[R-G] Fw: WSJ on Genoa

[Johannes Schneider]

> Wall Street Journal - August 6, 2001
> 
> G-8 Protesters Say They Were Beaten,
> Deprived of Rights by Police in Italy
> 
> By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV and IAN JOHNSON
> Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
> 
> Just before midnight on July 21, Miriam Heigl, a political-science 
> student from Munich, was figuring out a way to get home after three 
> days protesting the Group of Eight summit in the Italian city of 
> Genoa.
> 
> As she scanned train schedules posted in the Armando Diaz school 
> complex, some 70 members of an Italian SWAT team smashed through the 
> front door, wielding truncheons and shields, their faces covered with 
> blue and red handkerchiefs. Ms. Heigl and about 30 others were 
> arrested and taken to a police barracks, where the 25-year-old says 
> she was made to strip, humiliated and deprived of basic civil 
> liberties.
> 
> Hospital records show that 61 others in the school fared worse -- 
> they ended up requiring treatment for injuries. "All I remember is 
> being hit on the head with a truncheon right away," says Melanie 
> Jonasch, a 28-year-old archeology student from Berlin, "and then I 
> woke up here" -- in a Genoese hospital, where she has had surgery for 
> a broken mastoid bone behind her left ear.
> 
> To millions world-wide, the Genoa G-8 summit two weeks ago will be 
> remembered as the most violent in a series of international protests 
> against "globalization," a rallying cry first popularized during 
> clashes at a 1999 trade meeting in Seattle. As the leaders of eight 
> leading industrialized countries met in Italy, TV viewers around the 
> world watched police fight citywide battles with anarchist militants 
> who set dozens of cars, banks and storefronts afire.
> 
> But out of the TV cameras' gaze, another scene of violence was 
> unfolding -- on the part of the police. Now, as details of the school 
> raid emerge sketchily, it is turning into a political crisis for the 
> government of Silvio Berlusconi, the pro-American media mogul who ran 
> on a law-and-order platform.
> 
> Initially, his government firmly defended police behavior. Mr. 
> Berlusconi said the school raid simply proved "collusion" between the 
> anarchists and mainstream demonstrators. Communications Minister 
> Maurizio Gasparri said it was "a detail" whether "a cop used his 
> truncheon four times instead of just three." The police, in a report 
> a few hours after the raid, said that the school was a "refuge of the 
> extreme fringe of the Black Block," and all those inside were members 
> of that violent, anarchist group.
> 
> More recently, however, the government said something may have gone 
> wrong. The judiciary has launched an inquiry into the use of violence 
> during the raid and the treatment of those detained. Parliament has 
> formed a separate commission of inquiry. Interior Minister Claudio 
> Scajola promised last Wednesday that "if some untoward behavior will 
> emerge, and it looks like it is emerging, then it will be severely 
> reprimanded." Shortly thereafter, he removed three top police 
> officials, saying this would make it easier to investigate.
> 
> Part of the pressure on the government is coming from abroad, 
> especially Germany. After first helping gather information on 39 
> Germans arrested in the sweep at Diaz, Berlin is calling for a fuller 
> accounting. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer delivered that 
> demand to his Italian counterpart in a telephone call last week.
> 
> The official inquiries are just beginning, but interviews with 
> numerous participants and witnesses offer the most complete account 
> yet of the events at the Diaz school. The accounts of 19 Diaz 
> detainees, who were interviewed in five countries, and those of 
> doctors, local officials and neighborhood witnesses indicate that 
> heavy force was used to arrest demonstrators who, for the most part, 
> hadn't been organizing the preceding days' violence but had been 
> peacefully protesting. After being denied contact with lawyers and 
> families for anywhere from one to four days, most of the people 
> detained at Diaz were brought before judges, who released all but one 
> and found that the overwhelming majority of the arrests were 
> "illegitimate."
> 
> A complete response from the police wasn't possible because the raid 
> is under investigation. In an interview, Francesco Gratteri, head of 
> the national police Central Operative Service, partly defended the 
> raid. "One must take into account that the raid was very energetic 
> because it was met with an equally energetic resistance," said Mr. 
> Gratteri, who stood in the school's courtyard when the police charged 
> in. But he added that "evidently something abnormal happened there, 
> which is why there is an investigation."
> 
> For Ms. Heigl, the events began around 11 p.m. on Saturday, July 21. 
> She and her boyfriend, Tobias Hubner, were heading over to the 
> Pertini middle school, part of a group of junior and senior high 
> schools known as the Diaz school complex.
> 
> Ms. Heigl was feeling a sense of relief. On Friday, a militant had 
> been shot dead by police. On Saturday afternoon, tear gas had been 
> used to disperse a crowd estimated by the interior ministry at 
> 200,000. As rumors circulated that the police would raid places where 
> the demonstrators camped, such as the stadium where she and Mr. 
> Hubner had been sleeping, they decided they wanted a safer place. 
> They headed for the school, also open to the demonstrators, because 
> it was just across the street from the headquarters and press center 
> for the mainstream organizers.
