‘Welcome’: this is what bureaucrats, priests and politicians call the infamous practice of locking up in concentration camps like the Regina Pacis one in Saint Foca (Salento, southern Italy) all the people waiting to be deported because they don’t fit into the immigration quota which has been fixed by the bosses. We must come out and say it: immigrants are merchandise (like everything else in our society). The bosses decide on the quantity and character of what they want to buy, political power collects information, the police does its roundups, and finally the jailers look after the prisoners in the immigration camp in order to prevent them from moving freely. These camps are surrounded by huge walls and barbed wire, with bars on the windows and cameras and guards all around. In spite of the fact that they are presented as places of welcome and solidarity, they are actually prisons for those who are to be deported from the rich western world where there is only room for the ones who are useful to its awful machinery. This is their great welcome.
Monsignor Cosmo Francesco Ruppi, archbishop of Otranto and prestigious figure in political and religious circles of Salento, is fundamental to this perverse machinery. Through his lackey father Cesare Lodeserto he controls the prison Regina Pacis in Sain Foca where men women and children whose only guilt is that they landed on the shores of southern Italy without any identity documents in order to escape from miserable living conditions are locked up: for this stupid reason alone these human beings are called ‘clandestine’. The archbishop hides himself behind a false and reassuring mask of benefactor and succeeds in gaining many common people’s confidence. The truth is that he is just an unscrupulous criminal, a very mean man who takes advantage of hundreds of human beings’ hopes and desperation. Ruppi regards them as animals for the slaughter who serve only for him to get rich as quickly as possible during their imprisonment while waiting to be sent back to their countries to face hunger, war, misery, sickness, exploitation once again … These conditions are all being created by the western world. In addition to this, we have to consider the hundreds of people who die during these so-called ‘journeys of hope’. And Ruppi and his accomplice Cesare Lodeserto, a criminal of the same category, are also morally responsible for such deaths. These two vultures, along with anyone else who does the same job as theirs, are our enemies, whereas we are side by side with the immigrants who reach our shores. We know well that capitalism is making our existence similar to that of the exploited immigrants, full of uncertainty and the impossibility to decide about our present and our future. If we share the same conditions of exploitation, we can also share the struggle against this life which is becoming more and more deprived of any freedom.
ENEMIES OF ALL BORDERS
Showing posts with label Lecce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lecce. Show all posts
Thursday, 6 May 2010
THE ANARCHIST STRUGGLE AGAINST THE CONCENTRATION CAMP OF SAINT FOCA (Lecce, S. Italy)
Concentration camps for immigrants were introduced in Italy by a law passed in l998 by the ‘leftist’ government of Massimo D’Alema. They are called CENTRI DI PERMANENZA TEMPORANEA (CTP), ‘temporary stay camps’. The minister responsible for this law was Livia Turco, former Welfare Minister.
There is no substantial difference between the ‘leftist’ law on immigration and the one passed by the current Berlusconi’s government, the so-called Bossi-Fini law. The latter simply limits the number of visas to be given, a measure which meets the needs of the Italian capitalist system and therefore would have been taken by the previous government had it still been in charge. In other words, now fewer immigrants are allowed to stay in Italy than before, the ones who are useful to the Italian economy. All the others are located in concentration camps built by the ‘leftist government, waiting to be deported to their countries where they face once again those awful conditions (hunger, war, sickness, exploitation) that have been created by the western world.
In Salento in southern Italy, which is part of the Puglia region, can be found the concentration camp REGINA PACIS of Saint Foca. It is run by Italian the catholic organisation Caritas, or more precisely by Cesare Lodeserto, a priest who is the manager of the camp, and his boss Cosmo Francesco Ruppi, archbishop of Otranto.
A number terrible deeds have occurred in ‘Regina Pacis’ since it was created, including beatings, forced administration of psychotropic drugs, attempted suicides… not to mention the many escape attempts which were unfortunately mostly unsuccessful. There have been protests against such a hellish detention centre since it was built. Both Lecce Social Forum (composed of leftist parties and various humanitarian and green associations) and the anarchists of Lecce have always taken part in the struggle against ‘Regina Pacis’, but no agreement has ever been made between the two categories of protestors. At the beginning the main difference concerned the existence of the camp–while the Social Forum claimed for the improvement of the material living conditions in the camp, the anarchists wanted its immediate suppression. But was only after Berlusconi came to power that the Social forum started asking for the closure of the camp too,
The contrast between the anarchists and the other protestors, however, has always been one concerning methods of struggle, as Social Forum has always refused any find of direct attack against the camp. The anarchists, on the contrary, maintain that what really counts is sharp attack, aiming to transform the struggle against the concentration camps into a concrete fact. Not only the help given to the immigrants, but also and mainly the attack against the people responsible for their suffering. That’s how, along with demonstrations, sit-ins, debates, distribution of leaflets, meetings, etc, the anarchists have always been planning a series of attacks against the core of Regina Pacis management.
