TORONTO – The reception with Prime Ministers Giorgia Meloni and Justin Trudeau ‘s, scheduled for this evening, has been cancelled.

The meeting between the Italian and the Canadian PMs with guests from the two communities was supposed to take place in the evening in the Art Gallery of Ontario, on Dundas Street West in Toronto, but the museum was manned outside, since late afternoon, from some hundreds pro-Palestine demonstrators who shouted for almost three hours slogans against “the genocide in Gaza in which Trudeau and Meloni are also complicit”, as the participants in the demonstration said.

The guests of the reception who arrived one by one at the Ago were harshly contested: among these, in particular, the federal minister of International Development, Ahmed Hussen, who had to be escorted by the police who accompanied him away from the Ago while the demonstrators followed him by shouting “traitor” (Hussen is Muslim and originally from Somalia), “accomplice to a genocide” and “fascist”.

Around 6.30pm, the Ago “lockdown” was ordered, with protesters besieging every entrance and guests blocked inside. At 8pm, the forfeit of the two Prime Ministers was announced. No reception, therefore, and everyone at home.

In the pic above, protesters against Minister Ahmed Hussen (photo by Marzio Pelù)