Hundreds of unemployed Sicilian ex-convicts who have taken over Palermo Cathedral said on Monday that they would refuse to budge until the State gave them a job.
The former prisoners, several of whom have gone on hunger strike, told reporters that "we're going to camp out here until they find us a job. There's no way we're leaving". The protesters have occupied Palermo's imposing Norman-era Cathedral since Saturday, with wives and children swelling the numbers at some points to more than 600.
The core 200 or so demonstrators have been joined by dozens of inmates who were released from Palermo prison last week under a mass pardon approved by the government.
They have draped huge white banners outside the cathedral bearing the slogans 'Ex-prisoners are outcasts, God help us', and 'Jobless former inmates ask God for his aid'.
One of the leaders of the protest, Filipo Accetta, who has chained himself to a pillar in the cathedral square, has been on a hunger strike for the past four days.
The father of three said that he had been out of work for four years.
He said the protesters wanted the local authorities to activate a planned employment programme which would provide them with jobs such as caretakers or gardeners on a guaranteed monthly wage of 516 euros.
Accetta said that in the run-up to elections last April, local politicians had promised that they would be put on the programme list and that the project would be immediately put into action.
"But they haven't done a thing since... They told us to wait until the elections were over. They asked us for our vote and then they abandoned us," said Accetta, who was briefly hospitalised on Monday because of his increasingly weak condition.
Another spokesman for the protesters, Nunzio Bologna, said that "we won't go until the local politicians listen to us and fulfill their promises. The job programme has to be started up".
He demanded that the mayor or other local officials come and talk to them.
Salvatore Dolce, a 62-year-old inmate who was released last week under the prisoner pardon scheme, said that "I've been in and out of jail for a total of 30 years and I hope the government will help me. "When I was in prison, I had a job in the kitchen and was making 400-600 euros a month. Now I'm on the outside but I've got nowhere to live and no job. At 62, if they don't
find me something, I'll have no choice but to go back to crime".
Palermo Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi has not so far commented on the protest but the local parish priest Pino Lo Galbo has been helping the demonstrators by distributing food and water.
Meanwhile, the government said on Tuesday that it was releasing 13 million euros to fund a job programme to help prisoners released by the pardon reintegrate. Justice Minister Clemente Mastella said the scheme would benefit at least 2,000 of the "neediest" prisoners.
Almost 12,000 inmates have so far been released and up to 10,000 more could be freed by the amnesty, which cuts sentences by three years for crimes committed before May 2, 2006 and is designed to ease chronic overcrowding in Italian jails.
