SCN: Coalition Protests Needed Re:Fwd:an appeal from the activists fighting in Genoa] (fwd)
Sharma
sharma at aa.net
Sun Jul 22 19:20:35 PDT 2001
I realize that scn may not be a completely appropriate list to forward
this information to, I would not do so now if there were not an apparently
nationwide media blackout on what happened slightly after midnight Italian
time in Genoa. I have searched CNN and other media sources on TV and the
web, and there is close to nothing available. Earlier today G8 leaders
apparently said they feel "traumatized" by the 100,000+ demonstrators
protesting their meeting. However I imagine it must be somewhat less
traumatizing to be behind the lines of the army of police protecting them
than on the other side.
The mainstream media consistently ignores and minimizes and confuses what
these protests are about. They pretend to be baffled and annoyed by the
now several hundred different groups of people protesting not "globalism",
but the "profits above people and the environment" agenda of government
leaders bought and paid for by multi-national corporations.
I apologize if you find this forward annoying. I remain committed to
freedom of information and individual rights. This is how I feel I must
further those goals.
Cheers,
-sharma
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 17:49:59 -0700
From: "getmelissa at uswest.net" <getmelissa at uswest.net>
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
Subject: Coalition Protests Needed Re:Fwd:an appeal from the activists fighting in Genoa]
I should add that approximately 400 people are now missing and I fear
the worst for them. (from http//www.indymedia.org)
-melissa
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [seagreens-talk] [Fwd:an appeal from the activists fighting
in Genoa
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 13:54:38 -0700
From: "Colleen Roman" <colleenr at speakeasy.net>
San Francisco is the nearest consulate, which according to their website
covers WA as well as most of the western US. I'll post the Embassy and
Consulate contact information below. I wanted to ask about the
possibility of the Greens (locally, nationally, internationally) making
an official statement, given the serious nature of what's happened (a
lot of details below, and in other posts from the IMC). This was an
assualt on the press and the non-violent training center. There was
blood everywhere, reports of at least one British journalist beaten
(possibly why the BBC is seriously reporting on this while US media is
not), videos people had taken of police confiscated, the lawyers office
ransacked and computers destroyed. . .
I'm thinking as well as the Greens, what about the coalition of groups
such as labor and environmental involved in the globalization protests
here and around the country and world? What about some joint protests,
with representatives in the cities with consulates and the Embassy in DC
taking the concerns of the rest of us with them to the Italian
representatives here (with similar actions internationally)?
Contact info:
Embassy of Italy
3000 Whitehaven Street, NW
Washington, D.C.
Tel: (202) 612-4400
Fax: (202) 518-2154
http://www.italyemb.org
Italian Consulate General
2590 Webster St.
San Francisco, CA 94115
Tel (415) 292-9210/931-4924 main numbers
Fax (415) 931-7205
e-mail: receptionist at italcons-sf.org
http://www.italcons-sf.org
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [seagreens-talk] [toeslist] an appeal from the activists
fighting
in Genoa as
we speak
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 14:24:02 -0400
From: "Doug Hunt" <dhunt at neerucc.net>
Genoa, early morning 22nd July 2001
GSF media centre
phone: 0039-010-3627149
Please Distribute Widely - an appeal from the activists fighting in
Genoa as we speak
We write from the building of GSF and Indymedia in Genoa after
witnessing the worst human rights violations in the short history of
the young movement against capitalist globalisation. Two people were
killed by the police on the 20th, one in Genoa and one at the border,
and someone else might have been killed in the most outrageous display
of fascist state brutality that all of us have seen in our lives, just
a few hours ago in front of this building.
This night the police broke into the school Diaz (across the road), one
of the accommodation places of GSF were people were sleeping at that
moment, and beat up everyone to the extent that most of the people
could not walk out and had to be carried in stretchers out of the
school. We don't know how many people were badly injured because we
lost count of the amount of stretchers carried out of the school, but
they brought about 30 ambulances for the injured people. The police
also brought at least one body bag outside, maybe two, but we don't
know yet whether there was a corpse inside either or both of them.
Everybody was either arrested or taken to hospital. According to the
testimony of one person who could escape before being arrested, people
were lying on the floor saying 'no violence' when the police broke into
the first floor where he was, and they battered people so badly that
one of the officers had to intervene to stop the massacre. In one of
the pictures taken by Indymedia (http://italy.indymedia.org) you can
see a plank of wood with nails covered with blood lying next to a
corner with big patches of blood on the walls.
The police also broke violently into the GSF and Indymedia building at
the same time, but here they only destroyed and stole materials. They
did not attack anyone (although in part of the building it was
difficult to breathe due to the tear gas). Italian parliamentarians
were also struck by policemen while they were trying to enter the
school Diaz while the police was beginning to remove the injured.
