Politics, the media, justice:the Aboubakar Soumahoro case

Investigation into the management of migrants and unaccompanied minors:the wife and mother-in-law of parliamentarian Aboubakar Soumahoro are under house arrest

Update October 30, 2023: SThey ended up under house arrest Liliane Murekatete and Marie Therese Mukamatsindo, respectively wife and mother-in-law of the MP, Aboubakar Soumahoro.The arrests were ordered by the Latina investigating judge in the investigation into the management of cooperatives that dealt with the management of migrants and unaccompanied minors.

The Latina prosecutor's office contests crimes in the management of migrants such as fraud in public supplies, fraudulent bankruptcy of assets and self-laundering.In particular, the Karibu cooperatives and the Consortium Agency for inclusion and rights of Italy, in addition to Jambo Africa (through Karibu), would have received large public funds from the prefecture, Region and Municipalities intended for assistance projects, providing services which a note from the Gdf defines as "inadequate and different from what was agreed upon".

In particular, the prosecutor contests the excessive number of guests, dilapidated accommodation with inadequate furnishings, poor hygiene conditions and absent heating.In the structures, the Guardia di Finanza soldiers also found deficiencies in the supply of hot water, in the preservation of meat and poor quality of food.

In 2014 the journalist and writer Luca Rastello published his latest book "The Good".A novel-exposé that tells the story of charity professionals, those "who fight to save the world".The protagonist is Don Silvano, head of the non-profit organization "In tiptoe".A suburban priest, with a worn sweater and a suffering look, who everyone loves:“The powerful, the beautiful, the famous and the nun who trembles under his gaze.Everyone is proud to be his friend.Because he rides with the banner of good.He is the hero of this time, he is the consolation", wrote the journalist, who later passed away in 2015.The release of the book was accompanied by a long controversy, because for many the work contains explicit references to some exponents of the anti-mafia. But to those who accused him Rastello himself replied: “Don Silvano is me. And I believe that we all are Don Silvano, at least potentially."And again:“We are the water in which the plant grows.”

Dramatically current, the book has the ability to focus on some dangerous trends that cross the world of activism and non-profit:that of outsourcing, due to lack of commitment or ability, battles which, instead, should remain collective, to particularly charismatic figures;the gap between private behavior and public image;the risk of a dangerous short circuit between just causes, narcissism and the desire for power.All mechanisms that have a counterpart:the continuous search for symbolic men, heroes capable of representing good in an absolute sense, then makes it impossible to turn one's back on those "good" people even when they make mistakes, because by attacking them one risks tarnishing the (right) battles they carry out.

In recent weeks, the case involving MP Aboubakar Soumahoro, who was elected to Parliament for the first time on 25 September with the Italian Greens-Left list and ended up at the center of public debate for an investigation that concerns the family of his wife Liliane Murakatete, and in particular his mother-in-law, Marie Therese Mukamitsindo at the head of two cooperatives she manages, Karibu and the Aid Consortium, active in the reception of migrants.In mid-November, the Latina prosecutor's office opened a case after a complaint from the Uiltcs union.There is talk of unpaid salaries to employees, substandard reception conditions for unaccompanied minors, and the lack of essential services such as electricity and water in some of the facilities.Aboubakar Soumahoro is not under investigation nor involved in the investigation, yet the scandal overwhelmed him immediately, making him the main target of the affair.The accusation is not judicial, but concerns the political coherence of his actions:who entered Parliament with the declared aim of defending the least, the exploited, could he really (as he claims) not have known about the events regarding migrants and workers that directly involve his family?Can we wage battles of principle when those same principles are violated at home?

Accusations that appear serious precisely because Soumahoro's media-political history was born from a just battle following a terrible news story.It is June 2, 2018, the then new Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini, during an electoral meeting in Vicenza, pronounces his most famous slogan:“The treat is over”.800 km away, there is a boy who dies.Soumaila Sacko, 29 years old, originally from Mali.He was shot dead by a man, Antonio Pontoriero, while together with his friends Drame and Fofana he was recovering some sheet metal to build a makeshift shelter in a laborers' shantytown in the Gioia Tauro plain.The story is well described in the book “The parcel” (Zolfo publisher)  by journalist Bianca Stancanelli. In the first statement from the prefecture of Reggio Calabria, Sacko is branded a "thief", who entered private property and was killed by unknown persons.“He is a 'nivuru' (black) like many others, his story is destined to end up forgotten”, explains Stancanelli, if it were not for Drame who changes the tone and the script of the story, calling into question Aboubakar Soumahoro, sociologist and manager of Usb.As a good trade unionist, Soumahoro finds the right words:Soumaila “was one of us, a member of the union, he fought for everyone's rights”, he underlines.His death quickly became the symbol of the condition of those boys (many of whom had a regular residence permit) exploited in the Southern countryside.And who gather in procession to demand rights, dignity and respect. Soumahoro, takes charge of the protest.

