BOLZANETO IS EVERYWHERE

As the antipsychiatric initiative at the ex-mercato 24 (in Bologna - Italy) finished on the night of the 18/19 May a comrade came out with his scooter and a friend… After walking a few metres, he got stopped by three plain clothes cops, who asked him for identification and after checking him declared that the scooter was stolen, even though the chassis indicated to the contrary. The policemen decided to charge him with the crime of receiving stolen goods, and hence to take him to the station. To these ends they called the flying squad. As soon as they arrived, a thug in uniform started to insult, provoke, and push the comrade around in order to make him fall to the ground. Flooring him with the force of his blows, the thug in question managed to dislocate his shoulder continuing to insult him; after handcuffing him, he attempted to strangle him by the throat.


The policeman successively continued to lay blows, punches and kicks onto the comrade, unsuccessfully attempting to make him fall to the floor once more. At this point the cops decided to bring him into the police station, where he got told to get out of the car. Still handcuffed and beaten in front of the stair-ramp, he was hurled against the handrail.


He got locked in a little room, where he got repetitively beaten by ten or so policemen in uniform, and insulted about his political identity: “Zecca (literally “tick”- a derogatory term for a political dissenter), I’ll piss in your face, you fucking communist piece of shit”, “you’re worse than a Maroccan”. Being constrained to lying with all his weight on his handcuffed wrists, as soon as he tried to ease the torture to his wrists by raising his legs, the policeman stamped on his face and the rest of his body with the sole of his shoe. The instructor arrived (the man in the highest, most “responsible” position at that moment in the station), and the interrogation began, finally deeming it time to alleviate the handcuff’s bite.


When the interrogation finished, another plain clothes cop arrived, who, speaking to the comrade said: “Call your antifascist friends, and I’ll call my boys and we’ll go and sort this out somewhere else!”, this said, the comrade got taken inside a cell and the psychological violence the form of political insults continued in order to torture him further by not letting him sleep. The reason for “unleashing” this violence as said at the beginning was a hypothetical scooter robbery… When the owner of the bike, the comrades’ flatmate went to the police station to ask for the reason for the seizure, he heard it said that it was all due to a spelling mistake by a carabiniere (policeman) who had drafted a statement in 1998!

This is the treatment with which the repressive apparatus of the city usually punishes those who struggle against the social injustice that this system of death produces on a daily basis. The antifascists and the antiracists are warned, along with all those who recognize thenselves in the practices of self organisation!

We all know that the torture and repression did not begin nor end at Bolzaneto. Bolzaneto was already there and is still here, in the streets and squares, in the CPTs and in the prisons! Bolzaneto is the weapon used by the state uses against immigrants, comrades and people in precarious situations. In Bologna it is common to witness similar episodes of police brutality against our arab and immigrant brothers and sisters. In Bologna, all this takes us back to the times when the Uno Bianca was free to kill and instil terror in the city.

Episodes like this cannot remain in silence and indifference, and for sure they do not hit the mark. It will not be your infamous methods to stop social conflict and the desire for freedom!

OUTOFCONTROLL-CREW
ASSOCIAZIONE SENZA FRONTIERE
CENTRO DI COMUNICAZIONE ANTAGONISTA