Italy: more NO TAV protests planned for December

On Novem­ber 24, the NO TAV move­ment held a pub­lic assem­bly in Bus­soleno to dis­cuss and plan December’s ini­tia­tives and protests. For more than 3 hours par­tic­i­pants debat­ed and exchanged views on the present state of the NO TAV strug­gle and future ini­tia­tives. More protests are planned in par­tic­u­lar around the date of Decem­ber 8, anniver­sary of the great vic­to­ry of Venaus in 2005*. In 2005, the media pres­sure and the mobil­i­sa­tions were enough to make a very clum­sy and churl­ish gov­ern­ment yield. Today, the big dif­fer­ence is that the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic lob­by behind the TAV project, after years of study­ing and observ­ing the NO TAV move­ment, is much more ruth­less. The cur­rent mil­i­tary occu­pa­tion in the Susa Val­ley doesn’t excel in speed (to this date, no build­ing has com­menced, and the exca­va­tion sites are still occu­pied by the NO TAV), but it’s cer­tain­ly deter­mined: the for­ti­fied fences around the exca­va­tion sites have become a sym­bol­ic show of strength. Decem­ber 8 2011 comes after 6 months of resis­tance in the area, where the con­flict between the local NO TAV activists and the mil­i­tary is felt every­day.

The assem­bly opt­ed for a dou­ble-protest day: a protest will take place around the fenced areas, while anoth­er group will be march­ing from Susa to the head­quar­ters of Sitaf. Sitaf is a part­ly pub­lic com­pa­ny that man­ages one of the motor­ways from Turin and that de fac­to assist­ed the mil­i­tari­sa­tion of the Val­ley by pro­vid­ing a cor­ri­dor and tech­ni­cal help to the troops trans­ferred from Turin.

Mean­while, a few nights after the assem­bly, some NO TAV witch­es held a night-time coven, armed with very dan­ger­ous seca­teurs to cut the fence down. My favourite chant: “My nan was a par­ti­san and she taught me that cut­ting down fences isn’t a crime” 🙂 There was some ten­sion when the secu­ri­ty forces start­ed mea­sur­ing the length of the cut in the fence with their batons (??!!), but they then left, and the witch­es cir­cle end­ed unharmed. Watch the video:

* On 5/6 Decem­ber 2005 the police and secu­ri­ty forces vio­lent­ly evict­ed one of the per­ma­nent look­out posts in Venaus, injur­ing about 20 pro­test­ers. On the 8th the NO TAV had a mas­sive march from Susa to Venaus and man­aged to estab­lish a new look­out post. Fol­low­ing the clash­es and pres­sure from the NO TAV move­ment, the gov­ern­ment decid­ed to put the works on hold.

Sources: arti­cles from www.notav.info, no 1 and no2.