Already with the first decree, the one on Rave which was followed by the
Cutro, Caivano decrees, up to the one against the NGO ships, the Melonigovernment had shown its authoritarian face in which the security turn
transforms into public order problems every demonstration that has even
a semblance of protest or more simply of social unease. ---- And it is
precisely in continuity with this strongly repressive vision that the
approval of the DDL 1660 on public safety fits in, a plan that is the
last act of a government program that wants to erase the principles of
our constitutional system to make room for others that belong to the
history of this right.
The first impression one gets from reading the text is that, by waving
the flag of insecurity in cities, which has always been the battle horse
of the right, once again the focus is on increasing penalties and
introducing new crimes without even considering the problem of acting
instead on the causes and/or social phenomena that produce the so-called
"insecurities".
This bill takes up all the campaigns dear to the right in a logic that
is only repressive and security-oriented and essentially aims to
criminalize social conflict and dissent in all its forms: from cannabis
to illegal occupations, from prisons to CPRs, from environmentalist
struggles to those against the militarization of territories, from
workers fighting with pickets in front of companies that relocate to
solidarity initiatives towards migrants and prisoners.
Below are the salient points of this bill:
With art. 1 of Chapter I introduces a new crime that punishes with
imprisonment from 2 to 6 years the mere possession of "material
containing instructions on the preparation or use of weapons,
substances, techniques etc., for the purpose of terrorism"; therefore,
it is no longer necessary for there to be an actual and demonstrated
intention to commit acts of terrorism, but it will be enough to simply
be in possession of publications that in some way recall such a crime to
be accused of terrorism. It is an aberrant principle that transforms
into a crime the simple suspicion that one might commit it in the future
and, very worryingly, it can constitute a precedent to be applied to
other types of crime;
Art. 8 of Chapter II establishes the new crime of "arbitrary occupation
of property intended for someone else's domicile", prosecutable upon
complaint by a party, but also ex officio in the case of public
buildings and the participation of more than 5 people, with penalties of
up to 7 years and an emergency procedure for eviction. It should be
specified that the same penalty is also applied to "anyone who
interferes or cooperates in the occupation of the property or receives
or pays money or other benefits for the occupation itself". This means
that movements, associations, committees, and all entities that support
an occupation for the need of an empty property, participate in an
anti-eviction picket, or even activate or participate in a subscription,
can be accused of a crime punishable by up to 7 years in prison; but
that is not enough because, while the occupier, in the case of
"cooperation" (i.e. leaves the property under the threat of prison) sees
the criminal proceedings annulled, the same is not foreseen for those
who collaborated or supported that fight.
And all this while the housing crisis is affecting more and more people
without politics doing anything to try to give answers to those who are
experiencing the drama of the housing emergency, to those who are only
asking for a fundamental right that is denied today to be recognized,
the right to housing, and moreover after the Meloni government cancelled
the 330 million rent fund intended for tenants in arrears out of
necessity. The obsession of this government seems to be precisely the
war on the poor (let us remember the demagogy made on the citizen's
income and the exultation of the entire government team, and not only,
when it was cancelled) and on those who fight for rights, especially
social rights and human rights, while at the same time protecting the
so-called "white collars" by canceling, for example, the crime of abuse
of office: in short, the classic policy of those who choose to be strong
with the weak and weak with the strong. Continuing reading the provision
we find in art. 10 is the point that introduces the power of the police
to order the removal of a citizen from a certain area for 48 hours: it
is easy to imagine the use that will be made of it before demonstrations
and trade union and political marches, while art. 11 changes what was
an administrative sanction for blocking a road into a criminal offence
and introduces the increase in the penalty from 6 months to 2 years for
those who block a road or railway with their own body and with several
people gathered together.
It is clear that these rules are aimed at eliminating any form of
protest or unauthorized demonstrations, even in the form of passive
resistance; and so they try to cut the legs off the climate movements,
the No TAV demonstrations and the protests against the bridge over the
Strait of Messina, but also the workers' struggles or the many
territorial demonstrations against the processes of militarization of
the territories or against military bases and their use in the various
wars that now see, in fact, also our country involved in absolute
contempt of art. 11 of the constitution.