More than once, Social Forum members have sent delegations, also comprised of a number of members of parliament, inside the camp in order to talk with the manager and eventually acquire some meaningless promise from him. On the other hand, the anarchists have always refused any dialogue with the people who capture immigrants for deportation and draw up the troops to prevent them from entering Italy. Somany tragedies have occurred in the Adriati Sea over the past few years, not only tragic shipwrecks of immigrants’ boats but also massacres due directly to some military measures taken to block access to the Italian shores. [Kater I Rades] No bartering is possible with those who sell weapons to the armies and take war into the countries from where most of the immigrants escape. No dialogue is possible with the exploiters of their labour and resources, the same who reduce them to starvation, then build prisons for capturing them and give protection to those who beat, torture and kill them. Only recently the manager of ‘Regina Pacis’ Cesare Lodeserto has been charged with ill-treatment and injuries after many years of investigation which had never led to any charges in spite of all the evidence of Lodeserto’s guilt. And it was following this serious episode that Social Forum interrupted its dialogue with ‘Regina Pacis’ manager.
The contrast between Social Forum and the anarchists has shown itself during many demonstrations in front of the camp. In particular Social Forum, especially before Lodeserto was officially charged, were clearly worried about certain slogans shouted out by anarchists against the manager. Social Forum used to say that ‘don Cesare’ was not such a bad person nd that all the guilt belonged to Berlusconi’s government (we should remember that Italian camps for immigrants were set up by the current Berlusconi’s opponents). And they have always dissociated themselves with indignation from the acts of sabotage carried out by the anarchists both during demonstrations in Saint Foca (damage to Caritas vans, attempts to communicate with the imprisoned immigrants, writings on the walls surrounding the camps) and at any other time in any other place. […]
Main actions:
Counter-information in the places where the camps are located in order to let the inhabitants know what really happens in those prisons.
Saint Foca, where the camps are located, is a little sea-side town which is full of people on holiday in the summer. During that period the anarchists organise unauthorised public debates and distribution of leaflets. Social Forum only comes to the big demonstrations against the camp which have previously been authorised by the police.
Cooperation on a large scale with the comrades who struggle against the many other concentration camps in the country.
Acts of sabotage aimed at striking anything anything and anyone connected to the camps:
managers and their armed guards
firms providing any kind of service (food, laundry, etc)
lawyers defending the people who work in the camps and are responsible for the ill-treatment of the immigrants
etc
The information produced by the anarchists is in sharp contrast with that provided by the media and journalists, whose aims and methods are opposite to those of the anarchists.
Chronology
31 August 2002 - group of demonstrators interrupts a meeting of Melendugno Council with trumpets. They also show the banner ‘No Borders, No Foreigners’ and shout their content against the mayor who had banned an exhibition on immigration in Saint Foca. Distribution of leaflets and among the people of the Council.
21 September 2002 – 4 immigrants attempt to escape from Regina Pacis and have a fight with the police who are always in the camp. Unfortunately 2 are arrested.
3 November 2002 – Demonstration in front of the church in Monteroni (Lecce) where Archbishop Ruppi is celebrating a religious event. Exposition of banner, exhibition on immigration and distribution of leaflets. Ruppi doesn’t show up to greet the crowd who were waiting for his blessing, but runs away by the back door.
12 November 2002 – Group of demonstrators gathers outside the palace of the Prefecture in Lecce where 11 Home Secretaries of the Adriatic-Ionic area are about to have a gala dinner. The next day the same ministers are supposed to have a summit to strengthen measures and a plan of ‘alert and rapid reaction’ against illegal immigration. The demonstrators show their anger with whistles, trumpets, megaphones. Thousands of leaflets are handed out and road blocks are carried out.
13 November 2002 – During a Social Forum against the summit of the 11 ministers, the anarchists throw some rotten fruit and eggs against the cops, the journalists and the security service of the Social Forum.
