NO TAV movement again under attack, Italy

For twen­ty years in moun­tains of North West Italy, not far from Tori­no, a pow­er­ful move­ment has grown that has resist­ed the Ital­ian government’s plan to build a high veloc­i­ty rail­road, which in addi­tion to being very cost­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly use­less would cer­tain­ly destroy the moun­tain envi­ron­ment. Over and over, the NO TAV move­ment, now well-known through­out Europe, has come under attack by the police and the army, besides being the object of a smear cam­paign by politi­cians of almost every polit­i­cal stripe. How­ev­er, so strong has been the deter­mi­na­tion of the peo­ple of Val di Susa and their many sup­port­ers to resist this assault on their land and their lives that so far no real con­struc­tion has tak­en place and all that the com­pa­nies in charge of the project have achieved has been to sur­round thou­sands of acres of land, belong­ing to the local pop­u­la­tion, with barbed wires and cops.

It is now gen­er­al­ly rec­og­nized, even at the EU lev­el, that the con­struc­tion of the high veloc­i­ty rail­road is unnec­es­sary, so that some par­tic­i­pant coun­tries have already with­drawn from the project. Nev­er­the­less, the Ital­ian gov­ern­ment has even fur­ther inten­si­fied its attack on the resis­tance to the TAV trains, with the full mil­i­ta­riza­tion of Val di Susa. As the vil­lagers of this beau­ti­ful his­toric val­ley, near the bor­der with France, the cen­ter of the par­ti­san resis­tance to Fas­cism and Nazism in the ‘40s, have repeat­ed­ly denounced, no effort has been spared to repress ide­o­log­i­cal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly the legit­i­mate protest of the res­i­dents of the val­ley who would bear every day the con­se­quences of the TAVS. Already the land of Val di Susa has been drenched with tear gas, and many have been arrest­ed, wound­ed, and some have even died because of the government’s out­ra­geous deter­mi­na­tion to com­plete this work regard­less of its dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for the peo­ple of the val­ley.

Now a new vio­lent assault on the No Tav move­ment is unfold­ing that demands a clear response by all those in and out of Italy who believe that the sys­tem­at­ic destruc­tion of our envi­ron­ment and the vio­la­tion of people’s most basic needs and demands are crimes that affect us all and we should not tol­er­ate.

On Mon­day morn­ing, July 29, the DIGOS – the polit­i­cal branch of the police – has raid­ed dozens of homes in Tori­no and in Val di Susa. Twelve com­rades have been forced to open their hous­es to its agents, who have then pro­ceed­ed to search for incrim­i­nat­ing mate­ri­als, pre­sum­ably relat­ed to their protest against the enclo­sure of the land of the val­ley with hedges of barbed wire. Instruct­ed to look for explo­sives and cut­ters, the police have failed in this goal, but they have con­fis­cat­ed all the audio-visu­al and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion mate­ri­als they could find, clear­ly the real objec­tive of the search. As one of the activists raid­ed put it: “They came for weapons, they left with com­put­ers and phones”.

The raid has includ­ed the restau­rant La Cre­den­za – a name that in Ital­ian sig­nif­i­cant­ly means both ‘faith’ and ‘pantry’ – a pub­lic place of meet­ing and aggre­ga­tion for No TAVS in Val di Susa, where work­ers’ unions and polit­i­cal asso­ci­a­tions are also locat­ed. This is a place where every day peo­ple meet to dis­cuss cur­rent events, most­ly relat­ing to the strug­gle, as well as share some food and a glass of wine. Who­ev­er goes to Bus­soleno, the heart­land of the NO TAV strug­gle, pass­es through it, to have a chance to talk to local peo­ple, check on cur­rent events, and have a great din­ner. But the mag­is­trates paint it as a place of con­spir­a­cy, to sup­port the charge that moti­vates the raid: involve­ment in “attacks with ter­ror­ist and sub­ver­sive intent.”

Any­one who has been in Val di Susa, or has fol­lowed the long his­to­ry of the protest its peo­ple have mount­ed against the TAV knows this charge is false, out­ra­geous, and is a clas­sic exam­ple of blam­ing the vic­tims. Not sur­pris­ing­ly the “proofs” are man­u­fac­tured.

