Open arms, Richard Gere: “I’m not looking for visibility, I’ll tell what I saw”

“I’m not looking for visibility”, I just want to tell what I saw on that ship. Cited among the witnesses of the Open Arms trial in which Matteo Salvini is accused, the actor Richard Gere, granted an exclusive interview to the Guardian. “I don’t know anything about politics, I don’t know the defendants in this case. I don’t wish them badly (to Salvini, ed), my concern is for people who have suffered so much. This moves me – says the actor – I was a witness, nothing more, nothing less. I can share it with the rest of the world if they ask me. ” “As for politics, I don’t support one way or another, or what the Italians have to do. This is up to Italians only,” he stressed. Gere says he does not know either the leader of the Lega Salvini, or the leader of the Brothers of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, who accuses him of seeking visibility. “I don’t know these people, I’ve never met them, but I doubt they ever had time to get on a ship and have a human experience, to understand the real people they have an influence on. If they did I believe the conversation it would be another. I don’t see myself as a movie star. I am one of the seven billion inhabitants of the planet. Neither better nor worse than anyone else. ” The actor explains that when called to testify, he will simply say “the truth. I will tell of my experience. I will speak for those who do not have a voice. It is not about me … I am just a witness”. Boarding the Open Arms ship to bring aid to migrants, Gere said he felt “full of shame because we have so much and we are unable to embrace these human beings, brothers and sisters who were dying of hunger, they were traumatized”. Salvini’s reply is ready: “Someone warn the American billionaire that thanks to my action in the government we have halved the number of dead and missing in the Mediterranean, ensuring a worthy welcome to real refugees”. “If – says the Northern League leader, addressing the artist USA – ignores Italian laws and judges them anyway does not make a good impression, if they leave him indifferent deaths, suffering and illegality, he has very little of Christianity and solidarity. I don’t judge him as a man and actor and I don’t judge the laws of his country, he avoids judging Italy and the Italians “.