Violent Repression of High Velocity Train protest in Italy’s Susa Valley

At around 3.30 yes­ter­day morn­ing near the vil­lage of Venaus in Pied­mon­t’s Susa Val­ley, police attacked and forcibly evict­ed locals and activists who had been peace­ful­ly occu­py­ing the val­ley for the past week in protest against plans to con­struct a High Veloc­i­ty Train line and tun­nel link­ing Turin with Lyon.

Accord­ing to reports, more than ten peo­ple were injured and three arrest­ed as police moved in with bull­doz­ers, kick­ing and beat­ing sleep­ing pro­test­ers and destroy­ing bar­ri­cades and hos­pi­tal­i­ty struc­tures erect­ed dur­ing the occu­pa­tion of a site where work is due to begin on the new High Veloc­i­ty train link between Turin and Lyon. One elder­ly inhab­i­tant of the val­ley who suf­fered a coro­nary after being trun­cheoned in the stom­ach was admit­ted to hos­pi­tal where his con­di­tion is said to be sta­ble. Oth­ers injured includ­ed sev­er­al news pho­tog­ra­phers.

There was wide­spread con­dem­na­tion of the vio­lence lat­er in the day from lead­ing left-wing and some cen­tre-left politi­cians, along with calls for the res­ig­na­tion of the police com­man­der who led the assault — incit­ing his men to “kill them all” accord­ing to sev­er­al wit­ness­es — and the Min­is­ter of the Inte­ri­or, Giuseppe Pisanu who defend­ed the police action, claim­ing that the val­ley-dwellers’ protest had been manip­u­lat­ed by ‘extrem­ists,’ a claim hot­ly denied by the may­ors of the com­mu­ni­ties involved.
Indeed the entire pop­u­la­tion of the Susa Val­ley have con­tin­ued to reaf­firm their oppo­si­tion to the con­tro­ver­sial project, which they say is unnec­es­sary and envi­ron­men­tal­ly dan­ger­ous. The moun­tains where the tun­nel is to be exca­vat­ed are known to con­tain sig­nif­i­cant deposits of asbestos and ura­ni­um and there has been mount­ing crit­i­cism from sev­er­al quar­ters regard­ing the pro­jec­t’s eco­nom­ic use­ful­ness. Also not with­out sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that the com­pa­ny award­ed the con­tract for the project is part-owned by the wife of Italy’s Min­is­ter of Trans­port, Pietro Lunar­di. Yes­ter­day morn­ing’s vio­lent action has shown that local and nation­al gov­ern­ment and their sup­port­ing finan­cial lob­bies are deter­mined to go ahead with the rail-link, which they claim is vital to Italy’s eco­nom­ic future, even if it means ignor­ing the col­lec­tive will of the local pop­u­la­tion and resort­ing to anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic and author­i­tar­i­an mea­sures.

Mean­while, there were numer­ous strikes and demon­stra­tions across Italy dur­ing the day in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the val­ley’s inhab­i­tants, while sev­er­al rail­way sta­tions and motor­ways in the Susa area were occu­pied, block­ing traf­fic for sev­er­al hours, to which police respond­ed with fur­ther vio­lence. More demon­stra­tions and dis­rup­tions are planned over the next few days.

For more infor­ma­tion go to:

http://italy.indymedia.org/features/piemunt/#2603
http://ww2.carta.org/notizieinmovimento/
http://www.carta.org/campagne/ambiente/notav/index.htm