> 
> Eager to Get Home
> 
> Back in Munich, Ms. Heigl had been engaged in fighting radical 
> right-wing groups and won a prestigious national award for her work. 
> But this was the first big demonstration she had attended, and she 
> was exhausted from the crowds and flood of information. "Everyone was 
> unsettled and we just wanted to get home," Ms. Heigl says.
> 
> After checking train schedules near a computer area on the ground 
> floor, she and Mr. Hubner walked upstairs to visit a friend. 
> Suddenly, panic broke loose. From downstairs she heard cries of 
> "Police! Police!" as the front door crashed open. Then she heard 
> screams and the sounds of police yelling and smashing things. "We had 
> total fear," she says.
> 
> Panicked, she and her boyfriend looked for an escape. The school was 
> under renovation, and scaffolding lined the outer walls. They climbed 
> onto it and waited.
> 
> Downstairs at the computers, Ms. Jonasch stayed put, figuring that 
> her fluency in Italian would help her explain that she wasn't a 
> violent militant. She says she had been working as a volunteer at the 
> headquarters and hadn't been out to the protests. But she says a 
> group of riot police wearing helmets and body armor charged around 
> the corner, truncheons flying. She says that besides the initial blow 
> to her head, which knocked her out, she was hit on the shoulder and 
> buttocks.
> 
> The hospital that treated her received dozens of similar cases. Among 
> patients still there last week was Daniel Albrecht, a 21-year-old 
> cello student from Berlin, who has undergone brain surgery to treat 
> cerebral bleeding and says he hears metallic sounds when he speaks.
> 
> Another patient was Lena Zuhlke, a 24-year-old student of Indian 
> culture at the University of Hamburg, who says she was beaten, thrown 
> down two flights of stairs and dragged by the hair. "I didn't see any 
> faces. Throughout all this, I couldn't see anything at all above the 
> knees," says Ms. Zuhlke, her hand on a jar attached to her chest to 
> catch fluid draining from her lungs.
> 
> Police, while asserting that all those inside the school were 
> anarchist militants, also have said that any protesters who were 
> hospitalized were extremists injured during earlier street battles. 
> That's an explanation that doctors say doesn't mesh with the cases 
> they saw. "There is no doubt that these wounds were fresh. We had to 
> sew up many of them on the spot," says Roberto Papparo, head of the 
> emergency department at Ospedale San Martino, Genoa's biggest 
> hospital. It dealt with more than 50 injured youths from the Diaz 
> school shortly after the raid, Dr. Papparo says, adding: "If these 
> people weren't brought to the hospital, there is no doubt that some 
> of them wouldn't be alive anymore."
> 
> A visit to the school several hours after the raid showed pools of 
> blood on the floor and walls and several teeth strewn around.
> 
> Apart from a handful who escaped, all the demonstrators at Diaz who 
> weren't hospitalized -- 32 people -- were rounded up. Ms. Heigl says 
> that after she heard the screaming and saw police beating students 
> unconscious, she and Mr. Hubner feared they would be in worse danger 
> if caught clinging to scaffolding. They climbed into the room, knelt 
> on the floor and put their hands on their heads. That didn't prevent 
> Mr. Hubner from receiving a few blows to the back and head with a 
> truncheon, and a dozen others interviewed say they too were hit while 
> in a submissive position.
> 
> Ms. Heigl says she wasn't hit. She was taken to the Bolzaneto police 
> barracks, which had been turned into a holding center for the G-8 
> summit. Situated inside a vast park-like complex of the national 
> police VI Mobile Division, the center had a series of unfurnished 
> cells that could hold 20 to 30 people each.
> 
> Detainees say they had to stand spread-eagle against the wall for two 
> to three hours. They add that police walked up and down the line, 
> beating those whose hands slipped and whose heads weren't bent down. 
> "They kept cursing us and calling us names that I couldn't 
> understand," Ms. Heigl says.
> 
> The man next to Ms. Heigl was pulled from the wall and sprayed 
> directly in the face with tear gas, say Ms. Heigl and a protester 
> interviewed separately. He collapsed and was dragged away to be 
> showered. He came back later, shivering, saying he had been stripped 
> naked and left under the water for half an hour. The group was then 
> sent to their cells, and the man had nothing to clothe himself with 
> except a plastic shower curtain, according to Ms. Heigl and the other 
> person, who both say they received just one cookie each to eat on 
> Sunday. At night, they say, they slept on a concrete floor and had 
> just three blankets for 30 or so people.
> 
> "We had this feeling that everything was completely arbitrary and 
> that they had lost their minds," Ms. Heigl says. "But now I see that 
> it was all done extremely professionally. They wanted to disorient us 
> and break us, as though they were dealing with a gang of hardened 
> terrorists."
> 
> The prisoners were registered on Monday, and their numbers at 
> Bolzaneto police barracks grew as many initially hospitalized were 
> sent over. Among them was Sherman Sparks, a 23-year-old from Oregon 
> spending a year in Europe. He said in a sworn affidavit that he had 
> been kicked in the head and groin during the raid.
