Update: In June of 2008, anarchist prisoner Juan Sorroche was released under house arrest.

BREAK THE SILENCE

(inspired by a few leaflets from 'Fuoriluogo')

Saturday 13th October 2007 at around 4am: a girl is sleeping in piazza Verdi in Bologna (northern Italy). Police on patrol decide that the girl�s behaviour is �abnormal� and must be corrected by compulsory sanitary treatment (TSO), which means internment in a psychiatric hospital and forced administration of psychotropic drugs. The cops call the ambulance while keeping the girl under their custody against her will. Five comrades of the anarchist place �Fuoriluogo� witness the episode and cannot help expressing their contempt at the police. They do their best to prevent the arrest of the girl. The police�s answer is brutal: armed with truncheons and even guns they chase the comrades. As the latter flee, six more police vans are called on the scene and the short escape ends in piazza San Vitale. The 5 are handcuffed while being severely beaten by the cops. A few residents in the area are clearly indignant at the police's behaviour but do not intervene.

The accusations against the comrades are quite heavy: aggravated robbery (the cops have lost a pair of handcuffs), resistance and damage (of a police van in which one of the comrades had been taken). The 5 are immediately imprisoned in La Dozza prison. Two girls are eventually put under house arrest.

That very night and the following morning the police search the houses of other comrades in Bologna with the pretext that they are searching for the disappeared handcuffs.

In the evening a spontaneous march in solidarity to the arrested anarchists is carried out. Some of the demonstrators decide to express their solidarity also through �dangerous� writings on the walls of the town. Caught by Digos officers, they are arrested and tried summarily: Juan and Bogu are sentenced to 10 months and taken to prison whereas Davide, Alessio and Belle are sentenced to 4 months and put under house arrest.

All the arrested anarchists are inflicted high surveillance regime and censorship on their mail.

In the following months, Cristian, Federico, Andrea, Madda, Manuela and Bogu are unlocked and put under house arrest without the possibility (in Bogu�s case) to receive mail, make telephone calls and see anyone who doesn�t live in the house. Juan, on the contrary, is still in jail and has been transferred from one prison to another a number of times. At the moment he is being held in Poggioreale prison (Naples).

In February 2008 another three anarchists are arrested (house arrest) following the same investigation concerning the former.

These are the latest in a long series of episodes that in recent months have brought about the adoption of suffocating repressive measures in Bologna. Prohibitions of all sorts are imposed all over the city and the centre is constantly patrolled by a massive presence of police. Houses and social squats are being evicted, camps of gypsy people are being demolished with excavators and all forms of social and political dissent are being criminalized. This is done in the name of 'social security' and to solve so called 'social uneasiness', topics that have been filling the front pages of the press with the intent of stirring a sense of social fear in the citizens and divert their attention from real problems, and of fomenting an atmosphere of cynicism, indifference and resignation. Right now that it is governed by a 'leftist' major, Bologna seems to be once again a laboratory where more and more refined and widespread techniques of social control are being experimented. It is the mayor of Bologna the father of the �security laws� approved by the committee of Italian majors and eventually adopted at a national level thanks to home secretary Amato.

In fact the 'question of security', far from being a local problem, has become the tour de force of all politicians in Italy, and a subject that gives left-wing and right-wing politicians the opportunity to be engaged in a game in which everyone tries to propose the most suitable solutions to suppress freedom. Day by day intolerance towards the �weakest� categories is growing up. A system based on authoritarian subjugation establishes who are those to be protected and who are those to be persecuted, and inevitably exposes the excluded to cowardly violence: from the attacks against gypsy camps and the community of immigrants in general to the use of total institutions (prisons and psychiatric hospitals) and the more and more frequent raids carried out by gangs of neo fascists.

This progressive and obvious devastation of social relationships is not carried out at random. On the contrary, we think it demonstrates that a well-thought process of restoration of order is under way, a process that is making giant steps in order to change the rules of this �democratic� State. It is not a restoration directed to the past, it is rather a condition necessary to consolidate a political, economic and social system, which is strategically based on war. In fact, while the armies of all western States (including the British and the Italian ones) are engaged into massacring the poorest populations in order to �export democracy� in every corner of the world, the suppression of any space where opposition and dissent can express themselves has become absolute priority at all levels, from the international one to the local one: massive militarisation of urban space, increase in the number of prisoners, deportation of immigrants and shameless persecution of all social struggles, from workers� strikes to squatting of houses, from protests against eco-devastation to opposition to war. Obviously the most persecuted are those who openly declare themselves enemies of the State and its social order.

Those people who don�t let themselves be deceived by the propaganda of the regime can therefore recognize the real causes of �insecurity� and �social uneasiness�.

Deaths at work and fires in workplaces that are occurring in Italy almost on a daily basis cause more dead and injured than any criminal activity. At the same time the impoverishment hitting most people does not depend on thefts and robberies but on wages that are more and more inadequate to the cost of living.

The real insecurity is caused by the constant growth of precarious jobs, which are paid very poorly and do not offer any safeguard, by continuous dismissal of workers (due to the transfer abroad of businesses, where labour force is cheap enough according to the bosses� needs), by unaffordable renting prices and by a welfare that cannot offer anything, on the contrary: in Italy people die because of wrong sanitary treatment or get intoxicated by rubbish left to accumulate in the streets.

This is not only an Italian story: repressive strategies and social control aimed at preventing the excluded and exploited to unite against their common enemy are being adopted everywhere.

This story, therefore, concerns all of us.

