by Stefano Lorenzetto
Former entrepreneur and volunteer, from perpetrator of death to deminer in the Balkans. “Saved by my son, he was 8 years old when he called me a murderer. How did I atone for my sins? “Three heart stents and I lost my right eye”
It’s easy to talk about anti-personnel landmines. Which? There are two types: pressure and fragmentation. The former explode when stepped on, tearing the foot, the leg, the genitals; The latter are activated with a trigger wire and kill instantly. To the unfortunate who stumbles upon them, one might say if they weren’t filled with metal shards that would injure everyone on the 10,000 square foot surrounding property.
Vito Alfieri Fontana, a former entrepreneur from Bari, produced 2.5 million mines. It started when he was 26. He stopped for thirty years. He dissolved his first life as a producer of death with a second life as an Intersos humanitarian worker in the Balkans.
He set out to remove 2,000 people from Kosovo, Serbia and Bosnia and cleared Sarajevo of mines. 0.08 percent. “It seems like nothing, but there are so many, for the effort I put into it with 20 people,” he consoles himself, as the book “I was the man of war” that he wrote for Laterza with Antonio Sanfrancesco has, will be published soon (next Friday).
Fontana was the owner of Tecnovar, which closed in 1997 due to a crisis of conscience that was not foreseen in Confindustria. He is the only one in the world who has uncovered the mechanisms behind the most criminal production of war. Without him, the international campaign to ban anti-personnel mines, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in the same year, would never have gotten off the ground. Without him, the Italian Parliament would never have passed the law that forever banned the infamous trade.
She is more remorseful than Tommaso Buscetta.
“This is what Teresa Sarti, Gino Strada’s late wife, told me: “Buscetta is making her life difficult.” The emergency doctor called me: “Do you realize what your mines are planning?” I stammered: I know, doctor , a huge mess. “Finally someone who calls me doctor. Do something immediately!” he ordered me sternly. Twenty years later I met him in Catania. He was still worried that he had been too aggressive.
What are anti-personnel mines for?
“To frighten, to maim, to kill. They secure an area: In Afghanistan, the American bases were surrounded by minefields that the Allies should have reported. They make an area uninhabitable for many years after a war: residents cannot return home, farm the land or graze their livestock. Children are the first victims.”
Who invented them?
“The man. When the Mongols attempted to invade Japan in 1274, they found rudimentary devices filled with black powder waiting for them on the beaches. Modern mines first appeared in 1861 during the American Civil War. In our country they became widespread during the First World War: They prevented the cutting of the barbed wire that was stretched around the trenches.”
How much explosive did your explosives contain?
“Up to 350 grams of T4 or TNT.”
Cost?
“The TS-50, the most sophisticated one I have ever designed, 5,000 lire.”
Nothing.
“It was the most sought-after because it exploded even after decades. In 1988 the Italian government asked me to study “smart”, or rather “ethical” mines.
He lacked a sense of the ridiculous.
“They should have stopped activating within 6-12 months. But they cost 100,000 lire each. I never produced it because the project was canceled in 1990.
To which countries did he sell his devices?
“Especially to Egypt, which operated in various theaters of war through the Ministry of Military Production. I met a former officer who had been loyal to Saddam Hussein. At the time of the Iraq-Iran conflict, he commanded the Army Corps of Engineers. After the 1984 embargo, triangulations were required to get the mines into the Gulf. He told me that the dictator shouted at him: “I don’t care where you get them from, what matters is that there is Italian perfume.” But Tecnovar also traded with the United States, Canada, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, France and Thailand. A sample of ours was found in Bosnia, which we had delivered to the German army. I never understood how it ended up there.
Did it all happen in broad daylight?
“Certainly! Our exports had to be approved by the Prime Minister and four ministries: Defense, Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs, Foreign Trade.”
Where do you buy mines today?
“China, Russia, India, Iran, North Korea, South Korea, Pakistan, Myanmar, Cuba, Singapore and Vietnam continue to produce them in defiance of the ban, which not even the US has ever joined: they claim that they are there to comply with it. “The border between the two Koreas is secure.”
Did you develop Tecnovar?
“No, I inherited it from my father Ludovico, an engineer like me and like my maternal grandfather Vito. He founded it in 1958. In the beginning it was called Fabem, an abbreviation for Bakelite and metal goods factory. He built bases and frames for Enel’s meters and valves for aqueducts.
