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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Global IMC Indy Releases Response to Police Raid on GSF and Genoa IMC |
Current rating: 0 |
by Ad hoc Genoa Solidarity Committee, reposted b
(No verified email address) |
24 Jul 2001
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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. |
------------ please distribute widely --------------
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
han@skynet.be
+ 32 476 533
188
Doug Morris, IMC-chicago member
eredgreen@yahoo.com
(847) 657-0182
Sheri
Herndon, IMC-seattle member
sheri@speakeasy.org
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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See also:
http://www.indymedia.org
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