On the 20th and the 21st the police terrorism in the streets was
unprecedented in recent Western European history. On the 20th they
murdered a young protestor from Genova, who was shot once in the
forehead and once in the cheek, and drove backwards over his corpse. A
young french woman was killed in the Ventemiglia border on the same
day, while the police was preventing her and other people from entering
the country. Police attacked and teargassed all the different groups
that took part in the action. For instance, they threw tear gas from
helicopters into the assembly point of the pacifist march, charged
against the tutte bianche and the Network for Global Rights before they
even started their actions, and injured a still unknown number of
people. They deliberately mixed the different sorts of political
expression, trying to create conflicts (for instance by pushing part of
the black block into the pacifist assembly point). On the 21st they
massively attacked part of the demonstration for absolutely no reason,
teargassing the whole area (including the parking lot that served as
the GSF convergence centre and a nearby beach) and some people were
forced to jump into the sea just to escape from them - only to find
police boats facing them in the water. Both on the 20th and the 21st
there were riots all day, all over the city, which were clearly
provoked by the police. The forms of provocation were diverse: the
television showed images of a group of people dressed in black going
out of a police van and breaking windows, and the black block was
visibly infiltrated throughout these days. We respectfully ask our
friends from the black block to reflect on the meaning of this fact, not
just for them but for everybody else. This request is not meant to
imply that they should not be present in large collective actions, but
merely that we encourage them to rethink their role and choices in
them. One possible way would be to play a role focused on solidarity
and defense of other groups, similar to the one so successfully carried
out by the black block in A16.
People who are taken to the hospitals are arrested immediately after
receiving first aid, unless they are in an extremely bad condition. One
person, a member of a nonviolent group, who was horribly beaten up
while sitting on the floor with his hands up, went through that
experience. In the police station he was repeatedly tortured like
everyone else there. The police was hitting the already wounded areas
of his body and battering him for no reason. Another person who was
arrested and released says that they were beating everybody and forcing
them to scream 'viva il duce', which means long live Mussolini.
The police terrorism started well before the actions. The last weeks
were characterised by police searches all over Italy, followed by what
everybody here considers to be a reproduction of the strategy of
tension used by the Italian state in the 70s to crash social movements.
Letter bombs were sent (by whom?) to policemen, the police exploded a
car in the centre of Genova because it was parked in the same place for
several days, and they alleged in the media that bombs had been planted
in several places (including one of the accommodation spaces of the
GSF) - all of these in order to create an atmosphere of paranoia, fears
about demonstrators and social terror. They also arrested several
people before the actions, including a particularly brutal case of a
young woman who was kept in isolation for four days for having a van
(which they claimed would be used to break into the red zone) where she
kept a hatchet for camping purposes. The people who were arrested with
her report that they were also tortured physically and psychologically,
including forced exposure to a succession of three posters: a
pornographic one, followed by one of Mussolini and then one of the Nazi
Army in action.
We know that many solidarity and denounciation actions have already
taken place all over the world and that many more are being planned
(see http://italy.indymedia.org). We encourage all the groups that have
not planned actions yet to do so, and to prepare for sustained actions
to continue until those responsible for these outrageous human rights
abuses pay the full price for their actions. We suggest to these groups
that their minimum demand would be the resignation of the Berlusconi
government. There is a list of Italian embassies at
http://www.ethoseurope.org/ethos/embassies.nsf/ (go down to the link
Embassies of Italy).
We think that we need to turn this situation into a serious
international problem for the Berlusconi and the other G8 governements,
not just due to a basic sense of justice but also because we feel that
the survival of the movement and of many of us might depend on it. This
brutality shows the actual panic with which the rich and powerful are
reacting to the clear fact that the world is beginning to listen to us.
Seeing that they can no longer write us off as a marginal, temporary
phenomenon, they are now removing all masks of ostensible democracy and
showing their real face - one of oppression, violence and terrorism.
Por todos nuestros muertos, ni un minuto de silencio. Toda una vida de
lucha.
To honor our dead, not a minute of silence. A whole life of struggle.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * From the Listowner * * * * * * * * * * * *
. To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to:
majordomo at scn.org In the body of the message, type:
unsubscribe local-computer-activists
END
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * From the Listowner * * * * * * * * * * * *
. To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to:
majordomo at scn.org In the body of the message, type:
unsubscribe scn
==== Messages posted on this list are also available on the web at: ====
* * * * * * * http://www.scn.org/volunteers/scn-l/ * * * * * * *
More information about the scn
mailing list