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Independent Media Center
Ad hoc Genoa Solidarity Committee
www.indymedia.org
RESPONSE TO POLICE
RAID ON GENOA
SOCIAL FORUM AND IMC ITALIA OFFICES
23 JUNE
2001
CONTACT:
Han Soete, IMC-belgium member
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
+ 32 476 533
188
Doug Morris, IMC-chicago member
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(847)
657-0182
Sheri Herndon, IMC-seattle member
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
206.261.0184
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Independent Media Center
Network (IMC) (http://www.indymedia.org) demands that independent
journalism and journalists be protected from state repression. We also demand
this incident of grave repression be given the full investigation and scrutiny
that it deserves. Reports indicate that black clad provocateurs were working
in conjunction with Italian Military Police in a vicious attack on peaceful
organizers.
MIDNIGHT RAID IN GENOA
On early Sunday
morning, Italian Police stormed the IMC press office armed with tear gas and
batons. Italian military police and unknown provocateurs simultaneously raided
the school building across the street that has hosted various groups
participating in the Genoa Social Forum (GSF) (http://www.genoa-g8.org/).
Persons in the IMC at
the time of the raid were forced to stand against the wall with their hands up
while police searched equipment and personal effects. Reports vary on the
number of injuries sustained by IMC staff. IMC-Italia reports that one IMC
reporter from the UK is hospitalized with serious injuries from the attacks.
Materials reportedly seized during the raid include audio mini disks, video
tapes and computer hard drives. Other reports allege that telecommunications
equipment was damaged and/or destroyed during the raid. In the same building,
the police also raided the Radio Gap radio station and forced it off the air
for a short time.
The neighboring school building hosting GSF
organizers was where the worst violence occurred. Eyewitnesses claim that
around 50 black clad provocateurs first entered the street in front of
the school overturning dumpsters and creating chaos. They then removed their
black sweatshirts and entered the school and began beating those inside
indiscriminately; "most of the most savage beatings were again not done by
uniformed police but by characters dressed in jeans and bandanas and helmets
with 'police' written on their T-shirts...." Hundreds of Italian police sealed
off the street and a helicopter flew low overhead as if on a military
operation. Press in attendance was kept back at a distance.
Many
individuals were awoken from their sleep and lined up along walls, hands
over heads. The ensuing brutal assault lasted over 45 minutes...
Horrible screams from the building could be heard on the streets below.
Afterwards, the floors and walls were covered in blood. Twenty wounded
were carried out, many on stretchers, and three were unconscious (according to
BBC reporter Bill Hayton who was present during the raid). The injured were
taken to ambulances that arrived with the police; reports today indicate over
50 injured. Police claimed to have authority to enter and search the building
for weapons under Article 41 (an anti-terrorist act). Later an Italian MP,
Luisa Morgantini, arrived and told the police they had no such authority since
the schools resided on state-owned property, it was at this point the Police
and provocateurs left the building.
The Genoa Social Forum held a press
conference Sunday morning concerning the details of the raid. (see
http://italy.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=6282). Volunteer lawyers for
activists report that computers were destroyed and that police stole
information during the raid that related to their organizational work,
including the transcripts of testimonies. Materials were also
confiscated from the IMC offices that might have provided legal documentation
of police abuses in the preceding days. One lawyer stated, "The police blitz
is contrary to a state based upon rights and brings in a climate of
terror."
Throughout the day Sunday , the IMC newswire contained reports
of continued police beatings of activists in Genoa, both in the streets and in
the jails... Reports indicate that many injured demonstrators are fearful to
seek treatment in hospitals since the police have been removing people
with unexplained wounds and taking them to jail. At present over 500 hundred
people are missing and unaccounted for.
A full investigation is called
for, concerning the use of violent provocateurs by police. Reports all weekend
in Genoa have asserted that much of the property destruction and violent
provocations were carried out by individuals apparently working in
conjunction with police and dressed like black clad anarchists. Similar
reports have surfaced in past demonstrations in Prague, Quebec and
elsewhere. This disturbing claim and the subsequent violence and closing
of the GSF and IMC demand full
attention.