SOLIDARITY TO THE ARRESTED IN BOLOGNA

LET�S PUT FIRE TO ALL PRISONS

On Juan Sorroche's Trial

On Wednesday, June 13, 2007, in Trento, Italy, a trial was carried out against our friend and companion Juan Sorroche, accused of arson against the Trenitalia train company and "subversive association for the purpose of terrorism".

18,000 pages of surveillance evidence, from video, telephone and ambient sources, meant to support the hypothesis of "association", amounted to absolutely nothing. So the prosecutor Paolo Storari tried to characterize parts of Juan's written correspondence from prison and his previous legal troubles over the grabbing of the Olympic torch and a punch given to a fascist as having "terrorist purposes".

After placing microspies everywhere (in houses, cars, centers, public places and even in a companion's bag) and installing tens of surveillance cameras (in front of houses and centers, in telephone booths and near numerous cell phone repeater towers) at a cost of around a million Euros, our public mercenary of repression has found himself empty-handed. Nonetheless, he has asked for a sentence of 4 years and 4 months in prison. The sentence will be announced on July 6.

The Prosecutor of Trento made the trial into a closed door proceeding, impeding the access of Juan's companions.

After a blocking of traffic put into practice by some 30 anarchists and other people in solidarity, the doors were opened, allowing some companions inside to greet Juan.

During the intervention, the searches and investigations in Bologna were also spoken of. In light of the media lynching on a national level against some basic banalities always maintained by revolutionaries, it seemed appropriate to hang a banner reading: "The Terrorist is the State".

The appointment for sentencing is July 6 at 9:00.

Anarchists of Rovereto and Trento

(Loosely translated from Italian)

Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoner Juan Sorroche

A gathering in front of the Italian consulate in Barcelona was held on January 24th, 2007, in solidarity with anarchist prisoner Juan Antonio Sorroche Fernandez, who was arrested on December 21st, 2006, in Girona by the Guardia Civil (Spanish military police) in cooperation with the Italian Carabinieri (Italian paramilitary police). Juan was searched and detained as part of an investigation based on article 270bis, "subversive association for the purpose of terrorism", under the Italian legal code. Juan was imprisoned in the anti-terror prison regime of Soto del Real Apdo, Madrid. Now he has been extradited back to Italy. It seems that the Italian state is taking the example from the Spanish state and has began to apply the systematic dispersion of all dissident prisoners. Therefore Juan has been sent to a jail that is to 7 hours from the place where he has roots (Rovereto). Juan's criminal charge is related to various acts of sabotage in Rovereto, Italy, where he had been living. These include attacks on banks, police vehicles, cell-phone relay equipment and the burning of three train-units of the Trenitalia railway company, an attack for which an anonymous claim of responsibility was made because of the company's involvement in the deportation of immigrants.

Juan had just spent several months in prison in Italy for resisting a police identification check in Rovereto in June of 2006. He and three of his anarchist companions resisted the cops attempt to drag them to a police station. Police reinforcements were called in and the police officers hit an anarchist in the face with a flash light and let loose with punches and kicks. The anarchists reacted, six cops sought first aid and one cop car was damaged. Juan was sentenced to nine months in prison for this incident. In a statement from prison, he and his companion Mike described their resistance as an act of solidarity with immigrants who also face identification checks, but under a more serious threat of deportation or death during escape attempts. At the end of September, a judge suspended Juan's sentence, with the condition that Juan remain in a different town and not leave, though his home was Rovereto. He left anyway and was arrested in Spain. Juan was also one of the four Rovereto anarchists arrested after the snatching of the Olympic flame in January of 2006, an action which one of the arrested anarchists, Massimo, claimed in court as being related to the exploitation of immigrant workers on the Olympic-related construction project of the TAV high-speed railway.

Juan's address in prison:

Juan Antonio Sorroche Fernandez
Casa Circondariale Ctr.
Castrogno 64100
Teramo
Italy

Statement from Mike and Juan in the Rovereto Prison (June 2006)

We transgressed your laws not by chance but by making a choice that reflects our very conscience and heart. When refusing to show our documents we reconfirm our refusal of authority and express solidarity to all the people who, unlike us, don't have the possibility to choose but are compelled to run away in order to escape imprisonment.

We want to remember:

- Patrick, who was compelled to falsify his documents to be able to stay close to his mother.

- Ali, who was recently deported from Italy after being blackmailed and obliged to choose between leaving Italy and being locked up in prison.

- We want to remember the boy who threw himself into the frozen water of the Adige in January, while escaping the Carabinieri from Trento, and whose destiny is still unknown.

- We want to remember those who died falling from a balcony or a train to escape police examination, as happened in Genoa and Turin.

- We want to remember those who are locked up, starved and tortured in the Italian detention camps and all over the world.

- We want to remember those who are judged in these courts because they don't have a piece of paper that is not worth a life.

- We want to remember the unnamed people who were killed by racism and indifference in this society.

As we are convinced that refusing to show identity documents on a large scale implies active solidarity towards those who don't have papers or have received deportation and expulsion orders, we remain 'not susceptible to repentance', towards your accusations, sentences and jails.

- Mike and Juan from the Rovereto prison, June 30, 2006.

Note:

Juan was also one of the four Rovereto anarchists arrested after the snatching of the Olympic flame in January of 2006, an action which one of the arrested anarchists, Massimo, claimed in court as being related to the exploitation of immigrant workers on the Olympic-related construction project of the TAV high-speed railway. More information on that can be found here:

Direct Action Against the Olympics and the High-Speed Railway in Italy

Insurrectionary Anarchists of the Coast Salish Territories