With art. 12 and 13 come the anti-Roma rules so dear to Minister Salvini.
The first cancels the mandatory postponement of the sentence for
pregnant women and mothers with children up to one year of age, thus
forcing a minor, completely innocent, to prison and its harsh reality; a
particularly hateful measure, this one, designed to specifically punish
Roma women, but it is not enough, in addition, it also provides for
aggravated penalties for begging which thus, from a social problem
becomes the object of real criminalization.
Scrolling through the various articles, one then finds the whole issue
regarding the "defense" of the police forces where increased penalties
are provided for up to a third of the penalty already provided for (from
6 months to 5 years) for the crimes of violence, threats and resistance
against a police officer or agent, prohibiting judges from considering
mitigating circumstances to prevail over this new aggravating
circumstance and where officers and police agents are also authorized to
carry weapons without a license even when they are off duty, but at the
same time, obviously, the identification code on the helmets of the
police forces completely disappears.
Furthermore, new aggravating circumstances are provided for the crime of
"incitement to disobey the laws" with a penalty of up to 5 years.
With this rule, all demonstrations or appeals that call for civil
disobedience with respect to war, the sending of weapons, the right to
decide when to die or to oppose rules and laws deemed unjust, could
therefore incur such punishment. But it is not enough because if such a
crime of disobedience were to occur inside prisons, by prisoners, or
even through direct communications to detainees, imprisonment of up to 8
years will be foreseen; penalties can be increased in certain cases up
to 20 years.
This means that a simple protest demonstration, even a symbolic one,
inside a penal institution or a CPR, would be considered the same as a
riot, punished with very high penalties even in the case of simple
passive resistance, nullifying any right of prisoners or migrants in
CPRs to be able to denounce the inhumane conditions in which they are
forced to live, nullifying their every voice and making them effectively
invisible. Finally, the rule that prohibits the purchase of a SIM card
to those migrants who do not yet have a residence permit, a rule of pure
evil, there are no other terms to define it, which will prevent those
who arrive in Italy after a dramatic journey, from being able to contact
their family, perhaps just to reassure them or even just to hear a
friendly voice.
The icing on the cake is art. 18 which prohibits the production of light
cannabis, a purely ideological rule that aims, here too, to criminalise
the so-called hemp inflorescences without any scientific and legal
basis, without considering that this would have as a consequence the
bringing to its knees of a growing sector that employs around 15,000
workers in Italy and generates an annual turnover of over 500 million euros.
But not content with all this, the League has presented and approved an
order of the day that commits the Government to opening a table to
evaluate the introduction of chemical castration for sexual crimes: we
are at the most absolute barbarity!!
The repressive plan behind the entire structure of the bill is clear, a
plan that aims to criminalise every form of social, political and trade
union struggle, to settle accounts with society and those who animate
it, with the conflicts that make it live and it is done with repressive
laws that aim to erase every form of solidarity and mutual aid that can
be established in front of a factory that is closing, together with an
anti-eviction picket, or with the request for more humane conditions in
places of detention; it is the denial of conflict as a dynamic element
that conveys transformation. If it is through conflicts that rights are
born, exercised and preserved, those who oppose and try to erase
conflict, like this bill, tend to maintain the status quo, the existing
relations of domination and inequality.
Moreover, even the OSCE, the organization for security in Europe, wrote,
expressing great concern: "most of these provisions have the potential
to undermine the fundamental principles of criminal justice and the rule
of law".
It is a bill for a real "police state" that finds its roots in a
strongly authoritarian idea of society and in the desire to rearm by
repressing any opposition, it is an armor of a war economy: the welfare
state is dying, brought down by the penal state.
Faced with this extremely worrying picture, there has been an
underestimation of the problem by those who are most at risk of
suffering its effects; the union, the movements, the entire left has
looked the other way (certainly also due to the contingency of the war,
the Palestinian question, the corporate crises, etc.), but today we are
all called to mobilize ourselves and mobilize the squares to build a
front capable of opposing this authoritarian drift, knowing that
otherwise it will be above all the above-mentioned realities that will
pay the dramatic consequences.
http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/wpAL
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