Italian Petition Calls for Women-Only Train Cars After Rape Incident

interior of railway passenger car of the second class in the regional train in Lombardy in
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Chris Tomlinson

A petition, which gained hundreds of signatures in a matter of hours, has demanded that Italian railway companies offer women-only cars following a report a woman was brutally raped aboard a train last Friday.

The petition was launched by Greta Carla Achini on the website change.org following the rape attack, which saw two men, a North African migrant and a man with Italian citizenship, sexually abuse two women, raping one and attempting to rape the other aboard a train from Milan to Varese.

The incident also led populist Senator and League (Lega) leader Matteo Salvini to comment: “Two girls raped, two foreigners wanted. But for the left, the ‘bad guy’ is me because I have fought (and always will fight) mass immigration.”

According to a report released by the Italian statistics agency ISTAT last year, as many as half of the violent sex attacks in Italy are committed by foreigners, with those from outside the European Union making up a significant proportion of attackers.

The new petition, which has amassed over 8,000 signatures as of the time of publication, demands separate spaces to keep women safe aboard trains, stating: “We have the right to use public transport at any time of the day without fear. In other countries, on the means of transport, even local, there are carriages dedicated only to female travellers.”

“With this petition, we ask Trenord to dedicate, on all its lines, the head carriage to women. In this way, at any time, you can travel safely,” the petition adds.

Several signatories to the petition have also written about their experiences on the Italian railways, with one user writing “I’m signing because I don’t want to be afraid to take the train anymore,” and another insisting “It is no longer possible to continue to be afraid, we must feel confident that we can travel alone whenever we want.”

Ultimately the decision to go ahead with a woman-only carriage will be up to Italian railway company Trenord, according to the newspaper Il Giornale.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com

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