Brutal dawn attack on anti-TAV protest camp, Italy

27/06/2011
At 5am this morn­ing, 2,000 police stormed the protest camps in Val di Susa, north­ern Italy, to try to start work on the High Veloc­i­ty Rail­way (TAV).

27/06/2011
At 5am this morn­ing, 2,000 police stormed the protest camps in Val di Susa, north­ern Italy, to try to start work on the High Veloc­i­ty Rail­way (TAV).

They went in using force and vast amounts of tear gas. Some of the ’No TAV’ pro­test­ers have been injured and their vehi­cles and camp­ing gear smashed up.

The peo­ple in the area have surged onto the roads and the motor­ways are blocked with lor­ries. Work­ers have been com­ing out of their fac­to­ries to join the pro­test­ers and defend them against the police attack. The met­al-mechan­ics’ union, Fiom, has declared an imme­di­ate 8 hour strike in the area in protest and sol­i­dar­i­ty.

…

Near­ly 30 peo­ple were injured on Mon­day when police clashed with demon­stra­tors protest­ing against a planned high-speed rail line run­ning through a scenic val­ley in north­ern Italy, police said.

The clash­es occurred as con­struc­tion work­ers pre­pared to begin work on bor­ing a tun­nel for the line in the Susa Val­ley near Turin.

Police in Turin said 25 offi­cers were injured includ­ing four who were hos­pi­talised, while the four injured demon­stra­tors were treat­ed on site.

Around 2,000 demon­stra­tors took part in the torch­lit pro­ces­sion through the val­ley on Sun­day night.

“A group of oppo­nents began attack­ing the police in a pret­ty vio­lent way around 7:00 am, and the police respond­ed by charg­ing them,” said Mario Vira­no, the gov­ern­ment offi­cial in charge of con­struc­tion of the Lyon-Turin train line.

He described the sit­u­a­tion on the ground as “dif­fi­cult”.

Oppo­nents of the line had already placed obsta­cles on the roads lead­ing to the site and set up sev­er­al camps with the aim of block­ing work on the project, said Vira­no.

Police fired tear­gas to dis­perse the demon­stra­tors and demol­ished the bar­ri­cades with heavy mech­a­nised shov­els, accord­ing to demon­stra­tors and tele­vi­sion footage.

Leader of the demon­stra­tors Alber­to Peri­no said gov­ern­ment gained the upper hand fol­low­ing Mon­day’s scuf­fle.

“We have lost a bat­tle but we haven’t lost the war,” he said.

Work has to start before the end of June if the project is to ben­e­fit from a tranche of Euro­pean sub­ven­tions for the rail link.

Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Rober­to Maroni pledged Sun­day that work on the project would go ahead “before June 30”.

“The project will hap­pen. If that was­n’t the case, we would be say­ing good­bye to hun­dreds of mil­lions in Euro­pean sub­ven­tions, but par­tic­u­lar­ly to con­nec­tions with Europe, and also we would be say­ing good­bye to the future,” he warned.

France and Italy signed a deal in 2001 on build­ing a high-speed line to slash trav­el time between Milan and Paris from sev­en hours to four, and form a strate­gic link in the Euro­pean net­work.

The cost has been esti­mat­ed at 15 bil­lion euros (21 bil­lion dol­lars). But res­i­dents of the Susa Val­ley have fierce­ly opposed the plan, say­ing the con­struc­tion of tun­nels would dam­age the envi­ron­ment.

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Back­ground — http://www.ambientevalsusa.it/main_english.htm