Police infiltration in Genoa

national | summit mobilisations | opinion/analysis

Thursday April 29, 2004 01:39

by Orla Ni Chomhrai

I thought people might be interested in the following pieces which refer to the police infiltrating the Genoa protests to start trouble. They actually admited to doing this.
Orla

These are two sections from two articles on this subject. I have given the links so that people can read the full pieces.

Protesters Beware
Protesters Beware Italian Police Incited The Violence At 2001 G8 Summit, Official Inquires Reveal http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/7099
...'The word "Genoa" became virtually synonymous in the public mind with "violent protestors."

Now it turns out that U.S.-trained police were responsible for the worst of the bloodshed in Genoa but that is not making headlines -- at least not in the U.S.A.

In an official inquiry, police in Genoa have admitted to fabricating evidence against the G-8 activists, deploying provocateurs i

n the activists' ranks, and even to planting Molotov cocktails in a school used by the protestors as a base.

Activists have alleged this all along, although their claims have been roundly dismissed since the events occurred. But now it turns out an elite police unit, which received four months of training from two Los Angeles police sheriffs, planted phony explosives at the Dias school as a pretext for shutting the place down and making mass arrests. Of the 93 people arrested, 72 suffered police-inflicted injuries.'

__________________

and MEDIA ADVISORY: Media Missing New Evidence About Genoa Violence

http://www.fair.org/activism/genoa-update.html

'Another story by Carroll (Guardian, 7/23/01) focused on allegations that segments of the supposedly anarchist "black block" in Genoa-- the group most often held up as proof that globalization activists are violent-- were in fact provocateurs from European security forces. Groups of black-clad people "burned buildings, ransacked shops and attacked banks with crowbars and scaffolding" during the protests, reported Carroll. Some attacked journalists, "smashing their equipment and tearing up their notebooks." Yet "few, if any" of these people were arrested, and local activists seemed not to know the people involved.

The Guardian quoted Francesco Martone, a Green Party senator for Genoa, alleging that police and neo-fascists "worked together to infiltrate the genuine protesters" and discredit the left. It also quoted an Italian communist MP, Luigi Malabarba: "I saw groups of German and French people dressed as demonstrators in black with iron bars inside the police station near the Piazza di Kennedy. Draw your own conclusions."

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Comments (11 of 11)

Does the news fit?

by N. H.

Thu Apr 29, 2004 05:54

...with the bossman's agenda.

This is what many people have been thinking all along. But it just don't fit in with the agenda, does it?
= they have already written their Sunday stories.

And guess who the baddies will be?
Oh, go on, you know you want to.

I wonder has Pat Kenny figured out yet what an 'agent provocateur' is.

Same old shit

by Ray

Thu Apr 29, 2004 10:36

The police confess to planting molotovs and fabricating evidence. Cool. This is a a confession. It is evidence.
Stuck on to the end of this evidence is an assertion that police infiltrated the black block. What is the evidence for this? Nothing. The same old allegations from the same old people, with nothing to back them up. The CP MP quoted produced a photo of these police infiltrators outside a police station. They weren't dressed in black.

There is still absolutely no evidence that the Black Block were infiltrated by the police, or that the Black Block was made up of provocateurs. I wish people would cop themselves on, and stop repeating this allegation until they find something to back it up.

it suits the SWP...

by a

Thu Apr 29, 2004 11:35

it suits the agents of the state to blame property damage and other forms of direct action against capitalism on "trouble makers" and "infiltrators" instead of acknowledging that some people agree with this tactic as a method of demonstrating.

I would'nt dignify the Black Bloc by saying its the Cops

by Steve Brown

Thu Apr 29, 2004 17:31

I would'nt dignify the Black Bloc by saying its been inflatrated by the police. They are just middle class idiots how don't give to shits about the issue. Most of them will be bankers in ten years.

NVDA

by kokomero

Thu Apr 29, 2004 18:38

If you want to engage in non-violent direct action, then why congregate in the middle of Phoenix Park to bang pots and pans, and get a chase from the cops.

Real effective NVDA should hit the government and the multinationals where it hurts. How about a non-violent blockade of the entrance to the Intel plant in Leixlip, or Microsoft in Sandyford or Pfizer in Cork.

