Vincenzo Di Meglio
Vincenzo Di Meglio was an italian doctor, who worked in the Africa Orientale Italiana in the late thirties and during World War II, and an Italian Eritrean politician who saved Eritrea from being divided in 1947 between Sudan and Ethiopia.
Life
Di Meglio was born in the island of Ischia (near Naples, Italy) in April 1903. Since young he participated in politics and was mayor of his hometown in the twenties. He graduated as Doctor and in 1935 moved to the Italian colonies in East Africa, where he professed as a family doctor, initially helping the most poor Africans.
In 1939 was requested by the governor of Eritrea, Giuseppe Daodiace, to work in Asmara in the Hospital "Regina Elena" as Vice-Director of Gynecology.
During World War II Di Meglio defended politically the Italians of Eritrea and successively promoted the independence of Eritrea.
After the war he was named Director of the "Commitato Rappresentativo Italiani dell' Eritrea" (CRIE). In 1947 supported the creation of the "Associazione Italo-Eritrei" and the "Associazione Veterani Ascari", in order to get alliance with the Eritreans favorable to Italy in Eritrea .
As a result of these creations, he cofounded the "Partito Eritrea Pro Italia" in September 1947, an Eritrean political Party favorable to the Italian presence in Eritrea that obtained more than 200,000 inscriptions of membership in one single month.
In 1951 Dr. Di Meglio moved to Saudi Arabia as a consequence of problems with the British authorities, when was forced to close the main Italian political organization of Eritrea called CRIE.
After a brief return to Eritrea as Director of Gynecology of an Hospital, in 1961 Di Meglio returned to Italy where died in March 1987 .
Political accomplishments
Vincenzo Di Meglio was appointed Director of the C.R.I.E (Comitato Rappresentativo degli Italiani dell’Eritrea), the main organization of the Italians in Eritrea during the British rule after 1941.
He was friend of eritrean politicians, like Woldeab Woldemariam and Abdel Kader Kebir, who promoted the independence of Eritrea during the British occupation. As a consequence he suffered some murderous attacks from the so called Scifta terrorists, but survived without harm.
Dr. Di Meglio was one of the main authorities in Eritrea who opposed the British tentative to divide Eritrea between Sudan and Ethiopia after 1945. He obtained in 1947 the dismissal of this project by the United Nations (wanted mainly by the British to enlarge their Sudan with most of northern Eritrea) with his continuous pressure on the Latinoamerican representatives (like those of Haiti) at the ONU: by only one vote -exactly the one of Haiti- Eritrea was not divided between Sudan and Ethiopia.
But later was unsuccessful -as a representative even of independist eritrean organizations- when he went to New York to talk in the United Nations against the annexation of Eritrea to Ethiopia as a federated province in 1950. In the ONU Vincenzo Di Meglio promoted (even in agreement with the Italian government) the "Fiduciary Administration" by Italy until 1960 of an independent Eritrea, to be done in a similar way to that of Italian Somalia 1.
In 1951 Dr. Di Meglio created the Casa degli Italiani ("House of the italians)" in Asmara as the center for the remaining members of the Italian Eritreans. In recent years the "Casa" has been proposed to be named with his name.
Bibliography
- Bandini, Franco. Gli italiani in Africa, storia delle guerre coloniali 1882-1943. Longanesi. Milano, 1971.
- Bereketeab, R. Eritrea: The making of a Nation. Uppsala University. Uppsala, 2000.
- Di Meglio, Rita. Gli Italiani in Eritrea. Italian Embassy in Eritrea. Asmara, 2004.
See also
- Italian Eritreans
- Asmara