There is a picture of Andy Rocchelli that strikes a chord more than any other one. It is the one depicting children hiding in the basement during the war in Ukraine. For getting a picture like that you need time. You need to gain the trust of the civilians, experience their own war, observe without judging.
Documents like this one make history, they condition our consciences and they end up addressing the history of the humankind. Documents like these ones can extract a drop of beauty in a ocean of sorrow, and maybe help us to improve ourselves.
Andy died in that war, killed in a rough attack tightened against civilian reporters. What happened is now an open wound for the whole community and for the people around Andy. But it is also a symbol of the permanent threat towards whom choose to be witnesses of the darkest side of our smashed humankind. It is thanks to them that we know and that we learn. It is thanks to them that we can roll up our sleeves and try to improve ourselves.
People like Andy Rocchelli, anywhere in the world, are accidental heros. It is our own responsibility to fight so that they won’t have to be that anymore in the future. They need to simply be what they were meant to be: our own conscience, our way of knowing, our right to improve ourselves.
It is for this exact reason that the trial currently held at the Pavia Court represent a civil fight of the highest symbolic value for everybody. It is necessary to find out what happened in that awful day in 2014. It is a must to find out the truth. It is mandatory to draw a line for reminding the community that crossing that line would mean commit an unforgivable crime against the community itself.
More than ever now participation is required. Civil voices are required to arise and demand justice. For Andy, for reporters around the world and for all of us.