20 November 2002 – Casarano (Lecce) – a conference organised by Alleanza Nazionale (the Italian fascist party) on immigration in which Lodeserto participates is interrupted by 15 demonstrators who show a banner against the deportation of immigrants.
22 November 2002 – 40 immigrants escape from Rgina Pacis after a fight with the police. In the following days most of them are captured again, only 7 succeed in gaining freedom. The immigrants captured again are violently beaten for reprisal.
26 April 2003 – 4 Rumenian attempt to escape from Regina Pacis and beat two carabinieri cops who try to stop them.
3 May 2003 – A group of North African immigrants destroy the canteen of Regina Pacis in protest against their deportation notice. 8 carabinieri are injured.
10 May 2003 – Lecce – soon before the start of ‘Giro d’Italia’, the most important cycling event in Italy, some writings appear on the roads of the trajectory: ‘Free all Immigrants, Ruppi is a killer’.
11 June 2003 – Lecce – The front door of the ancient baroque cathedral is set on fire. On the walls these writings appear: ‘Free the Immigrants from the concentration Camps’. ‘Ruppi and Lodeserto are Criminal Bastards’.
September/October 2003 – Lecce – the local newspapers write about the many writings on the churches and palaces of Lecce against Regina Pacis and its management.
October 2003 – 4 attempted suicides in Regina Pacis.
8 November 2003 - in Lecce and Lequile two cash machines of ‘Banca Intesa’ are set on fire and destroyed. That bank is involved in Regina Pacis management. In Lequile a few bank nots also burn and the inside walls of the bank are damaged. On the spot a few leaflets are left about Regina Pacis.
9 November 2003 – Lecce – another cash machine of Banca Intesa is blocked with glue.
24 November 2003 – An Algerian prisoner in Regina Pacis attacks Lodeserto with a stick and injures him.
3 December 2003 – Calimera, Lecce – a lot of posters and writings against Catia Cazzato appear on the walls of the village. The woman is employed in Regina Pacis and is responsible for writing false reports about the beatings of immigrants, maintaining that the prisoners’ injuries were self-inflicted in order to try to escape from the camp.
There is no substantial difference between the ‘leftist’ law on immigration and the one passed by the current Berlusconi’s government, the so-called Bossi-Fini law. The latter simply limits the number of visas to be given, a measure which meets the needs of the Italian capitalist system and therefore would have been taken by the previous government had it still been in charge. In other words, now fewer immigrants are allowed to stay in Italy than before, the ones who are useful to the Italian economy. All the others are located in concentration camps built by the ‘leftist government, waiting to be deported to their countries where they face once again those awful conditions (hunger, war, sickness, exploitation) that have been created by the western world.
In Salento in southern Italy, which is part of the Puglia region, can be found the concentration camp REGINA PACIS of Saint Foca. It is run by Italian the catholic organisation Caritas, or more precisely by Cesare Lodeserto, a priest who is the manager of the camp, and his boss Cosmo Francesco Ruppi, archbishop of Otranto.
A number terrible deeds have occurred in ‘Regina Pacis’ since it was created, including beatings, forced administration of psychotropic drugs, attempted suicides… not to mention the many escape attempts which were unfortunately mostly unsuccessful. There have been protests against such a hellish detention centre since it was built. Both Lecce Social Forum (composed of leftist parties and various humanitarian and green associations) and the anarchists of Lecce have always taken part in the struggle against ‘Regina Pacis’, but no agreement has ever been made between the two categories of protestors. At the beginning the main difference concerned the existence of the camp–while the Social Forum claimed for the improvement of the material living conditions in the camp, the anarchists wanted its immediate suppression. But was only after Berlusconi came to power that the Social forum started asking for the closure of the camp too,
The contrast between the anarchists and the other protestors, however, has always been one concerning methods of struggle, as Social Forum has always refused any find of direct attack against the camp. The anarchists, on the contrary, maintain that what really counts is sharp attack, aiming to transform the struggle against the concentration camps into a concrete fact. Not only the help given to the immigrants, but also and mainly the attack against the people responsible for their suffering. That’s how, along with demonstrations, sit-ins, debates, distribution of leaflets, meetings, etc, the anarchists have always been planning a series of attacks against the core of Regina Pacis management.
