Guardian on Genoa - "The fuse that fizzled"
repost | 20.07.2002 13:40
The fuse that fizzled
One year on from Genoa, Italy's anti-globalisation movement is still no match for Berlusconi
Rory Carroll
Guardian
Saturday July 20, 2002
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4465400,00.html
Through the mist of tear gas and burning cars the story of Genoa seemed as shocking as it was momentous. Police officers tasked with guarding a G8 summit lashed out at protestors in a weekend-long frenzy of screams, cracked heads and snapped bones. More than savage, it was stupid. Many of the victims were foreigners, Germans, Britons, Americans, Spaniards, with good jobs and connections back home. And the world's media was there, cameras rolling, to record for posterity, not to mention the courts, what the Italian police did to the anti- globalisation movement.
Blocked by iron gates and water cannon from the Ducal palace where George Bush and Tony Blair were meeting fellow heads of government, there were more than 200,000 protestors who in years to come could boast they were at a historic clash. After Paris '68, Genoa '01. Some have returned and will be in the port city today to mark the anniversary of the summit with another demonstration which will demand, among other things, the arrest of Italy's deputy prime minister, Gianfranco Fini, for allegedly stoking police brutality. Demonstrators - along with the host of books and documentary films chronicling the events of last July - are determined that Genoa is not forgotten.
Beyond the anti-globalisation community, memories of events in Genoa were blotted out by what happened in New York 53 days later. Brutal as it was, the shooting dead of one rioter and beatings meted to more than 300 protestors lost shock value in the shadow of Ground Zero and the war in Afghanistan.
Genoa should remain shocking - and in the news - because the story is not over. It continues to evolve in a direction which says a lot about Silvio Berlusconi's Italy and the state of the country's anti-globalisation movement.
Let us rewind to one of that weekend's most egregious incidents, the early morning raid on the Diaz school used as a headquarters by the protestors. For the previous two days the Black Bloc anarchists had smashed up the city and attacked the police, who responded by lashing out, sometimes in panic, at peaceful demonstrators. The raid was different. Involving several units, hundreds of men and senior officers, it was approved by the interior minister. It was an operation to arrest Black Bloc members and seize weapons, police spokesmen said afterwards.
The blood-splattered walls told their own story of the ferocity which left 62 of the 93 people arrested needing hospital treatment. Most had been asleep when the police broke down the doors. From his hospital bed Mark Covell told me, with difficulty given his punctured lung, five broken ribs and absence of teeth, of being used as a football. "I thought, my God, this is it, I'm going to die. The last thing I heard was a lot of screaming. Then I lost consciousness."
At a press conference the police said an officer had been stabbed during the raid and paraded their seizures: an assortment of hammers, knives, pick-axes, balaclavas and two Molotov cocktails - enough, said magistrates, to charge all 93 people with conspiracy to bomb. Instead they were all released as it became clear they were not Black Bloc.
Some European governments complained of police brutality and the Italian government said wrongdoers would be punished. Then the Twin Towers fell, and Genoa vanished from headlines.
Since then, there have been three developments: new evidence has emerged showing the brutality was worse than initially thought; prosecutors have said they think the police planted the Molotov cocktails and faked the stabbing; and the government has protected the police. A raft of investigations by Italian magistrates and human rights groups such as Amnesty International, aided by police officers breaking the omerta , or code of silence, have built up a picture of systematic abuse in two holding centres. Police officers, prison guards, nurses and doctors have been accused of beating and humiliating detainees. Stories have emerged of body piercings being removed with pliers, people being stripped and insulted, threatened with rape, denied food and water, or forced to sing fascist songs. A disabled man was bludgeoned for being unable to keep his legs spread.
Prosecutors allege police tried to frame the Diaz occupants by planting Molotov cocktails found by a mobile patrol seven hours earlier in the city centre. Pasquale Guaglione, a deputy police chief, identified the wine bottles shown at the post-raid press conference as the ones he found. An officer who said he was stabbed during the raid is under investigation for lying about the gash in his body armour. Dozens of police are expected to face trial. Quite an indictment of what Silvio Berlusconi hoped would be his glittering debut on the world stage, especially given that the G8 meeting achieved nothing of substance, though Italy's prime minister strived to make it pretty: extra lemons added to trees, a plea to locals not to hang underwear out to dry, drapes of renaissance facades to hide ugly buildings.
