A-Infos (en) Italy: FdCA statement - Anti-racism is not a crime! (it)

Our solidarity with the anarchist comrades in Lecce (1)
* * * * *
As usual, just when we are about to enter a period of mass (or at the very
least widespread) protest, the State's judicial machine bursts into action,
hitting a few militants with ridiculous charges and exemplary sentences. In the
last few days there have been arrests in various parts of Italy, accompanied by
a frightening array of charges being made against people on spurious grounds
and with little or no evidence.
This is the same legal system that let Trenitalia (2) off the hook, confirming
the dismissal of rail workers who dared to speak their minds and fight in order
to improve their working conditions and the safety of passengers, and also
absolved fascists and the State (3), ordering the families of the victims to
pay the costs of the various trials.

With intimidation in the workplace on the rise, with the obsession for security
equally championed by the left and the right, with the growth of social control
and the criminalization of immigrants, we are now witnessing protests, housing
occupations and the anti-racist struggle as the new targets in an effort to
teach us that whether we like it or not there is no room for change in the
current order of things. And the more the possibilities for social conflict are
reduced, the more there is fear and a rising sense of inevitability.

And while the European Court of Human Rights hypocritically "keeps watch" on
Italy, whose government is oh so zealous in its protection of Fortress Europe
as agreed in the various treaties, will we have to go on watching helplessly as
bodies are fished out of the sea along our coasts and as men and women are
rounded up, imprisoned and shipped out of the country?

The very existence of the CPTs (4) is a crime, comparable to the camps of 60
years ago. Italy's tomato fields are starting to look more and more like the
cotton plantations of yore, complete with overseers, work slaves and sex
slaves, all victims of clandestinity. Those who pretended they saw nothing at
the time or who sheepishly obeyed the law were responsible for those crimes.
But now, those who struggle to throw open the gates of the camps or rescue as
many as possible from the clutches of inhuman, crazy legislation are treated by
the law as criminals. Criminals... just like Harriet Tubman with her rifle, or
like those unarmed Quakers who enabled so many workers to gain their freedom
albeit without the freedom from exploitation.

Because beneath all racism, beneath all repression, today just like yesterday,
there is someone dreaming of total control over the workers, there is someone
wanting to block even the smallest murmurings of self-organization, there is a
plan, and quite a successful plan at that, to break any form of class
solidarity at all. And anyone who interferes with that plan is hit.

But it is up to every one of us to smash the plan and to build a free and equal
society.

And every one of us has a part to play.

FEDERAZIONE dei COMUNISTI ANARCHICI

16th May 2005

http://www.fdca.it/fdcaen



Translator's notes:

(1) The arrested comrades were active in the protests against the local CPT
(see note 4). They are charged with the standard accusation of "subversion" and
other minor offences like "unlawful demonstration".

(2) Italy's privatized national rail company

(3) See the recent appeal decision in the "Piazza Fontana case" where three
(neo)fascists were exonerated. In 1969, a bomb exploded at a bank in Piazza
Fontana in Milan, killing 16 and injuring nearly 100 people. Police first
arrested (naturally!) an anarchist, Pino Pinelli, who "committed suicide" after
3 days in police custody. Later, the three fascists were tried and sentenced
for the attack.

(4) Centri di Permanenza Temporanea - "Temporary Stay Centres", the official
name for the prison camps where "illegal" immigrants are detained, often for
months, before being deported. Conditions in the CPT in Lecce were so bad that
its director, a priest, was arrested on charges of violence and kidnapping


From: Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici <fdca@fdca.it>
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