More than once, Social Forum members have sent delegations, also comprised of a number of members of parliament, inside the camp in order to talk with the manager and eventually acquire some meaningless promise from him. On the other hand, the anarchists have always refused any dialogue with the people who capture immigrants for deportation and draw up the troops to prevent them from entering Italy. Somany tragedies have occurred in the Adriati Sea over the past few years, not only tragic shipwrecks of immigrants’ boats but also massacres due directly to some military measures taken to block access to the Italian shores. [Kater I Rades] No bartering is possible with those who sell weapons to the armies and take war into the countries from where most of the immigrants escape. No dialogue is possible with the exploiters of their labour and resources, the same who reduce them to starvation, then build prisons for capturing them and give protection to those who beat, torture and kill them. Only recently the manager of ‘Regina Pacis’ Cesare Lodeserto has been charged with ill-treatment and injuries after many years of investigation which had never led to any charges in spite of all the evidence of Lodeserto’s guilt. And it was following this serious episode that Social Forum interrupted its dialogue with ‘Regina Pacis’ manager.
The contrast between Social Forum and the anarchists has shown itself during many demonstrations in front of the camp. In particular Social Forum, especially before Lodeserto was officially charged, were clearly worried about certain slogans shouted out by anarchists against the manager. Social Forum used to say that ‘don Cesare’ was not such a bad person nd that all the guilt belonged to Berlusconi’s government (we should remember that Italian camps for immigrants were set up by the current Berlusconi’s opponents). And they have always dissociated themselves with indignation from the acts of sabotage carried out by the anarchists both during demonstrations in Saint Foca (damage to Caritas vans, attempts to communicate with the imprisoned immigrants, writings on the walls surrounding the camps) and at any other time in any other place. […]
Main actions:
Counter-information in the places where the camps are located in order to let the inhabitants know what really happens in those prisons.
Saint Foca, where the camps are located, is a little sea-side town which is full of people on holiday in the summer. During that period the anarchists organise unauthorised public debates and distribution of leaflets. Social Forum only comes to the big demonstrations against the camp which have previously been authorised by the police.
Cooperation on a large scale with the comrades who struggle against the many other concentration camps in the country.
Acts of sabotage aimed at striking anything anything and anyone connected to the camps:
managers and their armed guards
firms providing any kind of service (food, laundry, etc)
lawyers defending the people who work in the camps and are responsible for the ill-treatment of the immigrants
etc
The information produced by the anarchists is in sharp contrast with that provided by the media and journalists, whose aims and methods are opposite to those of the anarchists.
Chronology
31 August 2002 - group of demonstrators interrupts a meeting of Melendugno Council with trumpets. They also show the banner ‘No Borders, No Foreigners’ and shout their content against the mayor who had banned an exhibition on immigration in Saint Foca. Distribution of leaflets and among the people of the Council.
21 September 2002 – 4 immigrants attempt to escape from Regina Pacis and have a fight with the police who are always in the camp. Unfortunately 2 are arrested.
3 November 2002 – Demonstration in front of the church in Monteroni (Lecce) where Archbishop Ruppi is celebrating a religious event. Exposition of banner, exhibition on immigration and distribution of leaflets. Ruppi doesn’t show up to greet the crowd who were waiting for his blessing, but runs away by the back door.
12 November 2002 – Group of demonstrators gathers outside the palace of the Prefecture in Lecce where 11 Home Secretaries of the Adriatic-Ionic area are about to have a gala dinner. The next day the same ministers are supposed to have a summit to strengthen measures and a plan of ‘alert and rapid reaction’ against illegal immigration. The demonstrators show their anger with whistles, trumpets, megaphones. Thousands of leaflets are handed out and road blocks are carried out.
13 November 2002 – During a Social Forum against the summit of the 11 ministers, the anarchists throw some rotten fruit and eggs against the cops, the journalists and the security service of the Social Forum.
20 November 2002 – Casarano (Lecce) – a conference organised by Alleanza Nazionale (the Italian fascist party) on immigration in which Lodeserto participates is interrupted by 15 demonstrators who show a banner against the deportation of immigrants.
22 November 2002 – 40 immigrants escape from Rgina Pacis after a fight with the police. In the following days most of them are captured again, only 7 succeed in gaining freedom. The immigrants captured again are violently beaten for reprisal.
26 April 2003 – 4 Rumenian attempt to escape from Regina Pacis and beat two carabinieri cops who try to stop them.
3 May 2003 – A group of North African immigrants destroy the canteen of Regina Pacis in protest against their deportation notice. 8 carabinieri are injured.