---------------------------------------------
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
-----------------------------------------------
IMC BACKGROUND: A
FREE PRESS NETWORK
The IMCs, or Indymedia, are a network of
independent media organizations and hundreds of individual journalists
offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage.
Indymedia is a democratic
media outlet with the mission to create radical, accurate, and passionate
tellings of truth. The first IMC was initiated in Seattle, in the fall of
1999, during the demonstrations against the World Trade Organization. The
center was created to ensure that diverse voices could be heard with a clarity
and focus beyond the usual chatter of the commercial media
soundbite.
The Indymedia website is an unusual phenomenon in
cyberspace: visited by literally millions, the network has led to the creation
of over fifty collaborative sites in cities all over the world.
For
people in dozens of countries, indymedia.org is news: news that they can rely
on, news that does not have the bias of information/entertainment corporations
who have a stake in maintaining the status quo. The open publishing
software of the web site enables anyone with a basic computer and modem to
post immediately on the news wire, without an intervening editor. Indymedia
has created a model for collaborative work that makes a real difference.
The IMC organizes collaborations between various types of media (print, photo,
video, radio and internet) and between diverse organizations and
individuals. The IMCs are non-hierarchical in nature. The
decisionmaking is by consensus and all participants, including those who can
freely post on the newswire from home, are themselves empowered.
The
growing global justice movement, which is against corporate control of
globalization and for a more democratic and inclusive process of setting the
world's priorities and allocation of resources, has depended on, and
benefitted from, the IMCs to provide breaking and unfiltered coverage of
diverse views, conferences, and demonstrations.
HISTORY OF
STATE SUPPRESSION OF IMC AND THE FUTURE
The recent raid on the
Indymedia Center in Genoa is the latest in a series of intimidations and
threats to this movement of independent media centers.
As the Indymedia
movement has grown, it has been subject to increasing repression. From the
first days in Seattle, when the IMC received a tear gas attack, there have
been indications that authorities identified the IMC movement as a target to
intimidate and silence.
At the IMC in LA during the August 2000
Democratic National Convention, a police raid closed down the satellite van
that was scheduled to uplink live IMC television to a national grassroots
community television network. In Prague, the Czech police raided the IMC
offices, harassing and intimidating journalists and others. During the
days preceding the Bush inauguration, DC police sent spy/provocateur agents to
IMC-DC meetings.
More recently, during the FTAA protests, the FBI
visited the Seattle IMC with a request for all computer logs and a gag-order
injunction demanding that no news of the request be made public on the
net. The IMC in Quebec also suffered police harassment and an attack in
which tear gas was fired into the center. Less than a month later, shortly
after the Cincinnati uprising over police brutality last spring, police served
an order on a coordinator at the Ohio Valley IMC, also requesting records and
tape logs and to appear before a Grand Jury.
The IMC gained a victory
for the independent press community when these injunctions were withdrawn by
the FBI after The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for
Constitutional Rights, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center
intervened to support the IMCs.
The IMC global network will continue to
fight hard to protect the rights of independent journalists around the world
and to ensure that the voices of our many diverse communities are accurately
and respectfully covered and made available to the rest of the world. As
stated in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
"Everyone has the right to the freedom of opinion and expression; this right
includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive
and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of
frontiers."
CONTINUING IMC COVERAGE
For ongoing coverage
of the Genoa protests, stay tuned to IMC-Italia
http://italia.indymedia.org, and global IMC, http://www.indymedia..org.
Eyewitness accounts of
the IMC and GSF raids.
http://sf.indymedia.org/display.php?id=102064
http://la.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=8871
An
IMC NEWS BLAST will be released Tuesday for summary, news and updates
on the protests in Genoa. Here's the link to the first one: http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-news/2001-July/000228.html.
Also
see:
Indymedia radio broadcasts: http://radio.indymedia.org/
Indymedia print summaries
(in distributable newsletter/flier format): http://print.indymedia.org
IMC sites are providing
detailed coverage include (see global website Left column for links): France,
UK, Belgium, Barcelona, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, IMC-Sweden, Brasil,
Argentina, Chicago, and New York City.
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