No TAV Resistance in the Susa Valley goes on, Italy

10.12.11

As I wrote a few days ago, the NO TAV move­ment was plan­ning a huge day of mobil­i­sa­tion on Decem­ber 8, for the anniver­sary of what has become known as “The Bat­tle of Venaus” in 2005, where activists man­aged to defeat police and secu­ri­ty forces and take back parts of the val­ley that had been evict­ed and cleared up in the pre­vi­ous days.

How the local author­i­ties per­ceived this call out is clear from their reac­tion: on Decem­ber 7 a tem­po­rary decree was issued, pro­hibit­ing the access and tran­sit of peo­ple and vehi­cles around the fenced areas of the val­ley for the fol­low­ing two days. New check points were estab­lished or rein­forced dur­ing the day. As on pre­vi­ous occa­sions, the only response was to try to com­plete­ly block  protests around the fenced areas by increas­ing mil­i­tary pres­ence local­ly and ban­ning all activ­i­ties in the sur­round­ings.

Sin­is­ter char­ac­ters already known to the NO TAV move­ment were invit­ed to take part in the “order main­te­nance”, such as one of the chief inspec­tors who autho­rised the vio­lent evic­tions in Venaus in 2005, and oth­er inspec­tors and Digos chiefs who organ­ised and man­aged the repres­sion of the protests last sum­mer.

The NO TAV had two main actions planned for the day: a “siege” of the fenced areas of the val­ley on one side, and a huge block of a local motor­way on the oth­er (which went on for more than 14 hours).

Once again, the police react­ed with extra­or­di­nary vio­lence, in par­tic­u­lar around the fenced areas. Dozens of peo­ple were injured, includ­ing a 16 year old young man who was hit in the head by a tear gas cylin­der while he was try­ing to put down a fire caused by the same tear gas car­tridges, and a 50 year old man, also hit in the face, who might loose his sight com­plete­ly. Many oth­ers were injured by rocks and stones thrown by the police;unlike last sumer, this time some RAI3 cam­era­men man­aged to film these events and broad­cast them.

After evict­ing the look­out post (which was suc­cess­ful­ly tak­en back the fol­low­ing day!), police forces entered the build­ing, dam­aged any­thing that was in it, and final­ly con­fis­cat­ed all the remain­ing equip­ment. Dur­ing the day at least 6 peo­ple were giv­en ban­ning orders that pro­hib­it them to vis­it the area for the next 3 years. Some of the “dan­ger­ous” equip­ment found in their vehi­cles includ­ed water­proof jack­ets. The fol­low­ing day, a work­er of a local gar­den­ing co-oper­a­tive was also stopped and searched, and his gar­den­ing tools con­fis­cat­ed while he was on his way to open up a local eco-cen­tre.

As usu­al, the media and the polit­i­cal clowns unit­ed in a joint crit­i­cism of the vio­lent pro­test­ers. Fassi­no, cur­rent May­or of Turin, stat­ed “There were only extrem­ists in the Susa Val­ley “. Oth­er com­ments were made about the neces­si­ty of defend­ing the val­ley from the NO TAV activists!, and about the use­less­ness of these protests in view of the fact that the high speed line project is going to go ahead any­way.

The “left-wing” news­pa­per La Rebub­bli­ca even tried to dimin­ish the grav­i­ty of the inci­dent involv­ing the 16 year old boy, say­ing that he is Dan­ish and was there by chance…he is actu­al­ly Dan­ish but grew up in the Susa Val­ley, but his nation­al­i­ty doesn’t change the fact that he’s in a hos­pi­tal with trau­mat­ic brain injury…

The NO TAV held a press con­fer­ence the day after, and their main points were:

1) The NO TAV move­ment is one and unit­ed. There are no bad nor good pro­test­ers, nor were chil­dren in the demo used as human shields (one of the accu­sa­tions made by some politi­cians). The NO TAV strug­gle belongs to every­one.

2) The pro­test­ers didn’t attack the police forces, but only tried, as they’ve done in the past, to cut down the fences, which in their eyes are ille­gal and ille­git­ti­mate. The police imme­di­ate­ly react­ed with tear gas and water jets.

3) All the injured are among the pro­test­ers; there were no injured among the police forces (as was stat­ed by the media).

4) The look­out post in La Mad­dale­na was sub­ject­ed to dam­age, loot­ing and dev­as­ta­tion per­pe­trat­ed by the police forces. The tools con­fis­cat­ed by the police (e.g. axes) are not weapons, but nec­es­sary tools to cut down wood.

5) The move­ment will go back to the post and clean it up, and will vis­it the fenced area again. The police bru­tal­i­ty and the accu­sa­tions made by politi­cians will not stop the move­ment.

Faith­ful to their words, hun­dreds of NO TAV activist have gone back to the fenced area this morn­ing. They had lunch togeth­er, with hun­dreds of police look­ing at them from the oth­er side of the fences. Then they start­ed walk­ing along the fences and cut­ting them down. The police act­ed imme­di­ate­ly and fired the water jet, but mirac­u­lous­ly mis­aimed, hit­ting instead a group of Digos offi­cers. Well done, for once! Watch the video here:

Thanks to notav.info for the orig­i­nal arti­cles, pics and videos.

Translated by Italy Calling