Why was it converted back into ammunition?
“Not that Dad was a warmonger. He came from a liberal and anti-fascist family. He took over 20 percent of the Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno to please Aldo Moro, who had asked him for it through one of his loyalists, the former DC minister Nicola Vernola, my mother’s cousin.
So why did he get his hands dirty?
“He was arguing with Uncle Giovanni, his partner. Fabem was liquidated. My father turned to Valsella di Montichiari, a leading supplier of anti-personnel landmines, for whom he acted as a consultant. But he needed capital for the new company. He turned to a powerful and cynical businessman, the Old One. I don’t feel like mentioning his name, he’s dead. He lived on an oxygen cylinder between Milan and a villa overlooking the sea in Liguria. This is how Valsella Sud srl was founded in 1971, which later became Tecnovar. In the end we had 350 employees and a turnover of 40 billion lire per year. But the first order from the Ministry of Defense dates back 60 years. It was about the Aups mine, i.e. “anti-personnel defense and sabotage”.
Then came the crisis of conscience.
“My son Ludovico saw the Tecnovar catalogs in the back seat of the car when he was 8 years old. He asked me what those things were. I stammered: Mines, everyone who makes weapons makes them. “Then you are a murderer,” he concluded. The following year was even more terrible when I returned from a school trip. Maybe he had been talking to his friends. He attacked me like a rage: “I thought you were the best father in the world. But you’re not.” Do you have any idea what a parent feels when he hears a sentence like that?
He also suffered from social censorship.
“Every morning the warehouse worker came to my office: “Engineer, this package arrived without postage and without a sender.” I opened it: there was only one shoe inside. And always the same note: “You made the mark, you bastard!”
Nicoletta Dentico, former vice president of Mani tese, told me: “He is a convert.”
“She converted me, God bless her. He called every week to insult me. Finally he dragged me to the Oslo conference in 1997. And there sat in front of me one evening a very good-looking former British Army officer, under 30 years old. He had lost an arm and part of a leg while clearing mines in Cambodia. “Is this the one I should meet?” he asked me. What a shame, what a shame!
Bishop Tonino Bello harassed them.
“He died before he could do it. A month after the funeral, 400 people attended a cinema in Bisceglie. A boy stood up: “But what do you dream about at night?” That another war would break out to sell so many mines? What kind of life is he? We stayed in touch. His name is Gianpietro Lo Sapio, he lives in Barletta.
Did your father regret it?
“No, he died in 2006 believing I had wasted the family fortune. Unfortunately, mother thought like him. Only my wife understood me, along with two Tecnovar employees, Jehovah’s Witnesses. They were simple tool makers. Once they understood what their forms were for, they stepped back.
Resistance on an international level?
“In 1984, two Swedes from a UN commission visited Tecnovar. They feared that our sea mines would cause great harm to fish fauna.”
How many anti-personnel mines are there left?
“Nobody knows. There will be 40 million on the Iran-Iraq border alone. It is estimated that they have caused no fewer than 500,000 victims worldwide, including dead and maimed.”
How did he atone for his sins?
«With three stents in the heart. And I lost my right eye. I had to have surgery for a retinal detachment, but I didn’t want to leave Bosnia. In Sarajevo the director of Italian cooperation asked me: “How much do you earn?” I answered: 14,500 euros. He was surprised: “Don’t you think that’s exaggerated, engineer?” I meant per year, not per month. Although I earned around 10,000 euros a month at Tecnovar, like ordinary deminers, I had reduced my salary to 1,200. With the money saved we were able to reclaim three more hectares of land.”
Do you need antidepressants?
“No, the Balkans were enough. I only blame myself for not cleaning them up sooner.”
Can you sleep?
“A little and bad. I never remember dreams except one. In Egypt, Mother Teresa of Calcutta appeared to me at night. He looked at me wordlessly and shook his head. I woke up worried. The next day I found her in front of Fiumicino airport.
How would you describe your odyssey?
“With the poem of Catullus: “Multas per gentes et bagna per aequora vectus advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferas”. Brought through many peoples and many seas, I come to these wretched remains, brother.”
September 19, 2023 (modified September 19, 2023 | 07:37)
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