Wednesday, October 31, 2007
The ANNOTICO Report
To
understand the underlying animosity regarding Fiume/Rijeka, one must know a
little about its history.
The
earliest settlements on the site were Celtic Tarsatica (modern Trsat, now part of Rijeka) on a hill and the tribe of
mariners, the Liburni in the natural harbor
below. The city long retained this double character.
In
the time of Augustus, the Romans rebuilt Tarsatica as
a municipium on the right bank
of the small river Rjecina (whose name simply means
"river") as Flumen. . After the 4th century
the city was rededicated as Flumen Sancti Viti,
the city's patron saint.
From
the 5th century onwards, the town came under successive Frankish, Croatian and Magyar rule before coming under the control of the Austrian Habsburgs in 1466 .
Created
a free port in 1723, Fiume was passed during the 18th and 19th centuries
among the Habsburgs' Austrian, Croatian, and Hungarian possessions until its
attachment to the latter kingdom for the third and last time in 1870. Although
The
future mayor of New York City, Fiorello La Guardia,
lived in the city of Fiume, at the turn of the 20th century, and reportedly even played football for the local sports club.
Habsburg-ruled
Austria-Hungary's defeat and disintegration in
the closing weeks of World War I led to the establishment of rival
Italian and Croatian administrations in the city as both Italy and the founders of the new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes (later Yugoslavia) claimed sovereignty based on their
"irredentist" ("unredeemed")
ethnic populations.
At
the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Italy based her claim on the fact that Italians were the
largest single nationality within the city. Croats made up m ost of the remainder, and were also a majority in the
surrounding area, including the neighbouring town of Susak. Negotiations were rudely
interrupted by the city's seizure on Septem ber 12, 1919 by a force of Italian nationalist
irregulars led by the writer Gabriele d'Annunzio,
who eventually established a state, the Italian Regency of Carnaro.
This happened just two day s after the Treaty of Saint-Germain
was signed that declared the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy dissolved.
On November 12,1920, Italy and Yugoslavia
concluded the Treaty of Rapallo, under which Fiume/Rijeka
was to be an independent state, the Free State of Fiume/Rijeka, under a regime
acceptable to both.
D'Annunzio's response was characteristically flamboyant and of doubtful judgment:
his declaration of war against
The
aftermath of World War II saw the city's fate again resolved
by a combination of force and diplomacy. This time, Tito's Communist Yugoslav
troops advanced (early May 1945) as far west as Trieste in their campaign against the German occupiers of both
countries: Fiume became the Croatian city of Rijeka, a situation
formalized by the Paris peace treaty between Italy and the
wartime Allies on February 10, 1947.
Once
the change in sovereignty was formalized, Italian speakers fled the city in advance of Tito's Communist savage regime and went into exile (Esuli). The discrimination most of them experienced and the
persecution many of them suffered at the hands of the new Yugoslav authorities
in the dying days of World War Two and the first weeks of peace were a painful
memory for them. Su mmary executions of hundreds of
suspected 'Fascists', Italian public servants,
military and just ordinary citizens pushed
More
than 350,000 Italians were forced to abandon their homes between 1947 and 1954
to flee Tito's ethnic cleansing, in which more than 20,000 ethnic Italians were
systematically pulled out of their beds in the middle of the night, tied
together and hurled to their deaths into deep crevasses in the Istrian limestone, known as "Foibes".
The
horrendous memories still echo loudly.
http://www.istrianet.org/istria/property/news/sundaytelegraph990815.htm
It
also seems that the Postal Stamp has a "deeper" significance that
casual eye would be unaware.
SEE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postage_stamps_and_postal_history_of_Fiume
October 31, 2007
Some three-million copies of
the stamp showing Rijeka's Maritime Museum, but which served as the seat of
government during Italy's 1924-44 dominion of the Adriatic port, then known as
Fiume, were scheduled for release Tuesday.
The phrase: "
However, hours before the
stamps' release, the postal services citing an order from the Communications
Ministry said they would be issued at a "more opportune moment."
"The stamps are not
being blocked, they will be released on December 10," Communications
Ministry chief spokesman Sergio Bruno told Deutsche Presse-Agentur
dpa.
Officials have not confirmed
or denied whether the decision was linked to a request by
But Mario Landolfi,
a former communications minister in Silvio
Berlusconi's conservative government which in 2005 approved the stamp's design,
branded the decision as "despicable."
It amounted to an affront to
the "60,000 inhabitants of Fiume, 54,000 of whom ended up as exiles
because of their love for
"A few millimetres of paper has
re-awakened the inferiority complex of the most backward of Croats on the eve
of the elections," said Lucio Toth who heads
ANVGD, a group representing Italian exiles from the former
Still, the decision to hold
back on the stamp's release may help prevent a row similar to the one that
broke out between
Italian Foreign Minister
Massimo D'Alema then cancelled an official visit to
Earlier Croatian President Stjepan Mesic had accused his
Italian counterpart Giorgio Napolitano of "open racism" for a speech
by
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/133874.html
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