26 July 2001 Edition
Police brutality in Genoa
In the last of his series on globalisation, JUSTIN MORAN examines the lessons to be learned from Genoa.
To republicans, the scenes broadcast from Genoa that shocked the world last week were hauntingly familiar. Images at once recognisable and foreign rolled across the screen as demonstrators fought running battles with heavily armed police units. It could almost have been Ardoyne, Garvaghy, the Bogside or anywhere else in Ireland where the state let the police loose on peaceful protestors. And like many such clashes, it left hundreds injured and a family in mourning.
The unforgettable image of Carlo Giuliani, a 23-year-old demonstrator from Rome, lying in a pool of blood where he had been shot at point blank range and run over by a police Land Rover, brought home to viewers just how far the Italian state was prepared to go to protect the G8 summit.
The hope of moderate groups like the Genoa Social Forum for peaceful direct action to be the tool of choice for protestors had been dashed. They had not taken into account an Italian police force psyched up for confrontation. Media reports in the week leading up to Genoa only served to raise tension. The announcement that the Italian Army was deploying SAM missile sites, presumably to take on the demonstrators armed with rocks and sticks, raised the feeling of impending violence to a new level.
But few of the demonstrators, many of them veterans of Gothenburg, Prague and Seattle, can have expected the brutality with which the Italian police force treated anyone who got in their way. Among the Irish protestors, possession of a Swiss army knife was enough to get one protestor arrested, beaten and strip-searched. Accounts of police brutality, accompanied in many cases by images, have been sped across the globe by independent non-corporate media groups.
The raid on the headquarters of the Genoa Social Forum was possibly the greatest indicator of the depths to which the Italian police had sunk. The Forum represented hundreds of groups organising for Genoa and had played a key role all week in attempting to defuse violent situations and keep marches calm. In the middle of the night the police descended on the Forum, clubbing people in their sleep, destroying media and computer equipment. Images the next day of blood splattered on the walls and pooled on the floor testified to the brutality of the Italian police in a way words could not.
There are also suggestions that the police may have been involved in provoking some of the incidents through the use of agents provocateurs. Groups of `anarchists' were seen alighting from police vehicles before engaging in acts of destruction. Links between shadowy element of the Italian security forces and fascism have been uncovered in the past, none more famous than a bomb attack on a railway station in Bologna in the `70s, initially blamed on left-wing guerrillas and now linked to collusion between the Italian far right and Italian security forces.
The knowledge that the police went too far seems to have been acknowledged by elements in the Italian government. At a protest outside the Italian embassy on Tuesday night organised by Globalise Resistance, a spokesperson for the embassy apologised to Irish protestors for the behaviour of the police.
But the anti-globalisation movement is itself in crisis. The debate on violence at the protests has begun anew following the death of Carlo Giuliani. There is a fear that the violence of the protests will discourage workers and official trade unions from joining the protests. The aim of the anti-globalisation movement has been to build a broad base from which to mobilise people but the street battles between police and a small minority of the protestors do nothing to help that strategy.
In the wake of Genoa the question facing the anti-globalisation movement, particularly in Ireland, is where does it go from here? Is it time for the Movement to police itself in regard to violent protestors? Should the Movement concentrate on exposing the police as the real source of violence and provocation at these gatherings? Should the more moderate groups condemn those who get involved in clashes or simply make clear the differences between violent and non-violent protestors?
In an attempt to answer these questions, Globalise Resistance is holding a series of workshops and talks on the subject at Liberty Hall this Saturday, 28 July, as part of a day long carnival including a march, live music and video showings.
Sinn Féin councillor Larry O'Toole, who is to speak at the march, emphasised the importance of the meeting. ``No-one knows better than republicans the difficulty in fighting a battle against overwhelming odds. It is vital that we show our solidarity with the demonstrators in Genoa and play our part in the anti-globalisation movement here in Ireland.''
To republicans, the scenes broadcast from Genoa that shocked the world last week were hauntingly familiar. Images at once recognisable and foreign rolled across the screen as demonstrators fought running battles with heavily armed police units. It could almost have been Ardoyne, Garvaghy, the Bogside or anywhere else in Ireland where the state let the police loose on peaceful protestors. And like many such clashes, it left hundreds injured and a family in mourning.
The unforgettable image of Carlo Giuliani, a 23-year-old demonstrator from Rome, lying in a pool of blood where he had been shot at point blank range and run over by a police Land Rover, brought home to viewers just how far the Italian state was prepared to go to protect the G8 summit.
The hope of moderate groups like the Genoa Social Forum for peaceful direct action to be the tool of choice for protestors had been dashed. They had not taken into account an Italian police force psyched up for confrontation. Media reports in the week leading up to Genoa only served to raise tension. The announcement that the Italian Army was deploying SAM missile sites, presumably to take on the demonstrators armed with rocks and sticks, raised the feeling of impending violence to a new level.
But few of the demonstrators, many of them veterans of Gothenburg, Prague and Seattle, can have expected the brutality with which the Italian police force treated anyone who got in their way. Among the Irish protestors, possession of a Swiss army knife was enough to get one protestor arrested, beaten and strip-searched. Accounts of police brutality, accompanied in many cases by images, have been sped across the globe by independent non-corporate media groups.
The raid on the headquarters of the Genoa Social Forum was possibly the greatest indicator of the depths to which the Italian police had sunk. The Forum represented hundreds of groups organising for Genoa and had played a key role all week in attempting to defuse violent situations and keep marches calm. In the middle of the night the police descended on the Forum, clubbing people in their sleep, destroying media and computer equipment. Images the next day of blood splattered on the walls and pooled on the floor testified to the brutality of the Italian police in a way words could not.
There are also suggestions that the police may have been involved in provoking some of the incidents through the use of agents provocateurs. Groups of `anarchists' were seen alighting from police vehicles before engaging in acts of destruction. Links between shadowy element of the Italian security forces and fascism have been uncovered in the past, none more famous than a bomb attack on a railway station in Bologna in the `70s, initially blamed on left-wing guerrillas and now linked to collusion between the Italian far right and Italian security forces.
The knowledge that the police went too far seems to have been acknowledged by elements in the Italian government. At a protest outside the Italian embassy on Tuesday night organised by Globalise Resistance, a spokesperson for the embassy apologised to Irish protestors for the behaviour of the police.
But the anti-globalisation movement is itself in crisis. The debate on violence at the protests has begun anew following the death of Carlo Giuliani. There is a fear that the violence of the protests will discourage workers and official trade unions from joining the protests. The aim of the anti-globalisation movement has been to build a broad base from which to mobilise people but the street battles between police and a small minority of the protestors do nothing to help that strategy.
In the wake of Genoa the question facing the anti-globalisation movement, particularly in Ireland, is where does it go from here? Is it time for the Movement to police itself in regard to violent protestors? Should the Movement concentrate on exposing the police as the real source of violence and provocation at these gatherings? Should the more moderate groups condemn those who get involved in clashes or simply make clear the differences between violent and non-violent protestors?
In an attempt to answer these questions, Globalise Resistance is holding a series of workshops and talks on the subject at Liberty Hall this Saturday, 28 July, as part of a day long carnival including a march, live music and video showings.
Sinn Féin councillor Larry O'Toole, who is to speak at the march, emphasised the importance of the meeting. ``No-one knows better than republicans the difficulty in fighting a battle against overwhelming odds. It is vital that we show our solidarity with the demonstrators in Genoa and play our part in the anti-globalisation movement here in Ireland.''