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Bending down to ordinary people

by Raimondo De Cardona

The plaque with the sentence by Gibran

The plaque with the sentence by Gibran

The remarks by H.E. the Ambassador Raimondo De Cardona on the occasion of the inauguration of the Garden of the Righteous of Tunis

There are moments, in which diplomatic formality and institutional activities, inevitably burdened by matters of form and the respect of conventions, make a felicitous encounter with the human dimension and the personal tales of perfectly ordinary individuals; people whose gestures be able to shake our souls and illuminate our lives with a light of hope. The establishment of the Garden of the Righteous is one of these moments. By creating this Garden we respectfully and gratefully bend down to common people, unknown until the very moment, in which they accomplished their deserving gestures. It is a pleasure to dedicate our commitment to these people.

This garden was created thanks to a particularly felicitous intuition of Association Gariwo and its Chairman Gabriele Nissim. It is based on the concept that, beyond any nuances of sensitivity or orientation in different ethnic, cultural and religious groups, there is a dimension of good that unites us all. It stands on a thin thread that support natural and indisputable feelings that are there in the human dimension. It is an attachment to goodness that some individuals, inspired by noble aims, manage to bring about in the face of serious injustice and in particular where fundamental rights, human dignity and the very sacred value of life are questioned.

The Garden of the Righteous thus celebrates Goodness as a key value. And those who have been able to recognize it and enhance it in the gloomy moments that nonetheless are sometimes experienced by the humanity.

Hosting the Garden here in this Embassy is thus a reason of particular satisfaction to us. As we are happy about the resonance of this initiative, not only here in Tunisia, but also in Italy.

Setting up a Garden of the Righteous, here, for the first time on the Southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, in a Muslim country that has embraced the challenge of democracy and in which the rule of law in the defence of human rights has affirmed itself, is a significant fact that I wish to underline. Europe looks at this country in admiration for the great progress fulfilled and the example it keeps offering to the region.

If the Garden of the Righteous is, by its very nature, a universal project, it needs be said here in Tunisia it is at home; it is a place in which the memory of so many heroic gestures finds a natural location.

The Garden is a living body. Today we are setting it up in the memory of five Righteous people. More commemorative trees will follow in the future. For how our era seems rich at tragic events, undoubtedly it is also accompanied by reassuring evidence of the attachment of human souls to goodness. Generosity and spirit of sacrifice are the “motive” behind the behavior of our Righteous. We thus wished to include in the Garden a moving sentence by Khalil Gibran, “You give so little when you give your goods, it is when you give yourselves that you really give”.

I whole-heartedly thank President Gabriele Nissim and Director Ulianova Radice with their Gariwo team and Nobel Prize Winner Abdessattar Ben Moussa, President of the Tunisian League of Human Rights, without whose help this project would have not been accomplished.

I also warmly welcome Lamberto Bertolé, President of Milan City Council, and Dr. Cristina Miedico, curator of the Archaeological Museum of Angera, who have reached us on this occasion and actively participate in this initiative.

Raimondo De Cardona, Italy's Ambassador to Tunis

Analysis by

18 July 2016

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