10 May 2003 – Lecce – soon before the start of ‘Giro d’Italia’, the most important cycling event in Italy, some writings appear on the roads of the trajectory: ‘Free all Immigrants, Ruppi is a killer’.
11 June 2003 – Lecce – The front door of the ancient baroque cathedral is set on fire. On the walls these writings appear: ‘Free the Immigrants from the concentration Camps’. ‘Ruppi and Lodeserto are Criminal Bastards’.
September/October 2003 – Lecce – the local newspapers write about the many writings on the churches and palaces of Lecce against Regina Pacis and its management.
October 2003 – 4 attempted suicides in Regina Pacis.
8 November 2003 - in Lecce and Lequile two cash machines of ‘Banca Intesa’ are set on fire and destroyed. That bank is involved in Regina Pacis management. In Lequile a few bank nots also burn and the inside walls of the bank are damaged. On the spot a few leaflets are left about Regina Pacis.
9 November 2003 – Lecce – another cash machine of Banca Intesa is blocked with glue.
24 November 2003 – An Algerian prisoner in Regina Pacis attacks Lodeserto with a stick and injures him.
3 December 2003 – Calimera, Lecce – a lot of posters and writings against Catia Cazzato appear on the walls of the village. The woman is employed in Regina Pacis and is responsible for writing false reports about the beatings of immigrants, maintaining that the prisoners’ injuries were self-inflicted in order to try to escape from the camp.
Statement to the court, Lecce 2007, Cristian Paladini
There are two fundamental reasons for which I am sitting in this court as a defendant, the only role that, in spite of my will, I can play in a court room.
First of all I am a revolutionary and an anarchist; and if you consider how many comrades are still being held in Italian jails, that in itself seems to be reason enough. After all, what can those who want to break this damned murderous social organization based on misery and exploitation, expect from the ruling class, which does not intend to renounce its power, and the interests of which this court is bound to defend?
The second reason is closely linked to the first, or rather it is its direct and logical consequence: the struggle that, as an anarchist and revolutionary in this society, I have been carrying over the past few years.
So, after the ground had been prepared with a long period of preventive criminalization thanks to the usual journalists of the press and TV, imprisonment was not surprising. First imprisonment in a proper cell of 8 square metres, that three people shared twenty hours a day, then house arrest where the b,ars on the doors and windows cannot be seen, yet are there. House arrest, which is certainly less hard in certain respects, serves the project of total isolation carried out by the State even better: you do not have any contact with other prisoners and your only way of communicating is by mail, which, as this prosecutor well knows, is not at all reliable.
One year and ten months have passed since May 10 2005, during which my comrades and I have endured isolation, transfers, continuous intimidation and abuse of all kinds, but always cheered by practical solidarity by many other exploited like ourselves. Certainly it was not easy, as it never has been for all the men and women who have locked up throughout time all over the world, but I do not intend to complain or to present myself as a simple dissident who, by a judicial mistake or for whatever other reason, finds himself involved in a sensational judicial frame-up and is now waiting for justice.
Nothing is more extraneous to my way of thinking and living. Condemnation or absolution, justice – real justice – cannot be found in a courtroom.
It is true that this is a frame-up, quite a clumsy one, and in some aspects even a ridiculous one. The prosecutor, in fact, not having any evidence in his hands, relied on the old and always useful habit of inventing it by deforming reality, transforming conversations that he infamously listened to and omitting the context in which they occurred, so that he could make us members of a subversive association punishable by article 270bis. When you are a liar by profession, as time goes by you probably end up losing track. I think that it is how this prosecutor, trying to conciliate what cannot be conciliated, went quite further and established that anarchists, who refuse all authority, were part of a hierarchical structure composed of leaders and followers.
Apart from these dirty tricks, power was right as regards me: it has singled out an individual who refuses the State, does not care about its laws and strongly desires the subversion of this system, the destruction of all authority and the creation of a free life for everybody. This is the dangerous idea that power cannot tolerate, in spite of what they declare, and which is well beyond the worn-out old chatter about liberty and rights upon which the ideology of the regime is based.
