Die hier beschriebenen Vorfälle decken sich weitgehend mit der
ARD-Dokumentation vom Mittwoch der Vorwoche. (E.W.)
The fuse that fizzled
One year on from Genoa, Italy's anti-globalisation movement is still no
match for Berlusconi
Rory Carroll
Saturday July 20, 2002
The Guardian
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.
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
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
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