official referendum.
The core arguments of the movement are financial. The region pays 70 billion euros ($96 billion) in taxes to Rome, and receives 49 billion euros ($67 billion) back in services like healthcare, which activists have called a “fiscal robbery.”
Moreover, the heavy tax burden has forced thousands of Venetian companies to relocate to neighboring countries, including Austria, Serbia, Switzerland, Slovenia and Croatia. Like other major regions of the country, such as Milan and Lombardy, Veneto is strangled by Italian taxes, which are well above 60 percent.
Some international experts believe that Veneto's sovereignty bid is inspired by Crimea, where over 96 percent of voters supported reunification with Russia in a historic referendum last month, which Russian President Vladimir Putin said was in full compliance with the UN charter and international law.
Morosin, who is a practicing lawyer and author of a recent book entitled “Self-Determination,” said that self-determination was provided for both by international treaties such as the UN Charter, as well as the Italian Constitution which declares that it conforms to generally recognized rules of international law.
Scotland in Britain and Catalonia in Spain are also home to popular independence movements and will be holding referendums on their status this fall.
