Indro Montanelli, [...] who died in 2001, admitted having bought and married an Eritrean girl, 12, during army service in the 1930s.
[...]
Activist group Retestudentimilano labelled Montanelli "a colonialist who made slavery an important part of his political activity" and said he "cannot and should not be celebrated in the public square".
Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala, however, said the statue recognised Montanelli's indisputable journalistic contribution.
"He was a great journalist who fought for freedom of the press," he said. "When we judge our own lives, can we say that ours is spotless? Lives must be judged in their complexity."
Quoting a similar article from Giulia Blasi:
During his two years of service in the army in the second Italo-Ethiopian war in the 1930s, Montanelli bought — or rather “leased,” as he put it — a young Eritrean girl from her father for 350 lire, a horse and a rifle. The girl, whose name was either “Destà” or “Fatima,” was 12 or 14 at the time.
In a long, painfully detailed article that appeared in his column La stanza di Montanelli in 2000, the Italian man of letters described the girl as a “docile little animal” whose smell repulsed him, and whose mutilated genitals “resisted his ardor,” to the point that intercourse was only possible after her mother’s “brutal intervention.”
Montanelli never showed any remorse. In a 1969 television interview, he dismissed criticism of his actions by claiming customs were “different” in Africa. There’s nothing to suggest he ever regretted his treatment of her, or developed any self-awareness in later years.
And yet, the splashes of paint on Montanelli’s statue have been met with unanimous horror and condemnation in that subsection of the Italian population whose voice is still loudest: the old, upper-class white men who control the vast majority of power, money and media real estate in Italy.
Related: Gender & Sexual Abuses during the Fascist Colonization of Ethiopia & Eritrea
(Tagged as NSFW for the especially disturbing subject matter.)