Breaking the silence to stop extortion: door-to-door in Cardillo and Tommaso Natale

While magistrates from the Palermo Prosecutor’s Office and police investigators are reconstructing the circumstances and dynamics — and have already identified the first perpetrators of the serious criminal resurgence affecting the San Lorenzo mafia district — it is essential that business owners come to believe in the value of cooperating in order to finally free themselves of the burden of extortion.

“For this reason, we are holding confidential meetings and listening sessions aimed at shopkeepers and business owners — says Addiopizzo president Raffaele Genova — with the goal of building paths of cooperation that help victims report what they’ve experienced to investigators and law enforcement.”

In this same spirit, we felt it worthwhile to launch, starting today in the areas of Cardillo and Tommaso Natale, “door-to-door” initiatives aimed at shopkeepers in the borgate.

These are opportunities for meeting, information and awareness-raising, which will continue across the area in the coming weeks, so that those who have faced extortion demands in recent months and have so far kept it to themselves come to feel ready to cooperate.

“As long as intimidation and demands for pizzo go unreported to investigators and law enforcement, the criminal pressure — Genova concludes — on those who stay silent will remain high, and the extortion phenomenon will keep reproducing itself.”

Addiopizzo, like the other antiracket organizations active in the area, remains available to receive and take on — as it is already doing — requests for support and a listening ear from shopkeepers and business owners who reach out wanting to report extortion.

We remain convinced that today it is possible to cooperate and break free of extortion, as shown by the hundreds of victims who, over the past twenty years, have found in Palermo the strength and courage to stand up to mafia pressure.

On this occasion, we also want to recall what happened just under twenty years ago, at a time of criminal resurgence recorded in that same San Lorenzo district, when dozens of shopkeepers, with Addiopizzo’s support, spoke out about the violence, intimidation and extortion they had suffered, and even named the perpetrators, in one of the most significant instances of collective reporting. If it was possible then, we believe the conditions exist to do the same today.

Only in this way, through decisive and heartfelt collective action, will we manage to free ourselves from extortion.

Contact us for support: +39 327 9061172

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