Vittorio Arrigoni was an internationally-renowned human rights activist who served as a volunteer with the pacifist International Solidarity Movement, and worked closely with fishermen and farmers in Gaza from 2005. During the Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip in 2008-9, Arrigoni acted as a human shield while working with the Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances. Working as a freelance journalist for the Italian daily, Il Manifesto, Arrigoni’s daily dispatches, written between bombing raids and patchy internet access, ended with the plea, ‘stay human’, which became the motto of the anti-Israeli peace protests in his native Italy. His authoritative and deeply-moving eyewitness account was later published in 2010 in Italian, French, German and English, which the historian Ilan Pappé described as the ‘account of an everyman and a true humanist’. On the 14th of April 2011, Arrigoni was tragically kidnapped and brutally murdered by militants in Gaza, which caused an international outcry and was unanimously condemned by Hamas and the Palestinian National Authority.
Press Statement: Condemnation of the Murder of Vittorio Arrigoni
Friday, 15th April 2011
It is with deep sadness and shock for us to learn of the brutal kidnapping and savage murder of Vittorio Arrigoni in Gaza today. Vittorio was an internationally recognised human rights activist and a committed pacifist who lived with and stood up for the rights of the ordinary people of Gaza, and he will be sorely missed as a man of great honesty, moral courage and integrity.
Haris Ahmad, Kube Publishing’s Managing Director said, “As his publisher, we are very grieved to hear of Vittorio’s despicable murder at the hands of extremists. Our thoughts and condolences are with his family and friends at this time. His was a voice of compassion and a voice for justice and his senseless murder violates all reason and all morality, and is something that all decent people the world over would absolutely condemn.”