Actually there is no freedom in rights. The latter are a concession given to vassals and as such they can be suspended or suppressed, and they strengthen the power of those who concede them. In other words, the State concedes and removes rights according to its needs. This said, it is not surprising that article 270bis, which we are accused of, comes from old article 270, which was first produced by the fascist dictatorship (Rocco code) in order to repress rebels, and eventually passed from the fascist regime to the Republic that boasts it was born from the Resistance. In other words, the most efficient legal weapon against dissent during the time of dictatorship is being used today; moreover it has been refined and adapted to the different social conditions, going through decades and governments of all colours, as a sign of continuity between two powers that, basically, are not so different from each other. This article, which establishes a six-month imprisonment that can be reconfirmed every six months up to two years, cost us to be locked up for quite a long time before any jury decides our sentence. In this way the principle of ‘presumed innocence’, which any good democratic subject feels he is protected by, has been clamorously denied.
Many of the specific charges against us concern the struggle for the closure of all detention centres for immigrants and in particular the infamous Regina Pacis in San Foca, which was run profitably by the homonymous Foundation Regina Pacis [a foundation of the Lecce clergy] up until March two years ago. CPTs and deportations are another thread that links past and present: fascist and nazi concentration camps, before becoming centres of systematic massacre, were places where people were locked up without having committed any crime. It is exactly what happens in all CPTs. That is why I have always called them concentration camps. In these places immigrants who managed to reach Italy but do not have the right documents to stay in the country are locked up, after enduring terrible journeys during which they risked their life: The Mediterranean sea bed is now a cemetery without crosses or names. For them, guilty of being poor and foreigners on the run desperately searching for a better life, State racism has established that they be imprisoned, following what is a mere administrative question for an Italian. They are kept there until they are identified – officially 60 days – and, with the collaboration of companies such as Alitalia and Trenitalia they are eventually deported to their country of origin or, and this is what counts, somewhere else outside fortress Europe. Otherwise they are handed a deportation order compelling them to leave the country within a few days. Those who do not obey are put in prison. As they do not have any other choice in the face of misery, hunger, and war that they have escaped from, they are forced to live in hiding, constantly chased by the police, escaping raids and facing prejudice and hostility stirred up by the media propaganda that depicts illegal immigrants as criminals and possible ‘terrorists’. In order to survive they have to accept even more hideous working conditions because they can be easily blackmailed under the threat of deportation. They live constantly with the terror of being captured, thrown in CPTs and then sent back from what was their journey of hope. The condition of ‘clandestine’ hanging over immigrants, therefore, serves a precise project of exploitation: on the one hand the bosses ask the State for legal labourers, according to the established quota; on the other the latter have at their disposal a considerable number of undesirables without any rights that they can exploit to death. These 'undesirables' are used to threaten the legal immigrants so that the latter do not stand up for better working conditions (without a work contract immigrants cannot stay in the country).
Everything in this world is submitted to the rules of economy. It is such an obvious truth that power does not even try to conceal it; on the contrary it tries to make us think that it is an inevitable reality from which everybody will gain something.
When they do have to conceal reality, on the contrary, their most effective trick is to call things with names that do not match their meaning. It this way the expression ‘humanitarian war’ was introduced, concentration camps for immigrants are called ‘welcome centres’ and the prisoners inside these structures are called ‘guests’, as Cesare Lodeserto, a ‘benefactor-jailer’ ex-director of Regina Pacis did in this court. According to the stories of many prisoners, the detention centre of San Foca was a theatre of violence, beatings and abuse of all kinds, especially after revolts had broken out. But even if such atrocities had never occurred, my struggle for the closure of Regina Pacis would have been the same because the real problem is not the way a CPT is managed but its mere existence as a place where people are locked up. For a long while now these places have been called concentration camps even by the left that contributed to creating them and by a large part of civil society, without any practical consequences. The new governors, who out of pure political calculation had expressed their intention to vaguely ‘go beyond’ the CPTs, have now changed their cards: this ‘going beyond’ is nothing else but a different setting. The CPTs would be reduced in number, become more secure and serve as prisons ‘only’ for the ‘irreducible’, that is to say those who do not collaborate with the police to be identified and voluntarily deported. A real disappointment for the people who voted the new governors. The truth is, as the political class admit, that the CPTs are necessary to the current politics of immigration. The State cannot do without them, even if they represent the total demystification of the democratic lie and show how exclusion is at the base of democracy. As far as I am concerned, this does not make any difference, as I have always known that Cpts will disappear only if and when we have the social strength to impose it. This is the reason why, today like yesterday, I am continuing my struggle against detention camps and deportation, focusing my attention on the responsibility of those (managers and collaborators) who allow their existence and activity. Furthermore, I always bear well in mind that there exists a strong link between CPT, permanent war and the militarization of society.
