In recent months we have witnessed an increase in state and police repression, in
the name of a phantom public security, increasingly individualistically based onsocial isolation. In Trieste, after the pandemic season, it has becomeincreasingly difficult to demonstrate in the central streets; any collectiveaction is rejected by the drawing room to be relegated to the streets and squaresfar from the eyes of the tourists, the last recipients of the city. ---- Dissentand opposing voices are systematically criminalized through the use of very heavyjudicial measures. ---- What many scholars and activists define as the "criminallaw of the enemy" is being applied more and more often: the de facto constitutionof a juridical corpus reserved for the "internal enemy" - migrants, marginals,political opponents - subjects who, just like the enemy soldier in time of war,represent the "radical Other", the one who is hopelessly outside the civilassembly and democratic rules.Legal institutions that have never been abandoned are making a comeback: from thecrime of devastation and looting to the oral notice, up to the street orders thataccompany new repressive measures such as the urban Daspo.Similarly, the instruments of 41bis and life imprisonment, linked in rhetoric tothe emergency period of the fight against the mafia and the massacres of Capaciand via d'Amelio, are still very much alive and present in our legal system andused experimentally against people who have nothing to do with the mafia, mostrecently Alfredo Cospito.The 41bis is a regime conceived as an emergency measure, and the rules with whichthey began to prohibit demonstrations in the city center were emergency. Webelieve it is essential not to fall into the game they try to throw us into,driven by the urgency to do something, giving us a pretext to raise the level ofrepression: if emergency is their way of acting, we can place ourselves in a ofsolidarity and collective collaboration, against those who isolate and repress us.WE ARE ALL UNDER ATTACK (OR: THE ENEMY'S CRIMINAL LAW)To talk about repression we think it is important first of all to make a briefanalysis of the period we are experiencing from a social point of view.By force of circumstances and the need for synthesis it will be a partialpicture, but it could be a starting point for reflection for future comparisons.For years we have been witnessing a systematic dismantling of collectivestructures and social and relationship networks and the resulting suffering.In the world of work, the introduction of different contractual forms hascontributed to the fragmentation of the categories of male and female workers,who struggle to develop solidarity and unitary struggles. The model of liberalismand financialization has asserted itself with arrogance, welcomed with redcarpets by the right and by a large part of the left as the only possible model.The general working condition in the globalized world has certainly not improvedafter the pandemic period, quite the contrary. All this in a context ofever-increasing scarcity of the planet's resources, victim of the criminallooting perpetrated for decades by a development model that sees everything as aresource to be exploited for profit, in a purely consumerist vision of production.Healthcare is increasingly lacking and the violent push towards privatization hascaused and will continue to cause more and more deaths, leaving those who cannotafford to go to private clinics or professionals in pain and waiting for treatment.In the school, the chicken coop classes, the lack of places in nursery schoolsand kindergartens, the dilapidated structures, the Byzantine and complexbureaucracy passed off as transparency, the systematic insufficiency of teachingmaterials and more, are the sign of a general disinterest in education . Thevarious governments, which from time to time propose to solve the problemsthrough private sponsorships, transforming the institutes into companies thatmust know how to sell themselves, tell us that everything is a profit commodity,starting from the youngest sections of the population. Sometimes they are alsocannon fodder, on days when the army, armed forces or police forces go to promotevoluntary enlistment.The thrusts towards atomization and individualism, which transform us intodeluded protagonists of a moment of celebrity through social media, havecontributed to creating a powerful imaginary in which we are all ensnared,astonished and industrious as producers and reproducers. We work for free for thevarious private platforms, convinced that we are acting freely and notunderstanding the mechanisms of addiction creation, nor the temporal and mentalcage, which we build around ourselves.The climate of war pervades our daily lives more and more: for years now theideological border between external war and internal war has become impalpableand the soldiers in the streets are now part of the urban landscape. Hand inhand, the weight of the military-industrial lobby is growing, coming directly topower with various exponents in government posts (and not only in the Meloniexecutive). This process is also accompanied and favored by the mainstream mediawhich, especially since Russia's invasion of Ukraine began, has intensified itspropaganda in favor of rearmament and the importance of NATO.In this scenario, the State, through governments and its institutions, has beencarrying out a continuous and ferocious criminalization of dissent for years. Thethings that happen and that are not in line with the hegemonic social imaginaryare shown with the complicity of the mainstream media and repressed with theultimate aim of stifling any non-approved drive.Increasingly, criminal offenses are being adopted to target the movements thatonly a few years ago could have been considered exceptional. But in fact there isno exceptionality in the legal system. The various articles remain in force: thelaws are alive and well in the drawers of justice.Let's think, for example, of the Daspo, introduced against the fans and soonreworked, extending the possibility of prohibiting anyone from accessing specificspaces, places and/or times.Think of the so-called "anti-rave" decree