Slain Protester Interred as Parents Call for Unity

His coffin draped in the red-and-gold banner of his beloved soccer team, the young protester shot by police during last week’s riots at the Group of Eight summit was laid to rest Wednesday by thousands of mourners.

Carlo Giuliani, 23, was the first person killed in an anti-globalization protest since the movement began two years ago and the first to die in an Italian protest in 25 years.

“In his short life, Carlo has given us many things,” his father, Giuliano Giuliani, said in a shaking voice. “Let’s try, in Carlo’s name, to be united, to refuse violence.”

At the family’s request, there were no banners and virtually no flowers at the hour-long secular ceremony at the Staglieno cemetery on the outskirts of Genoa.

A few people attending wore T-shirts reading: “The killer’s car: CC AE 217,” the license plate of the police vehicle that ran over Giuliani’s body after a policeman shot him Friday.

As the coffin was carried by friends, applause erupted.

Friends and relatives described Giuliani, who was born in Rome, as a generous, good-hearted man with a rebel spirit, tormented by the injustice he saw in the world.