A day's or even an hour's lost production at any one of these plants would automatically make a dent in the state coffers and get the point across better to the government and the same multinationals than smashing shop windows and having a scrap with the cops and then complaining about police brutality!

Yeah right Kokomero

by R. Isible

Thu Apr 29, 2004 19:21

Try blockading a business and see if it doesn't result in a scrap with the cops! Even unions on a legitimate, widely supported strike are barred from blockading a business. You can be sure there'd be plenty of state violence against peaceful protestors if it was tried. Now, try again and tell us why it's not a good idea to protest the EU leaders peacefully where they are?

What's your problem R. Isible?

Thu Apr 29, 2004 19:58

Unlike you I have no wish to suppress free speech or debate.

You are more than welcome to protest wherever you want, and to get your point across in whatever way you wish.

I won't be joining you in the park as I've already been there and done that, and frankly the sort of tactics advocated will probably get you on the news for all of the wrong reasons and do the cause more harm than good.

My point is why be so predictable?

Who's "suppressing" your Free Speech Kokomero?

Thu Apr 29, 2004 20:56

You look even more ridiculous when you make accusations like that. You suggested blockading business to avoid being beaten up by the cops: you just did it again. You completely failed to address my clear point which is that this suggestion of yours is MORE likely to result in that. Added to this is the fact that a peaceful protest is NOT illegal and blockading a business is and I have to wonder how smart you are. You're either very smart or not smart at all. That's _my_ free speech.

Lateral thinking

Fri Apr 30, 2004 14:17

If you advertise to the cops months in advance that there is going to be a protest they have time to organise and to prevent or otherwise frustrate it.

It takes them time to move around and react. Why not take advantage of their inertia by being unpredictable?

The cops do not normally arrive with the riot squad to every (seemingly) minor protest so what if they were faced with a large number of small-scale simultaneous non-violent actions, where the people involved ove on before the cops start to escalate?

These tactics have worked in guerilla warfare for the past century, so I don't understand why protesters are so anxious to adopt the tactics of the Roman legions?

It doesn't even need to be a protest per se, how about faking a traffic accident such as a car being rear-ended at the entrance to the employee carpark of a multi-national plant, at that point you can actually call the cops if you wish and in the 1/2 hr. it takes them to respond you've delayed a whole shift from starting work.

Enjoy your medieval battle re-enactment in the park if that's what you're into!

Well, that certainly makes more sense Kokomero

Fri Apr 30, 2004 19:35

Than actually blockading a building and the guerilla tactics thing sounds like it would be effective. But, and this is important: the point isn't necessarily to cause a day of economic disruption, it's to raise attention and awareness about the direction that the EU is taking. Given the amount of distortion, under-reporting and lies I find it hard to believe that unaccountable, non-obvious guerilla actions like this would be made visible through the media.

I'm not dismissing it out of hand though.

I agree

Tue May 04, 2004 11:31

that one of the objectives of NVDA should be to raise the profile of the anti-globalisation cause, the key issue in any peaceful protest is trying to ensure that things don't get out of hand. In the main protest they didn't which is a tribute to the organisers, but unfortunately later they did on the Navan road.

This merely illustrates what inevitably happens when you play the game by the governments' rules.

Looking on the positive side there is a lot of energy there which can be harnessed and the question is really how.

Tactics to date have been based on large mass protests which play to a large extent into the hands of the state, allowing them to contain the protest and depict it as they wish through their media organs.

It is time for non-violent guerilla tactics which target the multinationals directly and unpredictably at multiple locations negating the police command and control structures.

The likelyhood is that when this happens simultaneously at 10-20 locations around Ireland that it will be the focus for a lot of positive media attention and will hopefully result in a very quantifiable loss to the exchequer in lost production hours with no injury to any of the protesters involved.

And more importantly it will attack the globalisation problem at the root in the multinationals, not their government lackeys. A good example of what can be achieved by attacking multinationals directly is when BOI were recently forced to pull the plug on porn publishers by the womens council.

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Police infiltration in Genoa

Comments (11 of 11)