which, also according to variousofficials of the "order", complicates an already stringent legislation on theoccupation of public and private land.But let's think also and above all of the customs clearance of the crime ofdevastation and looting (used successfully experimentally for the first time forthe events of the G8 in Genoa in 2001), a crime designed for times of war. Amongother things, correctness is envisaged for the simple fact of being present inthe place and at the time when punishable events occur: thus we pass from theindividual responsibility of each one before the law, to collectiveresponsibility regardless of the actions of the individual.Let's think of the special surveillance of fascist memory, whose most famouscases have involved some company returning from Rojava in recent years, but whichwas also about to be imposed on a Last Generation activist after a demonstrativeaction in Rome.We think of the increasingly frequent extortion charges in response to thestruggles of non-concert unionism. Let us think lastly - but certainly not interms of gravity - of the crime of massacre which endangers the security of theState (art. 285 of the criminal code) to which Alfredo Cospito was ultimatelysentenced. He is accused of having planted two bombs in the bins near theCarabinieri school in Fossano; bombs that caused neither injuries nor deaths.This is another museum piece of Italian jurisprudence, one of the heaviestarticles of the penal code relating to the crimes of massacre. An article thatwas not even used following the mafia attacks in Capaci and via d'Amelio or inthe massacres in piazza Fontana or Bologna, the work of right-wing extremistswith the endorsement of the secret services, which were not deviated at all.Today we live in very hard times, in which the only real anomaly is the almostflat calm that reigns in our country, despite the progressive and seeminglyunstoppable increase in social suffering. The judiciary, hitting a handful ofanarchists and other minorities of the social opposition, experiences thepossibility of raising the bar of repression even further. A bar that hasconstantly risen in recent years, extending the logic of the enemy's criminallaw, already tested on migrants, to all self-organized movements.We believe that this can happen because the laws, beyond the liberal andguaranteeist framework in which they are inserted, are nothing more than theritualized representation of the power relations within a society. Theirrepressive scope is exactly what the state thinks it can afford. When laws changefor the better, it is always under pressure from large and determined socialforces, capable of putting those who govern and the repressive apparatuses of thestate in difficulty. We repeat: large and determined social forces.AGAINST PRISON, 41BIS AND LIFE PRISON OBSTATIVE FOR A SOCIETY WITHOUT JAILSThe Italian legal system provides for penalties of increasing invasiveness inproportion to what it deems to be the seriousness of the offence. The mostserious penalty is life imprisonment with daytime solitary confinement, but onthe basis of the circumstances and behavior of the detained person, the executionof the sentence may include aggravations of his situation or access to benefitssuch as probation, permits prize, educational activities etc. The penitentiarysystem, however, provides that access to these benefits is precluded to prisonerssentenced to life imprisonment for some crimes considered particularly serious(mafia crimes or crimes committed for the purposes of terrorism or subversion ofthe democratic order), transforming the life imprisonment essentially in a deathsentence, unless the detained person decides to "collaborate". This is theinstitution of "life imprisonment", against which countless jurists fromdifferent ideological areas have already ruled over the years and on which therehave also been contrary rulings by international courts, regularly ignored byItaly. The question of the regime provided for by art. 41 bis, which, under thepretext of isolating the leaders of criminal organizations, condemns them to bewalled up alive in cells without windows, with no contact with the outside worldand even preventing them from keeping photographs and books.It is known from certain evidence on the bodies of those who have been subjectedto this regime for years, that it has an atrophic and dehumanizing effect quiteequal to torture. Many never go back to the way they were after experiencing thispunishment. But, given that life in prison already provides for very stronglimitations on contacts with the outside world, such as censorship of the mail,surveillance of interviews, etc., the application of sensory limitations judgedby many voices as psychological torture is equivalent to a admission of failureof the control that the state claims to exercise over detained persons (and whichis completely lacking in the case of the dozens of suicides in prison cells). Themeasure of 41 bis, which existed prior to the Capaci attack but stubbornlymaintained in the legal system in the name of the fight against the mafia, it isparticularly absurd when applied to Cospito, given the informal andanti-organizational nature of its area. Instead, Minister Nordio went so far asto say that Cospito was the explicit instigator of the spontaneous manifestationsof anger that took place in numerous Italian cities and abroad, that thereforeeven from the profound and grave isolation of a prison he could determine theactions of people throughout Europe. Let alone. that therefore even from the deepand grave isolation of a prison he could determine the actions of peoplethroughout Europe. Let alone. that therefore even from the deep and graveisolation of a prison he could determine the actions of people throughout Europe.Let alone.Finally, it is worth recalling that in some countries, including Europeancountries, life imprisonment does not exist, or is limited to very serious crimesand in fact never applied because it is considered disproportionate to thepurpose of the sentence.Although according to the very rules of the Italian state, the penalty shouldhave a re-educational purpose (and there