Arrests and Political Repression of No-Global in Italy Today

Friday November 15, 2002 21:31

by Blisset

Reuters Report

NAPLES, Italy (Reuters) - Italian police arrested 20 anti-globalization activists early on Friday for alleged subversive activity, authorities said, sparking protests across the country.

The activists were accused of belonging to a subversive network that had conspired to undermine law and order by organizing protests like a march against the Group of Eight summit in Genoa in July of last year.

At that event, violent clashes between protesters and police left one demonstrator dead and hundreds injured.

Police pounced on the suspects in night-time raids across southern Italy. Among those detained was Naples activist Francesco Caruso, an organizer of a peace march in Florence last week which drew more than half a million demonstrators.

Investigating magistrates in Cosenza, Calabria, ordered the arrests, the prosecutor's office there said.

"I don't see any doubt...that we are looking at more than a pure and simple ideological movement, but at one with the capacity to threaten...state security and public order," the investigators' report said, according to ANSA news agency.

Caruso's lawyer denied the accusations.

The activists are leaders of the "no global" movement in southern Italy, which helped stage demonstrations across the country leading up to the Genoa summit. Some of those turned violent, as did a march in Naples in the spring of 2001.

In Naples, about 120 people were injured and 16 arrested during a meeting of business leaders. Police were later accused of excessive violence against detainees and earlier this year, eight policemen were arrested for alleged abuse.

MORE PROTESTS PLANNED

Friday's arrests of those who organized the peaceful march in Florence set off protests from Bologna to Rome and Naples.

Dozens of activists scuffled with guards as they barged into the Bologna prosecutor's office to object to the arrests, while others gathered outside government buildings in Rome and Naples.

Larger protests were planned for Rome, Palermo, Naples and other cities on Saturday.

Human rights groups, local religious leaders and center-left politicians denounced what they called the "repressive" and "fascist" police action. "They are trying to criminalize the movement," said Luca Casarini, one of the leaders of Italy's anti-globalization movement. "We're not the ones who subvert the state of law, they do with their violence."

"The accusations are absurd," said Naples priest Don Vitaliano Della Sala, a sympathizer of the movement. "I know Francesco...If he is a subversive then so am I."

Investigators told ANSA they also suspected the activists of belonging to a more violent fringe group known as the Black Bloc, which was thought to be responsible for wreaking havoc at the Genoa summit.

save preference

Comments (2 of 2)

Italian Embassy Anyone?

by as do many many other ghosts

Fri Nov 15, 2002 21:36

protests have been called all over italy for tomorrow

Fri Nov 15, 2002 21:50

Cobas Statement : Machine Translation

PERSECUTION In the COMPARISONS Of the MOVEMENT And the COBAS
Cobas official notice of the school
(15 November 2002)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The extraordinary one happening of the European Social Forum to Florence does not have blocked the throbbing campaign of criminalizzazione that pursued, from March 2001, the antiliberista movement in a generalized manner and some members like the Cobas in particular.

Indeed, the forces that they had I churn without brakes to Genoa and that they had tried to prime the repressive mechanism also to Florence, receiving in answer the pacific and South Sea islander mobilitation of a million persons, return to load arresting 20 exponents with the movement between which Salvatore Stasi and Antonino Compennì of the national executive of the Cobas confederation and other four militants of the Cobas of Cosenza and Taranto: Giancarlo Petrozzi, Giuseppe and Gianluca Sansino and Antonio Brunetti.

The inquiry leaves from Cosenza (magistrates Plastina and Fiordalisi) extends to Taranto and touches also Naples with the arrest of "disobedient" the Francisco Caruso and traces the analogous inquiry carried out to Taranto in the past May that had already hit the Cobas confederation.

Today as then the imputation is grotesque: _ propaganda subversive and conspiracy political in order sovvertire the order economic, crime of the code fascist already riesumati in the year ' 70 and that also then not resist to the judgment of merit in the process.

Such "conspiracy" that would regard the southern net of the rebellious south is suffragata from some test: it is pure and crowds opinion of the magistrates of Cosenza that would be based on of the all inconsistent wiretaps. The attempt is however clearest: to continue and to aggravate the strategy of the tension around to the movement, to only force it always and in the vice of the repression and the vicissitudes of "public order", to prevent that one speaks about the contents and the antiliberisti programs and antiwar of the movement, to introduce all to us like "subjects to risk" to hold and under shooting police at a distance permanent.

But neanche this time riusciranno to lock up to us in the repressive spiral.

We will answer tomorrow to the arrests sin from in all the main Italian public squares with great and pacific manifestations of mass disintegrating ennesime the persecution and demanding the immediate release of all and all.

Rome 15 November ' 02

Upcoming Events

New Events

Other Press

User Preferences

Feeds

Blog Feeds

The Saker

Public Inquiry

Human Rights in Ireland

Lockdown Skeptics

Arrests and Political Repression of No-Global in Italy Today

Comments (2 of 2)