The regime’s incessant propaganda has always used fear as a means to produce consensus. The continuous creation of a threat, highlighted according to the circumstances, justifies a more and more suffocating control over all aspects of life and allows power to introduce more and more liberticidal laws. The enemy is everywhere, it is called ‘terrorist’ and can be an immigrant or a revolutionary. Reality is turned upside down: those who massacre entire populations in order to control resources accuse those who struggle for freedom of terrorism. But if terrorism is, according to its historical definition, the indiscriminate use of violence aimed at conquering and consolidating power, then it is well clear that THE STATE IS THE TERRORIST!
LECCE, June 28 2007
Cristian Paladini
First of all I am a revolutionary and an anarchist; and if you consider how many comrades are still being held in Italian jails, that in itself seems to be reason enough. After all, what can those who want to break this damned murderous social organization based on misery and exploitation, expect from the ruling class, which does not intend to renounce its power, and the interests of which this court is bound to defend?
The second reason is closely linked to the first, or rather it is its direct and logical consequence: the struggle that, as an anarchist and revolutionary in this society, I have been carrying over the past few years.
So, after the ground had been prepared with a long period of preventive criminalization thanks to the usual journalists of the press and TV, imprisonment was not surprising. First imprisonment in a proper cell of 8 square metres, that three people shared twenty hours a day, then house arrest where the b,ars on the doors and windows cannot be seen, yet are there. House arrest, which is certainly less hard in certain respects, serves the project of total isolation carried out by the State even better: you do not have any contact with other prisoners and your only way of communicating is by mail, which, as this prosecutor well knows, is not at all reliable.
One year and ten months have passed since May 10 2005, during which my comrades and I have endured isolation, transfers, continuous intimidation and abuse of all kinds, but always cheered by practical solidarity by many other exploited like ourselves. Certainly it was not easy, as it never has been for all the men and women who have locked up throughout time all over the world, but I do not intend to complain or to present myself as a simple dissident who, by a judicial mistake or for whatever other reason, finds himself involved in a sensational judicial frame-up and is now waiting for justice.
Nothing is more extraneous to my way of thinking and living. Condemnation or absolution, justice – real justice – cannot be found in a courtroom.
It is true that this is a frame-up, quite a clumsy one, and in some aspects even a ridiculous one. The prosecutor, in fact, not having any evidence in his hands, relied on the old and always useful habit of inventing it by deforming reality, transforming conversations that he infamously listened to and omitting the context in which they occurred, so that he could make us members of a subversive association punishable by article 270bis. When you are a liar by profession, as time goes by you probably end up losing track. I think that it is how this prosecutor, trying to conciliate what cannot be conciliated, went quite further and established that anarchists, who refuse all authority, were part of a hierarchical structure composed of leaders and followers.
Apart from these dirty tricks, power was right as regards me: it has singled out an individual who refuses the State, does not care about its laws and strongly desires the subversion of this system, the destruction of all authority and the creation of a free life for everybody. This is the dangerous idea that power cannot tolerate, in spite of what they declare, and which is well beyond the worn-out old chatter about liberty and rights upon which the ideology of the regime is based.
Actually there is no freedom in rights. The latter are a concession given to vassals and as such they can be suspended or suppressed, and they strengthen the power of those who concede them. In other words, the State concedes and removes rights according to its needs. This said, it is not surprising that article 270bis, which we are accused of, comes from old article 270, which was first produced by the fascist dictatorship (Rocco code) in order to repress rebels, and eventually passed from the fascist regime to the Republic that boasts it was born from the Resistance. In other words, the most efficient legal weapon against dissent during the time of dictatorship is being used today; moreover it has been refined and adapted to the different social conditions, going through decades and governments of all colours, as a sign of continuity between two powers that, basically, are not so different from each other. This article, which establishes a six-month imprisonment that can be reconfirmed every six months up to two years, cost us to be locked up for quite a long time before any jury decides our sentence. In this way the principle of ‘presumed innocence’, which any good democratic subject feels he is protected by, has been clamorously denied.
