Europe after Genoa
by Heather Wokusch

Almost a month after the end of the Genoa G8 summit, the meeting is still making headlines. Not for any great deals signed, but for the brutality exercised by the Italisn police, brutality that even conservative politicians there are calling "excessive." The violent clashes between protesters and police, in which one protester was killed and hundreds wounded, has begun to move Europe in much the same way that the 1970 Kent State shootings shocked North America. The media and foreign governments, at first critical and dismissive of the protesters, have begun to turn toward them and against the Italians. Where this will ultimately lead is unclear, but the genie is undeniably out of the bottle.

Of course, brutality against protesters is nothing new. The London-based Guardian noted, "Recently three students protesting against World Bank privatization were shot in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. Young men fighting World Bank-imposed water privatization have been tortured and killed in Cochabamba, Bolivia."

The difference this time is that the protester was white and European, and that his death was caught on film. Images of 23-year-old Carlo Giuliani hoisting a fire extinguisher to throw at a police vehicle and then being shot in the head and run over were broadcast internationally. The initial media reaction was predictably one-sided, blaming Giuliani and supporting both the summiteers and Italian police. The July 30 edition of European Newsweek noted: "Astonishingly, under the circumstances, some protest leaders denounced the death as murder, blaming police brutality," and clips of Tony Blair's sanctimonious assessment — "It is always a source of regret if anyone loses their life ... but when there is violent protest, people can get hurt" — were shown over and again.

Meanwhile, however, the unprecedented and indiscriminate police brutality that culminated on July 21st in an assault on the Genoa Social Forum (GSF), Independent Media Center (IMC) and Radio Gap headquarters at a local school, initially went virtually unreported in the mainstream press. As eyewitnesses stated in Independent Media, an undercover UK journalist was "attacked by the Carabinieri [Italian military police], beaten, left on the ground, and repeatedly kicked and beaten by every passing officer over the next hour despite his critical condition." The police then invaded the GSF office and, as an eyewitness recounts, "The media and politicians were kept out. And they [the police] beat people. They beat people who had been sleeping, who held their hands up in a gesture of innocence and cried out,'Pacifisti! Pacifisti!' They beat the men and the women. They broke bones, smashed teeth, shattered skulls. They left blood on the walls, on the windows, a pool of it in every spot where people had been sleeping. When they had finished their work, they brought in the ambulances. All night long we watched from across the street as the stretchers were carried out." Over 50 people were badly injured and at least three carried out unconscious.

What awaited the battered journalists and activists next was arguably even worse. As told in an interview with La Repubblica, a major Italian newspaper, and reprinted in Indy Media, one of the police officers involved said that when the wounded were removed from the GSF headquarters and taken to jail, "They were beaten, forced to stand up against walls, and they were forced to sing fascist songs. Officers urinated on detainees, and women were threatened with rape via batons. Prison police authorities watched as one girl vomited blood."

Coverage was at first cryptic to the point of incomprehensibility. CNN ran clips of bloodied people being removed from the GSF building but gave no context or further reporting, despite the fact that most of the assault had been broadcast live over the Internet. On the other hand, The Wall Street Journal noted that "Italian police raided a school building housing activists and arrested all 92 people inside. Afterward, the building was covered in pools of blood and littered with smashed computers. Several reporters at the school were hurt; one had his arm broken. Police said 61 of the detainees had been wounded in riots that preceded the raid, but neighbors described hours of beatings and screaming coming from the school during the raid."

However, as abused activists began returning home and giving interviews, the media, and attending governments, began to take notice. Since the summit ended, across Europe there have been over 200 large and noisy protests against the Italian police, with 100,000 protesting across Italy alone. Britain's The Weekly Telegraph ran a front-page story entitled "Britons tell of beatings by G8 police" that said, "Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, bowed to pressure to investigate the claims of police brutality at the G8 summit in Genoa as bruised and battered British protesters flew home last week without being charged." Amnesty International demanded a "comprehensive investigation by an independent commission of inquiry regarding the conduct of Italian law enforcement and prison officers," and Reporters sans Frontieres reported multiple instances of police assaults on journalists and also called for an investigation.

And the public backlash has spread elsewhere. On July 22 the Austrian theater group VolxTheatre was arrested outside Genoa and charged with vandalism, endangerment of public safety and membership in a criminal organization, the "evidence" consisting largely of their juggling equipment. Yet the Austrian government was not initially interested in helping; unlike government officials from other countries who actively lobbied for the return of their jailed compatriots, Austrian Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner simply stated that she had "trust in the Italian administration of justice."

Editorials and newspaper reports, including a recent piece in the New York Times, have since suggested that it may have been anti-protester bias that was to blame for the arrest. Regardless, public outcry over the affair has been intense, and Austrian government officials are now falling all over themselves to prove how seriously they take the situation. While most protesters from other countries have been set free, the VolxTheatre members remain in Italian prisons and the Austrian government will reportedly begin actively appealing for their release.

Fallout has also occurred in Italy, where Premier Silvio Berlusconi was jeered in parliament as he stated regret for the violence but ultimately blamed the protesters. Berlusconi agreed to hold an inquiry into the violence, and President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi said he would hold Berlusconi to his pledge to keep the inquiry above board. Meanwhile there are lawsuits against the Italian police and government being prepared by activists from Britain and Germany, and no doubt more on the way.

All of the above has received little or no coverage in the mainstream US media, but perhaps officials should start taking notice — the next stop in the "Summer of Protest" is the International Monetary Fund and World Bank summit in Washington, D.C., this September.

E-mail Heather Wokusch at womanrant at hotmail dot com.