FEATURE STORY
| Special Report
The Battle of Genoa
by Walden Bello
(about)
Genoa; Sunday, July 23
rganizers of the anti-G8 protest in Genoa say that 200,000 people came from all over Italy and Europe to join the mammoth demonstration yesterday. In contrast to Friday, the day seemed to be relatively peaceable...until the evening. At around 11 pm, while I and several media people were filing stories, the police barged into the Genoa Social Forum press center in search of "anarchists."
"Prensa, prensa," we shouted, our hands held high, as baton
wielding carabinieri pushed us and commanded us to sit on the
floor. We were captives for the next hour, but things were worse at the
high school next door which served as temporary quarters
for people coming from out of town. About 200 police in full riot gear
crashed into the building, rounding up Nazi-style about twenty
young people suspected of being anarchists.
Still things were less chaotic than the day before. I will never
forget Friday.
The police van came careening down the Via Giovanni Tomaso Invrea,
moving crazily from one side of the narrow street to the other in
pursuit of
protesters. I flattened myself against the wall, and it missed me by
two
feet. Another six inches and it would have mowed down the man in front
of
me. "Assassino, assassino," people screamed as the vehicle stopped a few
yards away.
A bald carabineri opened the door and glared at us.
Everything happened so quickly. Just twenty-five minutes before, at around
2:15
pm, a column of around 8,000-10,000 people, led by the famed
specialists
in civil disobedience the Tute Bianche, were marching down the Via
Tolemaide, with marshalls using megaphones announcing, "This is a
nonviolent
march. We believe in nonviolence." The goal of the marchers was to
reach
the twenty-foot wall of iron that the authorities had erected around the
Group
of Eight meeting site at the Piazza Ducale about two kilometers away.
They never reached the wall. At the foot of the hill, at the
intersection with Via Corsino, carabineri hidden in a small side street
started firing tear gas in an unprovoked attack that scattered the
advance
ranks of the march where there were many reporters and television crews.
The Battle of Genoa had begun.
Throughout the next four hours, the battle unfolded in the narrow
sidestreets and the small piazzas of the Corso Torino area, with the
battle
lines shifting constantly. The police would attack with teargas, vans and
armored personnel carriers. The protesters would retreat, then come
back
with stones and bricks ripped from the pavement. Huge trash bins were
turned over to serve as barricades. "Genova Libera! Genova Libera!"
would
erupt from the crowd everytime the police were forced back.
At 4:20 pm, I had my first glimpse of an injured man being
carried
away by the first aid personnel of the Tute Bianche. It was at around
the same
time that one person was shot dead by carabineri in the same vicinity.
Ambulance sirens blared constantly. Later I would find out that about
150
people had been injured during the day--about fifty of them being members
of the media.
I also learned later that there were acts of civil disobedience
throughout the day, the most dramatic apparently being that of a woman
from
the so-called "Pink Bloc" of marchers who tried to scale the steel wall
to
place grappling hooks on it, only to be hosed down brutally by the
police
when she had got nearly to the top.
Unfortunately, the anarchists--the so-called "Black Bloc"--were
also
around. Despite efforts by mainstream demonstrators to dissuade them
with
dramatic pleas for nonviolence, they went about burning a couple of
cars,
including an Alfa Romeo. They also moved down Genoa's beautiful
seafront
drive, the Corso Italia, selectively breaking windows--breaking those of
banks and car companies while leaving those of restaurants untouched.
"Capitalism kills" with an anarchist logo alongside was painted on
walls.
Many protesters were very upset about the antics of the few hundred
anarchists in a global assembly of about 100,000 people. Fabio Bellini,
a
25-year-old Genoan, told me: "It is right to demonstrate against the
G-8.
It's right to fight for a better world, and that's why I'm here. But I
don't understand the window breaking. I'm sad for Genoa." Pam Foster,
the
coordinator of the Halifax Initiative in Canada, asked: "Why did the
police
go after peaceful demonstrators but take their time dealing with the
anarchists?"
The antics of the Black Bloc were the subject of many passionate
debates when the protesters streamed back to the convergence center at
Piazza Kennedy at dusk. Observing one of these spontaneous arguments,
Han
Soeti of Indymedia-Belgium commented, "There are reports that instead of
arresting anarchists, the police were escorting some of them to critical
areas. I heard the same thing in Prague and Barcelona."
It is, however, for the new Italian Prime Minister, Silvio
Berlusconi,
that the protesters, both Italian and non-Italian, reserve their
greatest
anger. During the struggle at the Corso Torino, Gino Pierantoni,
another
Genoese, told me, "I don't know where you will find truth in this mess.
But I am sure that a great part of the blame rests with this man, who
really
is incapable of leading this country." Berlusconi is regarded as having
militarized the situation, going against the moves of the local
government,
which tried to accommodate the protest movement. A retired Italian
general
who headed the United Nations peacekeeping force in Beirut in the
seventies
summed up the feelings of many Italians when he commented that he did
not
know why Berlusconi assigned 20,000 carabineri to Genoa when he only
needed
2,500 troops to keep the peace in the whole of Beirut.
As in Seattle, Washington, DC, and Prague, organizers of what has
been
the biggest anti-globalization protest so far are worried that the
street
battles and the antics of the anarchists might overshadow the message
that
they wanted to deliver to the G-8. Over several months, the Genoa
Social
Forum was able to line up about 600 groups behind a pledge of
non-violence.
It also sponsored a week-long teach-in, involving international
speakers,
with topics ranging from "Who Needs Trade Liberalization?" to
"Mechanisms
for Global Democracy" to "Alternatives to Globalization." Among those
who
delivered talks were anti-globalization gurus Susan George, a critic of
neoliberalism, and José Bové, better known as the man who dismantled a
McDonalds restaurant.
The G-8, however, was deaf to the protests on the streets. While
Berlusconi delivered a carefully crafted statement saying he was
"saddened"
by the death of the demonstrator, he also said it was not connected to
the
G-8. To add insult to injury, the G-8, on the evening on July 20,
issued
a statement in which it encouraged the launching of a new round of
trade negotiations in Quatar. Opposition to a new round and the World
Trade
Organization was what had brought thousands of people from all over
Europe
and the world to Genoa.
|