An empty show? Not at all. History was made, said Mr Berlusconi, because it was at Genoa that he persuaded George Bush and Vladimir Putin to bring Russia into Nato. Mr Berlusconi's majority in parliament agreed the summit was a total success, and absolved the security forces. Overall no "illegality had emerged...just occasional individual excesses", said a parliamentary commission. The police "gave their best, paying a high price in terms of risking injury". Three senior Italian police commanders were transferred to other posts but so far nobody has been fired or convicted. If there are guilty officers they will face justice, said the government, but Gianfranco Fini, the deputy prime minister and ex-fascist whose presence at a police station during the riots allegedly signalled political cover for excesses, has not wavered in defending the security forces.
Genoa is a rallying cry for the anti-globalisation movement, each revelation feeding its indignation, and publishers and art house cinemas sense a market for its tales, but in terms of igniting something bigger the fuse has fizzled. The thousands expected at Piazza Alimonda today to remember the dead protestor, Carlo Giuliani, will be looking back, not forward.
To talk to its intellectuals is to realise the movement in Italy, once Europe's most vibrant, is alive but wrongfooted in an era with evils greater than McDonald's. Its leaders, feted as a rising national political force, have floundered. Luca Casarini, head of the Tute Bianche (White Overalls) protest group, got a derisory vote in local elections two months ago. So did Carlo Giuliani's father, Giuliano, when he stood in Genoa. Vittorio Agnoletto, head of the Genoa Social Forum, has vanished from public view.
At a poorly attended gathering in Rome last month I was about to interview Jose Bove when he realised his wallet had been pinched. He frantically grabbed his mobile phone to cancel credit cards. For a movement of symbols, here was an epitome of loss.
Nostalgia has suffused the build-up to today's anniversary. Genoa provides a fixed point for a movement groping for a way ahead. Who would have thought that that weekend of mayhem and tragedy would become - in Italy at least - a comfort memory, a time when the swelling influence of Italy's activists seemed a giddy, glorious inevitability?
Rory Carroll is the Guardian's Rome correspondent
rorycarroll@guardian.co.uk
One year on from Genoa, Italy's anti-globalisation movement is still no match for Berlusconi
Rory Carroll
Guardian
Saturday July 20, 2002
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4465400,00.html Through the mist of tear gas and burning cars the story of Genoa seemed as shocking as it was momentous. Police officers tasked with guarding a G8 summit lashed out at protestors in a weekend-long frenzy of screams, cracked heads and snapped bones. More than savage, it was stupid. Many of the victims were foreigners, Germans, Britons, Americans, Spaniards, with good jobs and connections back home. And the world's media was there, cameras rolling, to record for posterity, not to mention the courts, what the Italian police did to the anti- globalisation movement.
Blocked by iron gates and water cannon from the Ducal palace where George Bush and Tony Blair were meeting fellow heads of government, there were more than 200,000 protestors who in years to come could boast they were at a historic clash. After Paris '68, Genoa '01. Some have returned and will be in the port city today to mark the anniversary of the summit with another demonstration which will demand, among other things, the arrest of Italy's deputy prime minister, Gianfranco Fini, for allegedly stoking police brutality. Demonstrators - along with the host of books and documentary films chronicling the events of last July - are determined that Genoa is not forgotten.
Beyond the anti-globalisation community, memories of events in Genoa were blotted out by what happened in New York 53 days later. Brutal as it was, the shooting dead of one rioter and beatings meted to more than 300 protestors lost shock value in the shadow of Ground Zero and the war in Afghanistan.
Genoa should remain shocking - and in the news - because the story is not over. It continues to evolve in a direction which says a lot about Silvio Berlusconi's Italy and the state of the country's anti-globalisation movement.
Let us rewind to one of that weekend's most egregious incidents, the early morning raid on the Diaz school used as a headquarters by the protestors. For the previous two days the Black Bloc anarchists had smashed up the city and attacked the police, who responded by lashing out, sometimes in panic, at peaceful demonstrators. The raid was different. Involving several units, hundreds of men and senior officers, it was approved by the interior minister. It was an operation to arrest Black Bloc members and seize weapons, police spokesmen said afterwards.
