Tuesday March 15th, 2005 14:37 Against cpt for freedom of movement

In the Friuli Venezia Giulia region and more generally in the northeast of Italy there has never been a centre of temporary permanence(cpt).
The only time that the government tried to open up one in Trieste was in 1998 and there was a great mobilization that led its closure after a few days.
In October 1998 the demonstration in Trieste marked a turning point in the movement fighting against those lagers.
For the first time the demonstrators decided to protect their bodies from the brutal charges of the police. Hundreds of plexiglas shields that were carrying the name of Semira Adamu (killed in an airplane during her deportation out of Europe), allowed the demonstrators and journalists to enter inside the Old Port of Trieste and to show the shame of the lager that had been built inside.
  Photo
Some days after that demonstration the then Minister of the Interior Rosa Russo Jervolino decreed this cpt had to be closed.
Up till now that demonstration shows that is possible to close the cpt.
Even so, harsh sentences have been passed for many demonstrators.
The 20 of April 2005 there will be in Trieste the trial on appeal. That day a mobilization is expected under the court of Trieste.
Many years after that attempt the Italian government is trying to build a new cpt in that region….This time in Gradisca d’Isonzo, in the province of Gorizia, next to the border with Slovenia.
Inside the ex-barracks fallen in disuse, the works for building the biggest cpt in the North Italy has begun.
For more than an year, there has been a great movement of protest opposing the opening of the cpt, trying to slacken and boycott the works of construction, as in January and June 2004 when some demonstrators blocked the works by the sabotage of the tooling up causing 50000 euros damages.
  Photo and Video

The vicissitude of the detention center of Gradisca seems to be dirty and fishy just like its construction plans. The responsibility for the first documents about the location and the beginning of the works is of the previous left government. The present Berlusconi government is proceeding in the construction of the detention lager, bypassing all the local authorities that have always been against the detention center and the only sure thing is that it is imposing its will without interpellating any local institution.
Besides, thanks to the interest and to the inquires mode by some town councillor and by the Green regional councillor Alessandro Metz, many administrative steps for the building procedures of the detention center seem to be missing.
These skipped procedures make the CPT an illegal building that can be called an unauthorized building costing more than 10 millions Euro.
That has enabled the local authorities to decree the confiscation of the land, but so far nobody has had the political courage to make the choice. None of the local politicians has said that the detention center - besides being a juridical, social, cultural and political aberration - is also the last phase of the working and existencial precariousness and is the continual blackmail of the total flexibility for the labourmarket, that is creating a new kind of slavery also called residence contract.
Recently we are attending to some shameful behaviours of surrender together with some statements about some possible collaboration to run the detention center.
Instead, the citizens were the ones who tried to sequester the detention center.
On the 26 of February there was a great demonstration with more than 3000 people parading around the sheets of Gradisca.
When they were in front of the terrible reinforced concrete wall 4 mts high (recently rebuilt after the old one had been broken down during the previous initiatives) that hide what they are building inside the ex-barracks (Photo), the demonstrators simbollically spread out a barbed wire in front of the main door guarded by the police and coloured the wall and the police shields by throwing paintballs. In spite of the symbolic and pacific action, the police attacked the march with violence, wounding and arresting a young boy at the end of the demonstration.
  Photo and Video (QuickTime 56k or more)
During the following days, two people were served search warrents by the Carabinieri who were looking for the photos of the plans of the cpt and were charged with violation of the State Secrecy since the plans were withheld by the Ministry of the Interior.
However, someone had succeeded in getting and spreading them, allowing in that way to show to everybody that the cpt of Gradisca is a real lager.
  Photo of the project and plan of the CPT
The “chilean atmosphere” that the police had set up on these regions about the event of the detention lager (let us mention that before the demonstration the police had terrorized the citizens and shopkeepers of Gradisca obliging them to close the shops and stay at home) shows that the government is fearful that the truth about what the detention center really is comes out. For sure, the movement fighting against the cpt will not stop and since the 2nd of April new actions against the detention center of Gradisca have been announced.
The better way to close the detention center is not to allow to open it.

  Listen to the direct action in Italy against detention center during 2004/2005