is much to be said about this too), itis clear that it is applied hypocritically and exclusively in a punitive way: avendetta by the state.Instead, we prefer to look at the revolutionary experience of Rojava, whereprison is only the last resort for the irreducible, and there are paths ofreconciliation and restitution that involve the families of the victims, becausethe individual is considered too important to be locked up in a cage. And evenearlier, Michail Bakunin theorized exile and social ostracism in his writings asa remedy for the antisocial nature of crime, handing prison over to an outdatedregime.All prison is harsh, not just 41 bis, all prison is inhuman and hypocriticalbecause it does not "re-educate". Let us also consider that prison sentences areserved in dilapidated, inadequate premises and in which the conditions are somiserable as to seriously undermine the physical and mental health of the prisoner.The prison extends well beyond its walls, keeping us all under threat through theobscene device of dissuasion, a purpose that has nothing to do with the"re-education" provided for by article 27 of the Constitution. The states agreethat the conditions of prison are very bad, even in hypocritical violation oftheir own laws, in order to keep alive the illusion of dissuasion. In realitythere is no correlation between the severity of the penalties provided for by alegal system and the number and seriousness of the crimes committed therein.Despite this, any proposal to reform prison conditions is sabotaged, while thesocial causes of the crime remain unaddressed.But the prison is also extended with the preventive surveillance devices in thecities, in border controls, in the cpr, in Libyan prisons, in psychiatricinstitutes, through the tightening of penalties for existing crimes and throughthe maintenance in force of outdated penal provisions and liberticide, at thedisposal of an arbitrary application to the "enemy" of the moment who disagrees. From the simplest prison sentence to the most unfavorable prison regime, theentire prison universe is dehumanizing, useless and harmful.AGAINST THE SHOWCASE CITY, FOR A NON-COMMERCIFIED SOCIALITY, WE DEFEND THEFREEDOM TO DEMONSTRATEIf up to now we have talked about the picture at a national level, it seemsimportant to us to get to the situation in Trieste.At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic we witnessed the annihilation of thepossibility of aggregation in the square, without distinction of what nature:from the prohibition of garrisons or parades, in an initial phase due to thespread of the Coronavirus, to the absurd prohibition of attending places isolatedfrom sol?, as if just breathing the air outside the windows of the house - forthose who have the privilege of having one to live in - represented a crimeagainst public health, with the consequent hunt for the untor? we have witnessedon the streets and in the media. The tendency of the so-called "authorities" hasbeen, starting from that moment, towards the annihilation of constructivesocialities: they have tried, and are still trying, to limit socialization tovirtual spaces,In a second phase of mismanagement of the city spaces, in which it seemed thatthe emergency of the health situation was emerging, the real intention of theseoperations emerged: from 1 November 2021 to 30 April 2022, following an orderfrom the Committee order and public safety, any demonstration within theperimeter of the city center has been prohibited in Trieste. The virus evidentlyspread in piazza Unità, on the Rive and in Cavana, but not in Campo San Giacomo,in Largo Barriera, in the streets which, rather than being inhabited by tourists,are crossed by the people who live this city. From that moment on, the intent hasalways been the same: to make the city center a chic living room for tourists whoare participating in the destruction of Trieste with cruise ships, transformingit into a port for palace-ships with a high impact on the environment and into aplace of consumption dominated by bars and luxury shops. In fact, even after theend of the ban on demonstrations in the centre, the line adopted wascharacterized by strong ostracism towards alternative demonstrations and forms ofsociality, not focused on profit. Even in recent times, the Questura haspresented various prescriptions which have forbidden access to the centralstreets of the city, relegating processions and garrisons to areas where dissentgoes unnoticed by the "good population" who frequent those streets; a way to makeTrieste appear to tourists as a peaceful city, without social problems, in whichto stroll peacefully because everything runs perfectly.However, this is not the reality of the facts: social discontent continues togrow - as do the bands of poverty - and the movements continue to implementpractices of solidarity from below and criticism of the wrongdoings of thecentral government and local administration. It is extremely serious how theentities dedicated to public disorder have become actors in a real repressivefury against some groups and collectives of the city, which they have arbitrarilylinked to the ambit of anarchism. We fear that this climate of repression of thesquares and of non-commodified sociality initiatives will increase in the comingperiod.Making the movement's voice heard is becoming increasingly difficult; for this weneed collective action networks that aim to break down the wall of repression,towards the reappropriation of public spaces - even the central ones devoured bygentrification - for the destruction of an image of the silent, tranquil city,detached from the desperate situation society in which it is immersed.We believe that these issues must be at the center of the next city deadlines,with a long-term collective gaze that knows how to broaden our networks, buildingand multiplying spaces for self-management, for non-commodified sociality, forstruggle.Germinal Trieste Anarchist Grouphttps://germinalts.noblogs.org/post/2023/04/21/repressione-carcere-liberta-di-manifestare-qualche-riflessione-per-il-dibattito/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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