Teachers, students, gay campaigners
and #MeToo activists staged a demonstration outside the
education ministry in Rome Friday calling for action to prevent
the discrimination of transsexuals like the teacher who killed
herself near Venice last weekend.
"May This Never Happen Again" read one of the banners held up by
the protesters, who said the woman had been "systematically
insulted and marginalized by hatred".
The 50-year-old transgender former teacher burned herself alive
in her camper van on a northern Italian road at the weekend.
Cloe Bianco, former teacher at the Istituto Mattei high school
of San Dona' di Piave near Venice, had said she was going to
commit suicide in a blog post on Friday.
Her charred body was found in the burned-out vehicle on the
regional highway between Auronzo and Misurina near Belluno north
of Venice on Saturday.
In her blog post last Friday Bianco said: "Immediately after the
publication of this communique' I will carry out my auto da fe,
or rather my free death.
"On this last day I have celebrated with a tasty meal and
excellent nectars from Bacchus, enjoying for the last time wine
and food I like.
"This simple party of the end of my life was accompanied by good
music in my little home on wheels, where I will now remain.
"This is the most poetic way to live my life to the best and end
it in the same style.
"Here everything ends".
Minister for Relations with Parliament Federico D'Inca' said
"this is a terrible story that commits all of us not to look the
other way and to work to build a really inclusive and
unprejudiced country."
He said "it is a story of suffering, marginalization, denied
rights and loneliness that no one was able to understand or
resolve via the support and understanding that Cloe clearly
needed".
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