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GENOA SPECIAL In Italy that other world became closer 1 In Italy that other world became closer 3 Meanwhile in the rest of the world Reaction after witnessing the attack on the Diaz school A broad statement from People Not Profit |
In Italy that other world became closer - Page 2 Someone said the massive rain pour that started that night and continued for hours, water logging everybody, except us in the stadium was a sign of what was about to come, I believe things are more complex than that, but I was too tired to care at that point anyway. The next day the pink group left in high spirits, playing drums, saxophones and blowing whistles. People had brought anything they could get their hands on to use as a musical instrument: cans, a two foot empty oil container, biscuit tins…I asked around shops for things to use as drums but found nothing. Everyone was singing and in high spirits. Within twenty minutes of setting off, some 2000 black block arrived, we witnessed the first attack on a bank, and the rest you’ve probably read about or can read about more accurately in www.indymedia.org. With the chaos that followed, our group became separated; two of us got split off, and ended up wandering the whole day around the city trying to find everyone else. Later we walked through areas were symbols of wealth had been attacked such as banks and expensive boutiques. We saw a supermarket (one of a chain) looted, with local people coming out with carrier bags full of shopping, and we also saw the occasional ordinary car burnt out (we don’t know why this was, because we believed the tactics of the black block were to attack symbols of wealth) – but mostly we came across people who had been beaten, truncheon, tear gassed, water cannoned. I met a young women who I recognised from the media centre, a journalist, clutching her camera, her face was covered in blood – she had been cornered by seven policemen who punched and kicked her, then proceeded to batter her with their batons. I met an indymedia women from London who I’d met earlier in the week, who’d then been full of excitement for the coming demos, she’d been high on the solidarity and debate. This time she was in shock and was completely speechless, as she knew that if she spoke about what she had seen, she would start crying. At this point in our efforts to re-find the pink group we ended up looking down over the top of the railway lines. On the road leading down from our stadium towards Brignole Station, the air was full with tear gas. This was were the civil disobedience people were coming from – mainly Ya Basta. There were something in the region of 15,000 people who had a direct plan to use non-violent methods to attack the red zone, (the enclosed part of the city were the G8 were meeting), and tear down the 18ft fencing. They had covered themselves in cardboard armour, wore crash helmets and carried makeshift shields which would serve to protect them against police weapons – they believed they could break through the police lines, non-violently, by sheer numbers and then force their way into the red zone. However, there was very little defence against tear gas, and the armoury that was being deployed by the police. It was around this area that Carlo was shot dead. From where I was there looked to be thousands of people trying to get past police lines, I watched it for about an hour. Eventually the crowds were forced to run when police deployed armoured trucks to drive directly at them – everybody ran, thousands running away from the police, others jumping over the walls onto the railway lines (a huge drop) – the police did not seem to care if they hit anyone with their trucks. It looked like something you imagined only took place in the 3rd World or how I imagined a war or a revolution to look like. When I eventually caught up with the rest of our group I heard that even the ‘Pink Group’ the tactical frivolity group had been water-cannoned, tear-gassed and beaten. Everybody had a tale to tell of police violence. Many of the people who had attended the pink section, did not in the least expect to be attacked by the police, but they did. Many protesters carry the myth that the police will only respond violently when they are under threat. The police unleashed violence on anybody. The police, as I mentioned earlier, were out to teach us all a lesson – to tell us to go home, to sit in front of the TV and watch soap operas, to forget about what these important people are doing to the world – they tell us we don’t have it as bad as those in the 3rd World, so stop complaining. Life in 3rd world countries is cheaper, governments and corporations can directly pay death squads to kill dissenters, but here we kick up more fuss when one of us dies, but if we are a threat to their global plans, the message is clear – if you meddle in our affairs, you will pay the cost, we don’t care where you come from. To us that message was clear. Carlo Giuliani was the ultimate message. Saturday evening at the convergence centre after the huge demo of 300,000, in which the police attacked people indiscriminately, many of the people I’d spent time with earlier on in the week, the people I had got to know in such a short time seemed changed people, many of them looked disturbed, bothered, distant. They looked like something in them had gone. Many of the younger people who were coming to the movement for the first time and had expressed so much joy, warmth, trust and youthful frivolity – they seem to have lost something of themselves too. Maybe it was that everyone was just drained, warn out – but I wondered whether it was more than that. Hopefully that excitement, hope will come back to them in a more dynamic way. We sat round for a few hours, eating food and drinking beer. I felt physically and mentally exhausted, I knew I would be OK once I rested. It was hard to put everything together, the information we were receiving was often confused. We didn’t know how many people had been injured, arrested, hospitalised or even killed. When we had rested a little we wandered up to the media centre – to try and find out clear information. The streets outside the conversation centre were covered with glass and CS gas canisters; every bank we passed had been burned out completely. In the distance we saw burnt cars that had obviously been used to set up barricades. We met a women from Manchester, who had gone on the peace section of the March, she had been beaten by the police, and had five stitches in her head. Everything seemed so unreal as if I wasn’t really there. In all the major protests of this new international movement, from Seattle to Gothenburg the police had carried out atrocities in an attempt to break people, the violence seemed to be intensifying with each demo. At the Europol (European police force) and other meetings, they had discussed how to break the movement, what tactics to use (their main focus was Greece, Spain and Italy were the movement is the strongest) - but it is clear to me – it is not working. The more violence they use, the more they reveal their true role, the more the thin veil of democracy slips, and the more people realise it – thus increasing the influx of new people to the movement. In Gothenburg, before any protest had taken place, the police had surrounded the school were the international contingent were sleeping; and they beat and tear gassed nearly everyone, forcing them out, to sleep on the streets. One young Swedish lad I met in Genoa, told me how the police had thrown him down the stairs, beaten him as he fell, then handcuffed his hands behind his back, lay him on the cold stone floor, and pulled his trousers down, every time he moved they hit him with truncheons. Later people responded to the extreme violence of the police and some people had been shot, one guy almost fatally. This time they wanted to finally stop us, the police must have been getting orders from somewhere, orders that were saying something like ‘this movement is growing massively, we must stop it’. One person, Carlos Giuliani a 23 year old man from Genoa had been shot dead, while another person, a young women from France was killed on the border trying to enter Italy. We don’t know how many people were shot in Genoa, or even how many more people have been killed, there are still many people missing, I know a couple of people who told me they had seen a young girl collapse after she was hit in the head by a CS Gas canister. Someone else told me of an elderly man, who died of a heart attack while he was being beaten. One of those, reported missing after the demo, an Italian women, has re-appeared, dead in the Padua river, strangled so severally that all the bones in her neck were broken. We know many injured people did not go to the hospital when they were shot or injured, for the simple fact that the police were arresting people at the hospital, so people went elsewhere to received treatment. So the 500 or so people hospitalised falls well short of the real figure. People Not Profit witnessed police vans driving indiscriminately at protesters, people being indiscriminately tear-gassed and beaten. I was chased along with thousands of others by a tank, I helped an old man across a railway wall, and the both of us, while trying to escape were water cannoned and tear-gassed. One person from our group was held hostage in the media centre by the police, while over one hundred riot cops armed to the teeth, barricaded the street then raided the school across the road; she heard the banging, crashing and the screams for over an hour, she saw over 20 stretchers and a few body bags coming out of the Diaz school, yet no-one was reported dead. Other people saw the blood splattered all over the floorboards, radiators and the walls. Unless you have experienced police brutality, you may find all of this all hard to believe. |