As the Radio Popolare journalist recalls Massimo Alberti, right from the start, in the world of trade unions and activism, the first accusations of management of laborers' disputes for personal career purposes began to circulate.But Soumahoro works.It works because it embodies a symbol.Each of his forays into the ghettos is accompanied by a selfie video with some laborers in the background, in which rights are collectively claimed.It works because he communicates with effective gestures in the world of Instagram politics:he chains himself to the States General of the Economy during the Conte government and then in front of Montecitorio, he enters Parliament for the first time with his boots dirty with mud.“Abou”, as everyone calls him, also knows how to coin slogans:to those who say "Italians first", he replies "the exploited first";to those who talk about "taste", it shows the conditions of exploitation in agriculture.In a period of polarization of the public debate on the issue of migrants, with the leader of the League now Minister of the Interior, he knows how to contrast himself.The media system notices this and quickly elects him as anti-Salvini.It matters little if behind that collective self, often invoked, there is above all self-referentiality.

Political parties court him.Newspapers and TV, Italian and foreign, dedicate covers, portraits and in-depth articles to him.Today replaced by a fury over the matter that is hardly justifiable only with the investigation into the Mukamitsindo cooperatives.While, after the first press reports, the leaders of the Italian Left and the Greens, who nominated him in the last elections, asked for explanations.After a meeting at the end of November Soumahoro he self-suspended from the group.But this has not calmed the spirits on the left, with an impact of responsibility on the selection of the ruling class.

On the daily Tomorrow, Giorgio Meletti talks about the failure of the politics of vote-catching icons:“They sold him as a candidate for prime minister, the embodiment of a political line that doesn't exist, one that, they admit now, they knew nothing about.If there is a victim in this story it is him."

At a media level, from the initial and understandable requests for clarification on too many omitted of the affair, we moved on to the production of news on the private life of the deputy, bordering on gossip.Soumahoro's wife, Liliane Murakatete, was dubbed Lady Gucci for some Instagram shots wearing designer pieces.Some photos of her in lingerie, taken ten years ago, were published by the site Dagospia and then ended up on the front pages of some right-wing newspapers and on television broadcasts.For what the writer Djarah Kan in a long post on Facebook he defined a form of Revenge Porn: “To date Murekatete is not under investigation.But even if he were, the nature of the media violence of which he has been the target for weeks would not change.For me, showing intimate photos of a woman who has not given any consent, live nationally is pure and simple organized gender and group violence.A gender violence which is weighed down by the infernal conjunction between racism and sexism."

But what does all this have to do with the investigation, with cooperatives and the reception system?What does all this have to do with the conditions of exploited people?Isn't this once again a way to use a symbol (this time negatively) only for political purposes?

After weeks of attention in the public debate, the central questions remain in the background:the reception system which, twenty years after the entry into force of the Bossi-Fini law, is still based on a binary system between the management of the State and that of local authorities, with the proliferation of extraordinary reception centres, without the guarantee of adequate and uniform standards.In the ghettos of the South, agricultural workers continue to live in dilapidated slums and die, just like Soumaila Sacko.Thousands of social workers in cooperatives they work under crumbling contracts and without receiving a salary for months.Yet this is not outrageous.Indeed, the media short circuit that has been triggered in recent weeks risks devaluing the work that many do in the territories precisely to protect those who have no rights.And so this story of meteoric rise and fall confirms to us once again how social issues and, in particular, immigration are treated with extreme superficiality:with a continuous search for uplifting stories of champions/heroes, with vulnerable people always thought of as objects of the narrative, almost never as subjects;with a rush to political gossip, without a structural and truly critical vision of the phenomenon.

Last summer, the artist Jago, positioned on the Sant'Angelo bridge, in the heart of Rome, the statue of a young refugee entitled "In Flagella Paratus Sum - I am ready for the scourge". She was lying on the ground, the same color as the asphalt.People walking on the bridge found it in front of them, almost like a stumbling block.There were those who kicked her, those who broke her arm, those who put her in a corner so she wouldn't be trampled on.And who only stopped for a selfie.

When will we stop dealing with issues that concern the weakest sections of the population, only when we find them before us as a stumbling block?Will we still use them just to strike out hard against one or another political party?Or will we ever address them to truly improve people's conditions?

Preview image via optimagazine.com