At one of the hous­es raid­ed, a map of the val­ley was found with mark­er-signs on it. The young woman liv­ing there is a mem­ber of the Legal Team for the move­ment, and the map is part of the mate­r­i­al that she was to sub­mit to the defense in tri­als that are already tak­ing place against some of its mem­bers. On it, the sites are marked where in 2011 sev­er­al peo­ple were bru­tal­ized by the police. But accord­ing to the inves­ti­ga­tors, the map proves the exis­tence of a mil­i­tar­i­ly orga­nized guer­ril­la move­ment.

Sim­i­lar­ly, beer bot­tles pre­sum­ably found on the con­struc­tion site are pre­sent­ed as evi­dence for the pres­ence of Molo­tov cock­tails, no proof giv­en that they ever con­tained any­thing but beer. Black T Shirts too were con­fis­cat­ed, though it is hard to imag­ine what they could prove. But the mean­ing of the police oper­a­tion comes forth most bla­tant­ly where the mag­is­trates state that those raid­ed are inves­ti­gat­ed as sus­pects of “attacks with ter­ror­ist intent.”

In sum, the goal of this new oper­a­tion is to esca­late the assault on the move­ment by rep­re­sent­ing it, legal­ly and through the media, as a ‘ter­ror­ist’ move­ment – a move obvi­ous­ly intend­ed to scare its sup­port­ers, turn pub­lic opin­ion against the peo­ple of Val di Susa, and legit­imize any vio­lence the state will deem fit to unleash against them.

We do not think this oper­a­tion will suc­ceed. The peo­ple of Val di Susa have fought the fas­cists, have fought the Nazis, and for twen­ty years they have been able to push back the attempt of the Ital­ian gov­ern­ment to destroy their moun­tains, already tra­versed by many rail­road lines and a recent­ly con­struct­ed high­way. How­ev­er, we should not under­es­ti­mate the will of the gov­ern­ment to crush this move­ment. This in fact appears to be the pri­ma­ry objec­tive of the present oper­a­tion, as reports indi­cate that, even from a cap­i­tal­ist view­point, the TAV project is turn­ing out to be eco­nom­i­cal­ly unfea­si­ble. Why to pur­sue it then with so much obsti­na­cy, to the point of stomp­ing over the lives of thou­sands of peo­ple? Is it because the Ital­ian gov­ern­ment can­not admit that when peo­ple strug­gle in a uni­fied way they can win? Or is it that the prof­its that pri­vate com­pa­nies would make would out­weigh the fail­ure of the project to bring any ben­e­fit to the coun­try as a whole and out­weigh as well the immense agony and loss inflict­ed on the peo­ple of Val di Susa?

Pol­i­tics these days has a sur­re­al char­ac­ter. Lies, dis­tor­tions, argu­ments moti­vat­ed sole­ly by the nar­row­est of pri­vate eco­nom­ic motives are the order of the day. But the fic­ti­tious char­ac­ter of the charges brought against the vic­tims of the raid should not deceive us about the dam­age they can inflict. At the very least these attacks are forc­ing a move­ment to re-chan­nel its ener­gies from the strug­gle against the TAV to the defense of those under attack.

This is why we need to sup­port the NO TAV activists under inves­ti­ga­tion, we need expand our sup­port for the NO TAV strug­gle, and send a clear mes­sage of protest to the Ital­ian gov­ern­ment, demand­ing it ends the per­se­cu­tion of the No TAV activists and put an end to the TAV project itself.

Please sign the fol­low­ing state­ment –affil­i­a­tion for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pur­pose only:

We urge the Ital­ian gov­ern­ment and judi­cia­ry to:

*End its arbi­trary use of the law to per­se­cute No TAV activists;

*Cease the inves­ti­ga­tion against the twelve peo­ple whose homes have been raid­ed;

*Stop the mil­i­ta­riza­tion of Val de Susa;

*Lis­ten to the legit­i­mate protest of the peo­ple of Val de Susa and aban­don the TAV project, which has already caused so much suf­fer­ing to so many peo­ple