The blood-splattered walls told their own story of the ferocity which left 62 of the 93 people arrested needing hospital treatment. Most had been asleep when the police broke down the doors. From his hospital bed Mark Covell told me, with difficulty given his punctured lung, five broken ribs and absence of teeth, of being used as a football. "I thought, my God, this is it, I'm going to die. The last thing I heard was a lot of screaming. Then I lost consciousness."
At a press conference the police said an officer had been stabbed during the raid and paraded their seizures: an assortment of hammers, knives, pick-axes, balaclavas and two Molotov cocktails - enough, said magistrates, to charge all 93 people with conspiracy to bomb. Instead they were all released as it became clear they were not Black Bloc.
Some European governments complained of police brutality and the Italian government said wrongdoers would be punished. Then the Twin Towers fell, and Genoa vanished from headlines.
Since then, there have been three developments: new evidence has emerged showing the brutality was worse than initially thought; prosecutors have said they think the police planted the Molotov cocktails and faked the stabbing; and the government has protected the police. A raft of investigations by Italian magistrates and human rights groups such as Amnesty International, aided by police officers breaking the omerta , or code of silence, have built up a picture of systematic abuse in two holding centres. Police officers, prison guards, nurses and doctors have been accused of beating and humiliating detainees. Stories have emerged of body piercings being removed with pliers, people being stripped and insulted, threatened with rape, denied food and water, or forced to sing fascist songs. A disabled man was bludgeoned for being unable to keep his legs spread.
Prosecutors allege police tried to frame the Diaz occupants by planting Molotov cocktails found by a mobile patrol seven hours earlier in the city centre. Pasquale Guaglione, a deputy police chief, identified the wine bottles shown at the post-raid press conference as the ones he found. An officer who said he was stabbed during the raid is under investigation for lying about the gash in his body armour. Dozens of police are expected to face trial. Quite an indictment of what Silvio Berlusconi hoped would be his glittering debut on the world stage, especially given that the G8 meeting achieved nothing of substance, though Italy's prime minister strived to make it pretty: extra lemons added to trees, a plea to locals not to hang underwear out to dry, drapes of renaissance facades to hide ugly buildings.
An empty show? Not at all. History was made, said Mr Berlusconi, because it was at Genoa that he persuaded George Bush and Vladimir Putin to bring Russia into Nato. Mr Berlusconi's majority in parliament agreed the summit was a total success, and absolved the security forces. Overall no "illegality had emerged...just occasional individual excesses", said a parliamentary commission. The police "gave their best, paying a high price in terms of risking injury". Three senior Italian police commanders were transferred to other posts but so far nobody has been fired or convicted. If there are guilty officers they will face justice, said the government, but Gianfranco Fini, the deputy prime minister and ex-fascist whose presence at a police station during the riots allegedly signalled political cover for excesses, has not wavered in defending the security forces.
Genoa is a rallying cry for the anti-globalisation movement, each revelation feeding its indignation, and publishers and art house cinemas sense a market for its tales, but in terms of igniting something bigger the fuse has fizzled. The thousands expected at Piazza Alimonda today to remember the dead protestor, Carlo Giuliani, will be looking back, not forward.
To talk to its intellectuals is to realise the movement in Italy, once Europe's most vibrant, is alive but wrongfooted in an era with evils greater than McDonald's. Its leaders, feted as a rising national political force, have floundered. Luca Casarini, head of the Tute Bianche (White Overalls) protest group, got a derisory vote in local elections two months ago. So did Carlo Giuliani's father, Giuliano, when he stood in Genoa. Vittorio Agnoletto, head of the Genoa Social Forum, has vanished from public view.
At a poorly attended gathering in Rome last month I was about to interview Jose Bove when he realised his wallet had been pinched. He frantically grabbed his mobile phone to cancel credit cards. For a movement of symbols, here was an epitome of loss.
Nostalgia has suffused the build-up to today's anniversary. Genoa provides a fixed point for a movement groping for a way ahead. Who would have thought that that weekend of mayhem and tragedy would become - in Italy at least - a comfort memory, a time when the swelling influence of Italy's activists seemed a giddy, glorious inevitability?
Rory Carroll is the Guardian's Rome correspondent
rorycarroll@guardian.co.uk
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Comments
Hide the following 6 comments
why cant we get that many for Mayday!