> 
> He, too, said he had to stand spread-eagle for two hours. He said in 
> his affidavit, which he sent to the U.S. Consulate in Milan, that 
> people standing next to him had broken arms and legs and that one man 
> collapsed, shaking uncontrollably. That incident is related by others 
> as well. WhenMr. Sparks couldn't understand commands in Italian, his 
> affidavit alleges, he was slapped or beaten or his head was rammed 
> into the wall.
> 
> Detainees held in different cells and not known to each other paint a 
> common picture of the one to three days they spent in the detention 
> center: Strip searches were common. Men and women alike were forced 
> to use the toilet with police officers, usually men, in attendance. 
> Women were denied sanitary napkins, and requests for medical 
> attention were often refused. Roll calls went on day and night. 
> Detainees were asked to sign documents in Italian that they couldn't 
> understand and then sent back to the cell. Some signed, while others 
> refused. Phone calls and contact with attorneys weren't permitted.
> 
> A Little Better
> 
> Relief for Ms. Heigl came on Tuesday, July 24, when she was one of 
> the last to be transferred to a normal prison. Before leaving, she 
> says, she was ordered to strip naked again while a man in a blue polo 
> shirt inspected her. Some others say the same thing happened to them. 
> Then they were allowed to dress and eyeglasses taken from some 
> detainees were returned. But rings, earrings and money that had been 
> confiscated were not returned, Ms. Heigl and some other detainees 
> assert.
> 
> Many detainees say they felt relieved when they got to the regular 
> prison. There, they had cots with sheets, and three meals a day. Ms. 
> Heigl received a message from her parents.
> 
> They had been contacted by German authorities one day after the raid. 
> Her father, Wunibald Heigl, a high-school history teacher in Munich, 
> says the German authorities hadn't called to provide help but to find 
> out as much as possible about his daughter. "We called the German 
> consulate in Milan and were coldly told that everything was going 
> according to procedures," Mr. Heigl says. The German foreign ministry 
> had no comment on the raid, saying it was a subject of bilateral 
> talks.
> 
> Detainees say they were given consular access for the first time on 
> Wednesday or Thursday, except for U.S. citizens, whose diplomats 
> visited them hours after the school raid. The detainees were also 
> taken before judges but not allowed to speak to an attorney 
> beforehand.
> 
> All were charged with "aggravated resistance to arrest" and 
> "membership in an armed conspiracy to cause destruction." The raid 
> confirmed this membership, the police say. According to their report, 
> youths inside tried to block the entry gate and "engaged in scuffles" 
> with the agents. One allegedly tried to stab a policeman. At a news 
> conference, police displayed a small knife and a half-pierced 
> protective jacket but couldn't name the attacker.
> 
> Many protesters interviewed agree that some Black Block militants may 
> have been hiding inside the school. But they say that if present, 
> these militants were a minority and didn't advertise their 
> affiliation.
> 
> Possible Motive
> 
> Local government officials say the center of the Black Block was 
> elsewhere. According to Marta Vincenzi, governor of the Genoa 
> province, 200 to 300 militants had kicked nonviolent demonstrators 
> out of a province-owned gym next to the Martin Luther King High 
> School in theevening of July 19, breaking school furniture inside to 
> fashion weapons. Ms. Vincenzi and other provincial officials say they 
> repeatedly called police with requests to intervene, to no avail. Ms. 
> Vincenzi theorizes that in their raid at Diaz, "police tried to 
> offset their initial excess of tolerance with an excess of vendetta" 
> at the school.
> 
> Material seized in the raid suggests the police missed their mark. 
> The police report said the school "was a place dedicated to the 
> strategic planning and material manufacturing, by all persons present 
> inside, of instruments to attack police forces." The chief evidence 
> was two wine bottles filled with flammable liquid plus hammers and 
> nails taken from the construction site on school premises. In 
> addition, the police say they confiscated 17 cameras, 13 swimming 
> goggles, 10 Swiss army knives, four spent tear-gas shells, three 
> cellular phones, two thermos bottles and a bottle of suntan lotion. 
> The charges were presented to a team of judges who decided to free 
> all but one detainee.
> 
> Ms. Heigl was released on Wednesday evening. The police initially 
> decreed that she and the other 77 foreign detainees would be expelled 
> >from Italy and barred for five years, but Italy later said the ban 
> didn't apply to EU citizens. Ms. Heigl's parents, who had driven to 
> Genoa to find their daughter, followed the police truck that carried 
> her and about 30 others to the Austrian border. There, those released 
> were put on a train to Munich.
> 
> Ms. Heigl now will resume work on her master's degree. Earlier this 
> year, she visited Peru to collect material for a thesis on the 
> collapse of democracy under Alberto Fujimori. She says her experience 
> in Genoa has given her a new appreciation of the fragility of civil 
> liberties: "I realize now I didn't have to go all the way to Peru to 
> do my studies."
> 
> -- Alessandra Pugliese contributed to this article.
>