“Chi si oppone al G8 non combatte otto protagonisti eletti democraticamente nei loro paesi, ma combatte l’occidente, combatte la sua filosofia, combatte la libera iniziativa e il libero mercato” (Sivio Berlusconi, La Stampa 2001)

In 2001 Genoa witnessed 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 many others have been beat up in the most outrageous display of fascist state brutality in recent Western European history.

In one sense, a death in Genoa during the G8 in 2001 was predictable, practically predicted by Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian Prime Minister, who boasted of the military hardware to be deployed against protesters. In an environment of militarized repression, armed paramilitary squads, and good evidence of government-backed provocateurs inciting violence, death was nearly inevitable.

On July 20th police 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. 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. We respectfully ask our friends from the black block to reflect about 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 that we think that they should rethink their role and choices in them.

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. Other people who was arrested and released says that they were beating everybody and forcing them to scream ‘viva il duce’, which means long live Mussolini. Many persons were arrested and also tortured physically and psychologically.

A few weeks later “terrorists” attacked thw WTC, and the world changed… but today it is clear that the questions raised by the military and police involvement in the fight against «terrorism» became more acute before September 11th.

Genoa G8 Reports | OneMore Blog | Carlo Giuliani