Italy: Free the people! Fight teo-cons!

The struggle against detention centers in Italy has passed trough a very intense week and is moving on a wider ground. As reported on the previous releases on www.globalproject.info and www.meltingpot.org, facing the opening of two of the biggest detention centers for immigrants ever build in Italy, protests are growing in intensity.

At Gradisca d'Isonzo, in the nort-east land border and at Bari, south-east coast border, for this week it is scheduled the complete opening of the detention centers.

This opening has been delayed both in Gradisca as in Bari, thanks to protests, blockades, clashes with the police, marches. From the 27 till saturday 4 of march 2006, hundreds of anti-racist activists, citizens coordinated in an assembly, studens and immigrants have partecipated to the actions and the protests. The targets of these protests have been the structures as well as the private and cooperative firms working in the facility management and prisoners "traitement". The opening of the CPT in Bari is scheduled for monday 6 of March, it would round up 190 people for each shift; the CPT of Gradisca is now open but not yet in function it can "host" up to 250 people. Activists are monitoring the situation and camping close to the centers and promoting and active boycott against all the logistic structures and companies working on the centers. The sudden opening has been decided by the Minister of the Interior Beppe Pisanu, just after the end of the Winter Olimpic Games and before the political elections of 9-10 of April 2006. Now more policemen are avilable to defend the structures and vigilate the immigrants detainees and the opening has been used by the right as an electoral spotlight.

The 27 of march 2006 will begin the trial to 47 anti-racist and disobedients that in 2002 dismantled the detention center in Bologna; 2 anarchist are still in jail and several other autonomous and libertarian activists from Turin to Milan, Trieste, Bologna, Padova, Venezia, Bari, Lecce are facing also heavy accusations for actions agains detention centers and companies that make businnes on deportations and detention.

Meanwhile, the right wing racist party Lega Nord, the third party in the Berlusconi's government coalition, is feeding an hars campaing against immigrants, especially the islamic ones.

Our analisys is that the Lega Nord has openly embraced racist and fascist attitudes, enforcing the "clash of civilizations" discourse in order to gain votes and to raise social fear and mistrust. Lega Nord moved from an autonomist and separatist stance in the '90 to a more openly Catholic and conservative attitude. The minister Calderoli is one of the Lega's frontmans. Las week, showing live on TV his t-shirt with the comics against Prophet Muhamad, has provoked serious protests, especially in Libia where more than 10 protesters where killed by the police while attempting to attack the Italian consulate. Meanwhile the european deputy Mario Borghezio, notorious racist and supporter of the fascist party "Forza Nuova", is acting a press and public campaing against immigrants, giving support to police brutality against immigrants and to open discrimination.

We analize on the same ground the electoral agreement between Berlusconi coalition "Casa delle Libertà" and a regroupment of three small fascist parties: Alternativa Sociale, Fiamma Tricolore, Forza Nuova. They will have deputies and senators in the Italian government. From the days of 2001 in Genoa, where many italian Police and Carabinieri sang fascist songs while torturing prisoners, to the present, fascist aggressions against immigrants and left-wing activists and social centers have grown. With tens of arsons, bomb attacks, woundeds and a dead.

The anti-racist reaction is aimed not only to restrict the public spaces of these racists and to end up their violence but also to analize the new frame in which the right wing groups and parties, from the government itself are enduring a global racism campaing. This aggressive political practice and discourse belong to military and media dispositives of the global war. As empire is experiencing more and more resistance to the war, both on the battlefields as on the "internal front", his supporters are waging more and more aggressive racist and culturalis discourses in order to polarize identities and to spread violence inside the multitude itself. The iraqui civil war is only the last creature of the imperial teo-cons desperate offensive. From Paul Wolfowitz to Osama Bin Laden ending with the local european and Italian bosses, the "clash of civilization" party would see people fighting each other forgetting the real causes of their exploitation and suffering. This is a wery strong conservative discourse that we have to oppose in order to open spaces to political an social radical democratic change.

Saturday 4th of March in Padova, hundreds of anti-racists, immigrants and students have opposed a Lega meeting, with a radio counter-meeting (spoke Dario Fo, Judith Revel, Toni Negri among others) and a demo that tried to reach the meeting space of the Lega party, with shields, rockets and self-defended with fire from the police reaction.

For the end of March-beginning of Aprlil is expected a national rally of Lega Nord in Reggio Emilia where few weeks ago 3000 muslims immigrants protested against the comics with an unusual march in the rich industrial city. The Area of Disobedients, anti-racist groups and Ya Basta are already organizing a counter-march in order to deny public space to the
racist march, to promote a culture of diversity and respect and to link the struggles against deportations, detentions and labour exploitation with the struggle against the war and the teo-conservative ideology.

We believe that it is important to defend the right to resistance, here and everywhere and on at the same time to promote a cultural and political shiftfrom the narrow and destructive discourse of the "clash of civilization" to the claim of a universal citizenship.

In these years the global movements have experienced and put into practice "a world where many world can live". Against the dogmatic imposition of religion and its use as a weapon, here and everywhere, we defend the right to choose how and where to live, and we oppose actively clericalism, sexism, racism and capitalism. This is part of our "otra campaña"...

Ya Basta Bologna

Gradisca's and Bari's detention centres opened their gates

(09 Mar. 2006) Finally Mr Pisanu, Home Office secretary, made his goals and the two new opposed detention centres opened their gates at night. It happened in the night between March 7th and 8th 2006 when antiracist activists were not monitoring the area of the two centres. Today there's one datainee inside Gradisca and four in Bari. "They had to open the Italian Guantanamos at night", Mr Metz, regional councillor in Friuli, declares, "They had to hide themselves, to act in concealment". In the past years in fact movements, associations and local institutions have been opposing the opening of the detention centres and they have recently chose to be everyday outside their gate to practise civil disobedience against this Italian shame. The two centres are just like the worst houses of detention, "they recall of Nazis concentration camps", explained Mss Luana Zanella, mp, who entered the facilities.

Next March 18th 2006, international day of mobilisation against the war in Iraq, there will two demonstrations in Italy. In Rome and in Gorizia, "Against the Italian Guantamos".

Notes from an activist mailinglist