No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ) mourns with great sadness the death of President Sergio Stanzani. Since 1997, Sergio was the President of No Peace Without Justice, contributing his commitment to human rights and his charisma to the fight for justice, the rule of law and democracy.
NPWJ is honoured to have been chaired by Senator Sergio Stanzani, and we mourn and remember him through a letter written by Gianfranco Spadaccia, which follows:
Letter from Gianfranco Spadaccia
“I met Sergio, with Marco [Pannella] and Franco Roccella, when I started university, it seems almost a century ago now, back in 1953. He was already an engineer, and had moved from Bologna to Rome to work, while still involved in the Italian Student Union (UGI), the lay organization of university students, of which he was a founding member. On behalf of UGI he was also elected first president of the National Italian University Representative Association (UNURI), . Two years later, in 1955, we found ourselves, along with many others, in the constituent committee of the Radical Party. This was recognition to the generation who, within the university – and unlike in the rest of Italian society – had managed make a secular and truly liberal organisation have majority appeal.
“The friendship that began then lasted a lifetime. I share with many others a great debt and many reasons for gratitude towards him. But I also have a personal debt of gratitude. In 1966 and 1967, he agreed to head a commission for the elaboration of the Statute of the Radical Party, in view of the first conference that we had decided to convene, following the split with the political review “Il Mondo”. As the manager of a major company he was very busy, but on weekends he organised debates, seminars and dialogues. Within just a few months, a Statute, that Panella rightly defined a “theoretical charter”, was developed: the charter of a liberal and libertarian party, an alternative to the existing models of democratic centralism and of parties organized on the basis of internal factions.
“When I became Secretary of the party in 1967 and 1968, he was a member of the Federal Council and, if I remember correctly, also its chairman for a certain period. For me, in times of difficulty and loneliness (in 1968, all young people who had been attracted to the Radical Party and its battle for divorce had started to drift away, first to occupy universities and then towards extra-parliamentary movements), he was an important reference point, an attentive interlocutor, a security net. It was his way of continuing his extraordinary university experience, of maintaining contact with us and with the new generations, of remaining close to our possible failures and successes.
“A dozen years later we were colleagues at the Senate. And I can assure that he knew how to be really unbearable, as all those who have worked with him in the Party, in Parliament and at No Peace Without Justice well know. A few years ago he broke a leg, and could not attend a congress of Radicali Italiani (I think in Padua). He summoned me to the hospital to dictate a letter – very beautiful – for the congress. It concluded specifying that it was not a farewell letter but that he would return to us, though possibly in a wheelchair – as indeed happened in the subsequent years. Perhaps that was why I underestimated his final crisis, and, caught up in trivial and ordinary problems, I was not close to him in these last days. I was sure that this time too he would recover.
“I am close to the pain of his loved ones (Sergio’s house – like Franco’s – was often my house), Gianna, Bianca, Paul and Duccio.
A fraternal goodbye, then.
Ciao Sergio.”
Testimonies:
Stanzani, la storia radicale come esperienza di vita
di Lorenzo Strik Lievers, Strade, 23 ottobre 2013
In memoria di Sergio Stanzani
di Mauro Mellini, Giustizia Giusta, 22 ottobre 2013
Sergio Stanzani – Une figure de la Résistance italienne s’en est allé
Le Petit Journal de Rome, 21 octobre 2013
Addio a Stanzani, principe della Goliardia e colonna dei Radicali
Valter Vecellio, Europa, 21 ottobre 2013
In ricordo di Stanzani: un pensiero laico, repubblicano, libertario…
Gianfranco Macrì & Domenico Bilotti, Politicamente Corretto, 21 ottobre 2013
Sergio Stanzani morto, fu tra i fondatori del Partito Radicale
L’Huffington Post, 18 ottobre 2013
Cordoglio del Presidente Napolitano per la scomparsa di Sergio Stanzani
Roma, 18 ottobre 2013
