Italy: Petition to rename Milan piazza after Italian surgeon
Milan: A petition is underway to rename a central square in Milan after Gino Strada, the celebrated Italian doctor, war surgeon and human rights activist, who died on Friday aged 73.
The online campaign, on the Change.org platform, is calling for Piazzale Cadorna to be renamed after Strada who is best remembered for co-founding the humanitarian organisation Emergency to treat civilian victims of war.
Several thousand people have already signed the petition launched by Alessandro Lanzani, a doctor with the medical charity Tamponi Sospesi which provides free covid testing to those who can’t afford it.
The Milan square in question is named after General Luigi Cadorna, described by Lanzani a “warmonger” who presided over Italy’s crushing defeat at the Battle of Caporetto in the first world war and was responsible for the “massacre of tens of thousands.”
Lanzani said he would love to see the square renamed in honour of Gino Strada, a man who “repudiated war,” and has called on Milan’s mayor Giuseppe Sala to respond urgently with a positive answer ahead of Strada’s funeral next week.
A similar call has been made by Roberto Di Stefano, the Lega mayor of Sesto San Giovanni, the town on the outskirts of Milan where Strada was born in 1948.
Proposing to rename a public place after the humanitarian hero, Di Stefano called for a special exemption to Italy’s laws which state that a person must be dead for at least a decade before a street or piazza can be named after them.
Tributes have poured in for Strada, from doctors, charity workers and politicians, including Italian prime minister Mario Draghi who said: “He always spent his life on the side of the neediest, working with professionalism, courage and humanity in the most difficult areas of the world.”
Since Emergency was established in 1994 by Strada and his late wife Teresa Sarti, the medical charity has treated more than 11 million people in 19 war-ravaged countries, including Afghanistan, Cambodia and Sudan.
