The militarisation of the Susa Valley: final act & Brief History of the No TAV movement

12.11.11

Berlusconi’s mori­bund gov­ern­ment has final­ly man­aged to pass a decree – with the opposition’s approval – that for­malis­es the cur­rent state of mil­i­tari­sa­tion in the Susa Val­ley. The con­struc­tion site in La Mad­dale­na will become a “site of strate­gic nation­al inter­est”, that is, a mil­i­tary area. The con­se­quences for those who tres­pass will be the same imposed by law for any oth­er mil­i­tary area tres­pass: a prison sen­tence between 3 months and one year, or the pay­ment of a fine between 51 and 309 Euro. That’s not it, though! The rock extract­ed on the site will become a legal con­struc­tion mate­r­i­al, even if con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by ura­ni­um, asbestos and oth­er chem­i­cal prod­ucts released by the exca­va­tion process. This will have a huge impact on the indus­try of the “great use­less pub­lic works” beloved by the cur­rent gov­ern­ment; and it’s a huge present to the con­struc­tion mafia. Also, it’s anoth­er heavy attack to free­dom of protest and dis­sent, and a clear mes­sage for the peo­ple of the Val Susa: don’t dis­turb the con­struc­tion!

In the mean­time, a cou­ple of weeks ago a pub­lic youth hos­tel man­aged by an organ­i­sa­tion close to the NO TAV move­ment was attacked and van­dalised. The build­ing is often used by NO TAV pro­test­ers com­ing from the sur­round­ing areas. The attack­ers stole mon­ey and dam­aged the fur­ni­ture. Spe­cial atten­tion was reserved to the books, mag­a­zines and orig­i­nal mate­ri­als about the Antifas­cist Resis­tance which the build­ing makes avail­able to the pub­lic. Just in case it wasn’t clear who was behind the attack.

Nev­er­the­less, the state of per­ma­nent mobil­i­sa­tion declared last May by the NO TAV car­ries on; the nation­al tour that start­ed in Octo­ber in Bologna will con­clude in the next few days in Genoa, and more ini­tia­tives have been announced to protest against the new decree. 

Sources: this arti­cle, and var­i­ous oth­er things bor­rowed and recy­cled from Italy Indy­media.

Written/translated by Italy Calling.

NO TAV (No to the High Speed Train) is a move­ment based in the Susa Val­ley in Pied­mont that oppos­es the cre­ation of the new high speed rail­way line between Turin and Lyon in France. This line is part of a EU project which plans to con­nect Lyon to Budapest and then onto Ukraine. Sim­i­lar protest move­ments were active in the ear­ly 90s in Flo­rence, Bologna and Rome, but their mil­i­tan­cy and the bru­tal repres­sion that this trig­gered in the Susa Val­ley has made the Pied­mon­tese move­ment the most talked about.

The sim­ple prin­ci­ple behind the move­ment is that a new high speed rail­way line in the Val­ley is com­plete­ly use­less and not need­ed, its only pur­pose being the prof­it of the many pri­vate com­pa­nies that have shares in it. The NO TAV  think that the cur­rent rail­way line between Pied­mont and France is more than suf­fi­cient, con­sid­er­ing that traf­fic in the area has nev­er been incred­i­bly high. More impor­tant­ly, the con­struc­tion of the line would utter­ly and irre­versibly destroy a huge part of the Susa Val­ley, caus­ing not only an envi­ron­men­tal but also an eco­nom­ic and social dis­as­ter, with busi­ness­es clos­ing down and vil­lages being com­plete­ly dis­fig­ured or dis­ap­pear­ing.

High speed rail­way lines in Italy are con­sid­ered to be of “strate­gic inter­est”, which trans­lat­ed from polit­i­cal bull­shit lan­guage means that the law allows this type of works WITHOUT con­sult­ing the local pop­u­la­tion and insti­tu­tions what­so­ev­er. At a time of eco­nom­ic col­lapse such as Italy is going through, the works require bil­lions of Ital­ian tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey, at the expense of pri­ma­ry ser­vices like edu­ca­tion and health. It would main­ly be con­struc­tion and oth­er pri­vate com­pa­nies prof­it­ing from it, but when fin­ished and in use, the low demand for the line would end up mak­ing it a loss-mak­ing bur­den on the tax­pay­ers. Like in Ross­port, Ire­land, the locals’ con­cerns and pro­pos­als are being com­plete­ly ignored in the name of the only Mod­ern God: mon­ey.

The NO TAV came up with their own plan for the area which would include:
- chang­ing the pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion process­es to decrease trans­port of peo­ple and goods, espe­cial­ly on long dis­tances
- sup­port­ing local sus­tain­able trades instead of big indus­tries  
- cre­at­ing or improv­ing local means of sus­tain­able and green trans­port for work­ers and stu­dents
- sup­port­ing and incre­ment­ing the use of the already exist­ing local rail­way line

The main source of this arti­cle is Turin’s NO TAV web­site.