The ghosts of summit-protests-past: Seeking justice after Genoa at the Grassroots Gathering

The events of Genoa 2001 are still going through the courts, as the Genova Legal Forum puts the state on trial for human rights crimes during the Diaz raid and at Bolzaneto detention centre. Verdicts are in soon. Activist Trauma Support, on tour with films, information, and a donations bucket for the court case, will stop off in Dublin on Friday May 30th to open this year's Grassroots Gathering. We caught up with ATS's Mark Covell before he caught his ferry over.

Related Links: Genoa G8 on Indy.ie Activist Trauma Support Grassroots Gathering Details GG Homepage GG 2008 Reader

The ghosts of summit-protests-past – and of the torture techniques pioneered by the British Army in Northern Ireland – will be in the air on Friday May 30th from 8pm, when the 2008 Grassroots Gathering opens with the Irish leg of a major film and information tour by Activist Trauma Support and the Genova Legal Forum. Mark Covell of ATS, a veteran of the protests against the Genoa G8 summit of 2001, will tell the story of the battle for some kind of justice by the survivors of some of Genoa's bloodiest episodes. He'll have some help from the high-quality films put together by the Genova Legal Forum to reconstruct just what happened on those July days in Genoa.

Mark got the inside track on this story the hard way: “I suffered a broken hand, damaged my spine, eight broken ribs, a shredded lung, lost most of my teeth and was in a coma.”

But the reminiscing isn't just for posterity: since 2001, GLC have been busy building cases against the Italian state, and its agents, for the human rights crimes of Genoa. Mark emphasises the scale of the enterprise: “It took some time... to put together two of the largest human rights cases in the world, I think... given the number of police who are on trial. 29 police were arrested for Diaz, and indicted in 2003, put on trial in October 2005, and for Bolzaneto it was 47.”

These cases – dealing with the infamous police attack on the Diaz school, a base-camp for anti-G8 protesters, and with the torture charges surrounding the Bolzaneto detention centre – are set to conclude in the coming months, and GLC and ATS are set on spreading the word and drumming up support for a process that has cost them millions of Euro: “It's cost us about €7,500,000 to prosecute the case.”

Although Mark is hopeful that the trials will result in multiple years in prison for many of the dozens of police chiefs and officers on trial – “the cream of their officer corps” – and in substantial compensation for some of their victims, he also highlights the obstacles facing the case: “Because there is no law of torture in Italy, you can't apply sentences of, say, around ten years. So the highest we'll be able to get is five years, eight months... I'm very disappointed the judge can only hand out sentences according to Italian statute law, it's not enough. You see protestors get eleven years [in the recent 'Trial of 25”] and then you see a... policeman who breaks the fingers of protestors [in Bolzaneto detention centre] only getting like three years. It's not right.”

Although international torture agreements have not been incorporated into Italian law, Mark stresses that the GLC cases draw on the precedents of the Irish state's legal battle with the UK over torture in Northern Ireland: “In 1972 at the time of Bloody Sunday, the British Army came up with five torture techniques, which was revealed in court paperwork from that year. It seems that the police at Bolzaneto adopted four out of the five techniques... Obviously the same techniques have gone on to be used at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, so what happened in your country is now pretty much standard torture technique chic.

“We want to reach Mary Robinson, because one of the things we wanna do is bring the Diaz case to the United Nations, and we need her help, and we also want to make her aware, and the Irish government, of the relationship that the case has with your country.”

Asked about the implications of the trials and of Genoa's legacy for the movement against global capitalism now and in the future, Mark points out trends in Italy and elsewhere: “Last year a sort of low intensity war broke out between left-wingers and right-wing sort of Nazi supporters in Rome, and this is escalating... There's been a killing of a protester in Turin just a few weeks ago. Also, there's recently been an Italian election where Berlusconi's got back in, and Liga Nord have also swept in... So we're back to a worse political status quo than there was before the G8 itself...

“So we're very conscious of what impact the outcome of these trials might have in Italy... Last year the Diaz and Bolzaneto trials generated about 600 news articles in Italy, plus several TV shows and documentaries... We had a big demo in Genoa in November, we were expecting 20,000 people and 80,000 people showed up... We're hoping to get a parliamentary inquiry off the ground to bring reforms to the Italian police... We're also trying to put Gianfranco Fini on trial, because he's the man responsibe [as then Interior Minister] for ordering the Diaz raid... There's also a new torture law that's passing its way through the Italian parliament – because at the moment Italian police can torture their citizens and get away with it.

“The No-Global movement still exists, especially in places like Latin America, and it's moved on since 2001... The movement won't be bowed by this sort of violence from the state... I think there'll be more protests from 2009 onwards, as people protest over Kyoto, food riots, the energy crisis... The G8 returns to Italy in 2009, in La Maddelena, and we wanna talk about that as well...

“So it's really up to the state to understand what's coming towards it, and not to use violence, to use democratic means and negotiation to sort all this out. No more people need to die. I'm just so tired of seeing people die over this.


Genoa Benefit Film night: An opening to Grassroots Gathering 2008

Casadh, Unit 13, Newmarket Square, Dublin 8
Friday May 30th
8pm

Films:

L'Ordine Publico, Genoa 2001: Public Order during the G8

The Diaz Raid, Genoa 2001

Suggested donation: €3/4
No-one refused through lack of funds

See: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/87736