20.07.2002 13:57
Only getting 3 or 4 thousand people out on the streets for anti-capitalist demonstrations like J18 and Mayday is a disgrace!
steelgate
fair enough, but what about blairs comments
20.07.2002 14:13
he mentions the international complaints, he doesn't mention that Phoney blairs comment, straight after the summit just as the full horrors of the Diaz school attack were filtering out, Blair is busy praising the Italian cops stating that they had done a wonderfull job, as far as i know he never retracted this statement , he should be made to apologize.
The germans and french governments made strong protests to the italian authoritities two or three days after genova.
The british government tried to pretend nothing had out of order had happened, a week or two later straw made some half cocked protest, after the shit had hit ..
for me it put blair firmly on par with Thatcher !!!
oooooooh
hmm
20.07.2002 18:15
Still in spain they managed to get over a quarter of a million people out on the streets, and because there wasn't a huge riot the press almost ignored it, and then goes on to say that the 'movement' is dead.
Before Genoa I remember many people saying that it should be the last really big summit mobilisation, as there are better ways to expend our collective energy etc
Is it true that the next G8 is in Paris next year? If true that could really show them!
Oh and as to looking backwards to genoa, well yes, fair play I say.
PS the press did play a part in the aftermath, but they had to back peddle pretty quickly as Indymedia and others got the full shocking story out.
remember genoa!
Unity?
20.07.2002 18:38
dog
The Major focus is Capitalism
20.07.2002 21:29
bosses turnout for a rubber stamping conference or summit. After Genoa there were over 400,000 people
demonstrating against the actions of the police at the
G8 summit. After that there was talk [and action] to support more grassroots radical base unionism like
COBAS and CUB who now have a membership of over
400,000 workers. This from a Base Union who agreed
that there aim at Genoa was to breach the Red Zone
and also were helmets and carry baseball bats to do it.
It's true Berlusconi hasn't gone or Blair or Bush but that
again is the Media and the reactionary "new-left" trying to create goals, aims and institutionalised structure for
this uncontrollable movement. Indeed the fact that the ruling class has to appoint these neo-fascists as there
representatives means that they are already in crisis.
Also it seems to be quite a common thing amongst the anti-capitalist/anarchist "scene" to think that all we need to do in this country is wait for an EU meeting or another G8 summit or even move Mayday to Saturday[!]
to get more people out, no doubt this might affect numbers but we are then only WAITING for THEM to set the agenda. The focus we have is that the exploitation, the mass consumerism, the destruction of the planet happens everyday, everyhour, everyminute of the day. During this process it produces people who, through there everyday experiences living under a capitalist society learn to hate.
Tap into the hate and we're half way there in building
a real antagonistic militant movement against capitalism.
a Wombles
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usefully idiotic
21.07.2002 15:00
Certainly the violent repression we faced in Genoa frightened some of us so much that they may not protest at a major summit again. But more importantly, the hundreds of thousands of people in Genoa last year saw exactly what we are up against - namely, a kind of corporate fascism, with bought in governments like Berlusconi's unashamed to send agents provocateurs to subvert the black bloc with random destruction, and overtly fascist goons to gas, beat and kill on the streets and torture in private. To say that those commemorating the event are seeking a 'comfort memory' turns truth on its head. They return essentially because the wounds have not yet healed, and the guilty have yet to be punished.
Meanwhile the bigger issues have not gone away - and our understanding and links have only been deepened by the violent acts of 2001. The US empire's inability to prevent the tragedy of September 11th - despite all its wealth and weapons - and its leaders' brutish behaviour since, only confirmed the suspicion of over-mighty government that is spreading across Europe. On other pages the Guardian reports growing hostility to EU centralisation - no connection? If journalists look, they will now also find West European activists - many of them veterans of Genoa - spreading their passion for democratic justice across the world. They are building social centres in our own disadvantaged communities, opposing refugee detention centres and GM crops, refocusing shareholder meetings and standing by communities on the edge in Palestine, Argentina and India: confronting abuses of power, profit, people and planet wherever they arise.
If journalists like Carroll cannot see what is happening in the global justice movement beyond the big set-piece conflicts like Genoa, perhaps that is a sign of a decay in mainstream foreign reporting, rather than in the movement it so often misrepresents.
zzz