ABSTRACT
Genova, July 2001, G8 counter-summit. In addition to installing high barriers to protect the so-called ‘red zone’ around the summit meetings, the airport, railway stations and motorway exits were closed, and suspected activists were taken back to the city limits. The entire first day of the summit, events followed a similar pattern: after the black bloc’s attacks, the police force responded by setting on those in or near peaceful protests, including doctors, nurses, paramedics, photographers and journalists. Above all, the fight with the so-called ‘disobedients’, encircled and repeatedly charged, started in this fashion. After the police charge, some groups of demonstrators reacted by throwing stones, provoking the police to use armoured cars. During one incursion, a carabinieri jeep got stuck, and its occupants were attacked by demonstrators. One of the carabinieri inside opened fire, killing a 23-year-old Genovese activist, Carlo Giuliani. Within the red zone, the police used water cannon laced with chemicals against demonstrators from Attac, left-wing and trade union groups, who were banging on the fences and throwing cloves of garlic. On the evening of 21 July, the police burst into the Diaz School, where the Genoa Social Forum (GSF, the coordination of social movement groups that organized the protest), its legal advice team, the Indymedia press group and a dormitory for protestors, were based, searching for weapons and black bloc activists. The press described the behaviour of the police as particularly brutal – a description that certain members of Parliament who were present concurred with. Of the 93 persons detained and arrested in the building, 62 were referred with varying medical prognoses. In the days that followed, various testimonies were published recounting civilians’ mistreatment in the Bolzaneto barracks, where a centre for identifying detainees had been set up. Many witness statements, a large number of them from foreigners, described physical and psychological assaults. Using teargas and truncheons, and forcing detainees to stay on their feet for hours, police compelled those being held to repeat fascist and racist slogans.
