State organised butchery in Genoa

State organised butchery

“YOU CAN’T defend the action of the police in shooting and killing someone,” said Peter Hain, minister for European Affairs.

Yet Tony Blair did just that.

While Hain condemned the Italian police’s “excessive reaction”, Blair backed their actions.

Even Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, tried to distance himself from the raid on the media centre of the Genoa Social Forum (GSF), saying he didn’t know it was going to be attacked.

One eye-witness called this raid “authorised butchery”. 200 police stormed a school which was also used as a dormitory. GSF volunteers and sleeping protesters were brutally battered, splattering walls and floors with blood.

61 were injured. 93 people were arrested, including victims carried out on stretchers. The police also smashed computers and destroyed or seized all evidence of police brutality from the previous two days.

The level of repression against demonstrators has escalated with each anti-capitalist protest.

In Gothenburg, live ammunition was deployed against protesters for the first time in Sweden since 1931, wounding three.

In Genoa, 20,000 Italian Carabinieri used tanks, tear gas, water cannon, clubs, and plastic, rubber and live bullets killing one person and injuring hundreds.

These protests have shaken the representatives of global capitalism. It’s not a small minority of violent protesters they fear, but radicalised young people linking up with workers against the system.

With the capitalist world economy on the verge of recession, protests will increase.

Excessive state violence is being used to try and deter and criminalise all anti-capitalist protesters.

There is mounting evidence of state collusion with the “black bloc” in Genoa and use of provocateurs.

A Catholic priest saw ‘anarchists’ getting out of a police van. Others saw ‘men in black’ in police stations and undercover agents throwing Molotov cocktails. CWI members witnessed black-clad men standing beside the police.

A London Evening Standard journalist saw a plainclothes police officer disguised as a journalist fire a gun in the air: this police tactic could put journalists at risk.

On the Friday while some protesters were smashing and looting, police sat and watched.

When Carlo Giuliani’s police killer was “trapped” in a police van, other police vehicles were parked less than 30 metres away.