A-Infos (en) Italy, Torino, anarres info: TURIN. THE DESERTERS' SQUARE (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Many people gave life to a day of anti-militarist struggle, in the name 
of solidarity with the men, women, boys and girls who die everywhere in 
wars fought to affirm the interests of narrow ruling elites. ---- On the 
afternoon of February 24, despite the rain, wind and cold that brought 
winter back to the city, Piazza Castello quickly filled up. ---- Alessio 
Lega's rich songbook accompanied the many interventions that followed. 
---- "No war", a huge cardboard sign, was erected on the side of Palazzo 
Madama. ---- Salvatore Corvaio gave life to the anti-militarist 
performance "Why?".

In the streets, the wars from Artsakh to Sudan were recounted, two of 
the many to which Italy contributed directly, supplying weapons and 
trainers in the silence of most.
The 120,000 Armenians of Artsakh, whom the Azerbaijani troops had 
declared they wanted to execute, fled after the year-long siege and a 
final attack launched by troops supplied with weapons by Leonardo and 
trained in Italy.
In the two years preceding the outbreak of the civil war which reduced 
Sudan to rubble, killing or forcing hundreds of thousands of people to 
leave their homes, Italy supplied weapons to the RSF, the Rapid Support 
Force of Dagalo, former commander of the Janjaweed. In this war Dagalo 
and his men returned to their favorite sport, the one they had been 
known for for decades, that is, burning villages, raping women, killing 
men and enlisting children.
Italy was counting on Dagalo to block the departures of migrants from 
that area. Dagalo reciprocates the support from him, in the silence of 
the media and, unfortunately, of many of the movements.
The Turin square of 24 February also tried to give voice to the victims 
of these and many other forgotten wars.

Two years after the start of the war in Ukraine, hundreds of thousands 
of people have died and six million four hundred thousand Ukrainians 
have had to abandon their homes to take refuge elsewhere.
Yet even this war, obsessively covered in the media for months, today 
remains in the background.
In both Russia and Ukraine, tens of thousands of people have deserted, 
refused to take up arms, fled or are in hiding. In Russia, opposition to 
the war cost many people prison, torture and beatings. Yet it shows no 
signs of waning.
In recent months in Ukraine, professional recruiters have raided public 
transport, markets and shopping centers in search of men of the right 
age to capture and forcibly drag to the front. But in many places they 
don't have an easy life. On public transport people, especially women, 
form a wall to prevent men from being taken away. At the Odessa market 
the stalls were closed and a crowd prevented the government thugs from 
doing their work.

The war, once again devastating, unleashed after the ferocious attack by 
Hamas on the Israeli civilian population, with killings, rapes and 
kidnappings, has reduced a large part of the houses, hospitals and 
infrastructures of northern Gaza to a pile of rubble, forcing the 
population to take refuge in Rafah, in a deadly trap with no possibility 
of escape. The deaths, already over thirty thousand, including ten 
thousand children, are growing day by day among a population gutted by 
bombs, without water, food or shelter.
Stopping this war is necessary.
Even in Israel there are those who refuse to enlist, those who do not 
accept the occupation and apartheid and oppose them, paying the price 
harshly. In Gaza, a document by young Gazans tells us that, even in 
those conditions, there are those who reject nationalism and the 
religious war desired by the governments of both parties, determined, 
albeit with enormous disparity of forces, to annihilate the populations 
civilians.

Support for deserters from all wars was one of the central moments of 
the day of anti-militarist struggle.
Deserting the war was written on one of the banners in the square.

Everywhere there are governments that demand killing to move a border, 
to annihilate the "enemies", other human beings massacred in the name of 
the homeland, of religion, of the interests of a powerful few.

Everywhere there are those who oppose, there are those who desert, those 
who spit on the flags of every nation, because they know that only an 
international humanity will be able to lay the foundations of that world 
of free and free and equal that each of us brings in your heart.

A stone's throw from our homes there are factories that build the 
weapons used in the wars that bloodied the planet.
In schools, girls and boys are subjected to a relentless recruitment 
campaign and increasingly marked nationalist propaganda.
In the streets of our city, soldiers armed with machine guns and 
truncheons support the police and carabinieri in ethnically targeted 
control of the poorest suburbs.

Soldiers who leave from the bases and barracks of our cities are engaged 
in military missions abroad in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
They want us to believe that wars are too far away, that we can't do 
anything to fight them.
Those who promote, support and fuel wars would like us to be impotent, 
passive, helpless. We're not.
Every time a soldier enters a school we can get involved, when he is 
about to open an arms factory we can get involved, when they decide to 
carry out exercises near our homes we can get involved.

The day ended with the square singing together with Alessio "our 
homeland is the whole world".
A good omen for the hard times we are forced to live and which we do not 
intend to resign ourselves to.

https://www.anarresinfo.org/torino-la-piazza-dei-disertori/
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