Italy's right-wing govt slammed for anti-rave decree, oppn sounds alarm

Italy's new interior minister on Wednesday defended the government from criticism that a decree banning rave parties could be used to clamp down on sit-ins and other forms of protest while thousands of fascist sympathisers were allowed to march to the crypt of the country's slain Fascist dictator.

The decree on illegal raves was among the first actions of Premier Giorgia Meloni's far-right-led government. Both the political opposition and judicial magistrates voiced alarm the tough law-and-order stance signalled the government's possible intolerance of disobedience.

Critics noted that no action was taken against the weekend march by several thousand Mussolini admirers wearing Fascist symbols and singing colonial-era hymns in Predappio, the late dictator's birth and burial place, while the government in Rome took extraordinary action to break up a rave party in the northern city of Modena.

Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that he deplored