Many of the specific charges against us concern the struggle for the closure of all detention centres for immigrants and in particular the infamous Regina Pacis in San Foca, which was run profitably by the homonymous Foundation Regina Pacis [a foundation of the Lecce clergy] up until March two years ago. CPTs and deportations are another thread that links past and present: fascist and nazi concentration camps, before becoming centres of systematic massacre, were places where people were locked up without having committed any crime. It is exactly what happens in all CPTs. That is why I have always called them concentration camps. In these places immigrants who managed to reach Italy but do not have the right documents to stay in the country are locked up, after enduring terrible journeys during which they risked their life: The Mediterranean sea bed is now a cemetery without crosses or names. For them, guilty of being poor and foreigners on the run desperately searching for a better life, State racism has established that they be imprisoned, following what is a mere administrative question for an Italian. They are kept there until they are identified – officially 60 days – and, with the collaboration of companies such as Alitalia and Trenitalia they are eventually deported to their country of origin or, and this is what counts, somewhere else outside fortress Europe. Otherwise they are handed a deportation order compelling them to leave the country within a few days. Those who do not obey are put in prison. As they do not have any other choice in the face of misery, hunger, and war that they have escaped from, they are forced to live in hiding, constantly chased by the police, escaping raids and facing prejudice and hostility stirred up by the media propaganda that depicts illegal immigrants as criminals and possible ‘terrorists’. In order to survive they have to accept even more hideous working conditions because they can be easily blackmailed under the threat of deportation. They live constantly with the terror of being captured, thrown in CPTs and then sent back from what was their journey of hope. The condition of ‘clandestine’ hanging over immigrants, therefore, serves a precise project of exploitation: on the one hand the bosses ask the State for legal labourers, according to the established quota; on the other the latter have at their disposal a considerable number of undesirables without any rights that they can exploit to death. These 'undesirables' are used to threaten the legal immigrants so that the latter do not stand up for better working conditions (without a work contract immigrants cannot stay in the country).
Everything in this world is submitted to the rules of economy. It is such an obvious truth that power does not even try to conceal it; on the contrary it tries to make us think that it is an inevitable reality from which everybody will gain something.
When they do have to conceal reality, on the contrary, their most effective trick is to call things with names that do not match their meaning. It this way the expression ‘humanitarian war’ was introduced, concentration camps for immigrants are called ‘welcome centres’ and the prisoners inside these structures are called ‘guests’, as Cesare Lodeserto, a ‘benefactor-jailer’ ex-director of Regina Pacis did in this court. According to the stories of many prisoners, the detention centre of San Foca was a theatre of violence, beatings and abuse of all kinds, especially after revolts had broken out. But even if such atrocities had never occurred, my struggle for the closure of Regina Pacis would have been the same because the real problem is not the way a CPT is managed but its mere existence as a place where people are locked up. For a long while now these places have been called concentration camps even by the left that contributed to creating them and by a large part of civil society, without any practical consequences. The new governors, who out of pure political calculation had expressed their intention to vaguely ‘go beyond’ the CPTs, have now changed their cards: this ‘going beyond’ is nothing else but a different setting. The CPTs would be reduced in number, become more secure and serve as prisons ‘only’ for the ‘irreducible’, that is to say those who do not collaborate with the police to be identified and voluntarily deported. A real disappointment for the people who voted the new governors. The truth is, as the political class admit, that the CPTs are necessary to the current politics of immigration. The State cannot do without them, even if they represent the total demystification of the democratic lie and show how exclusion is at the base of democracy. As far as I am concerned, this does not make any difference, as I have always known that Cpts will disappear only if and when we have the social strength to impose it. This is the reason why, today like yesterday, I am continuing my struggle against detention camps and deportation, focusing my attention on the responsibility of those (managers and collaborators) who allow their existence and activity. Furthermore, I always bear well in mind that there exists a strong link between CPT, permanent war and the militarization of society.
The regime’s incessant propaganda has always used fear as a means to produce consensus. The continuous creation of a threat, highlighted according to the circumstances, justifies a more and more suffocating control over all aspects of life and allows power to introduce more and more liberticidal laws. The enemy is everywhere, it is called ‘terrorist’ and can be an immigrant or a revolutionary. Reality is turned upside down: those who massacre entire populations in order to control resources accuse those who struggle for freedom of terrorism. But if terrorism is, according to its historical definition, the indiscriminate use of violence aimed at conquering and consolidating power, then it is well clear that THE STATE IS THE TERRORIST!
LECCE, June 28 2007
Cristian Paladini
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