BBC News, I Still Have Nightmares, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4229777.stm
“The first eight of them attacked me as I shouted “Prensa! Prensa! (Journalist!)” One of them said to me in English ‘You are Black Bloc and we’re going to kill Black Bloc.’
…
I fell to the floor after being batoned around the kneecaps. They kicked me in the spine and I was used as a football. Eight of my ribs were broken. One lung was shredded, not punctured but shredded.
“I had two bones broken in my left hand and a vein twisted around my spine.
“I lay on the floor for a while and then more police came along. One hit me in the back of the head with a baton and another one kicked me in the face, which is when I lost my 10 front teeth.”
This is just part of the experience Mark Covell went through after midnight, on July 22nd 2001 when a large number of policemen in battle gear attacked the journalist covering the demonstrations during the G8 summit in Genoa. Covell, a reporter from the Independent Media Center, was 14 hours in unconsciousness and was sent to hospital in a critical condition. He spent 12 days there after what he was departed to England for further treatment.
BBC News, I Still Have Nightmares, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4229777.stm
“My post traumatic stress disorder is sky high and I am still having counselling. It was like having a shell go off next to you in Iraq.
“I almost died at Diaz and I still have flashbacks and nightmares every night, and recently they have got worse.”
The assault over Covell happened in the Diaz school, a few kilometers from the place of the G8 summit. 93 people were arrested following the police raid of which 72 were injured and none convicted.
BBC News, “Genoa police “admit fabrication” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2636647.stm
A senior officer, Pietro Troiani, reportedly admitted under questioning that two petrol bombs allegedly found at the school were planted by police to justify the raid.
…
Demonstrators said riot police beat them with clubs, smashed windows and wrecked computers in the raid.The BBC’s Bill Hayton was among those who stood outside the Diaz school, hearing the screams coming from within, then watching bodies brought out on stretchers.
When the police left he went in and saw blood on the walls, floors and radiators of an upstairs room.
The police forces are believed to be also responsible for the dead of the protestor Carlo Giuliani. Videotape and photos are showing Giuliani being shot in the head and ran over by a jeep belonging to the Italian carabinieries (more information about the death of Giuliani can be found on http://www.carlo-giuliani.com/ ). The 19th and 20th court hearings of the case, in which 70 police officers are accused of police brutality against protestors, were conducted on January 11 and 19 2006.
Independent Media Center, Witnesses Reclaim Truth in Geneva, http://www.indymedia.org/en/2006/01/831973.shtml
The first to give evidence was BBC reporter Bill Hayton, who happened to be present during the raid and could recall the whole night basing on his mobile phone bill. The timing of his calls to the BBC show the sequence of events: when the raid started and he could watch everything from the independent media headquarters, when the police took him “hostage” for 40 minutes and when he was freed and could go and watch the havoc caused by the police in the school.
After him the court listened to Hamish Campbell, a videomaker who was in the media center when the raid began and filmed everything from the rooftop of the building facing the Diaz school. His video is a milestone in the accusation, since it testifies that there was nobody fighting against the police when the agents attacked the makeshift dormitory. The thesis of the defence is instead that the police were assaulted by people throwing objects against them. From his rooftop hideout, Hamish Campbell also witnessed the policemen beating Mark Covell in the street.
However, even found guilty, the police officers might avoid jail because of the law devised to enable Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s former lawyer to escape a jail term on bribery charges but also applying to various other offenses.
The journalistic community is increasingly concerned with the violence employed by various security institutions towards the press. Most people consider normal, although unacceptable, repressions against the freedom of speech in countries like Iran. However, developed countries should not believe they are immune against such problems. Often, especially in the cases of demonstrations and protests, the police forces are reacting overly-aggressively and, thus, threatening the lives of bystanders.
International Federation of Journalists, Journalists Condemn Police and Demand Probe Into Genoa Violence Against Media http://media.gn.apc.org/fl/ifjgenoa.html
The International Federation of Journalists today accused Italian police of violence against media staff and heavy-handed tactics that “have put reporters at risk and show contempt for press freedom” in the confrontation with protestors at the G8 summit over the weekend.
“We had numerous reports of reporters and news teams caught up in the crossfire of some brutal policing,” said Aidan White, General Sectretary of the IFJ, the world’s largest journalists’ organisation. “We demand a full investigation into how the police have acted and particularly how they have compromised journalists’ rights and put reporters at risk”.
However, Covell believes the violence against him was not accidental.
International Federation of Journalists, Statement by Mark Covell, http://media.gn.apc.org/fl/0109sky.html?i=flolder&d=2001_09
The purpose of the Italian police raid on Indymedia, says Covell, may have been to seize film of their earlier actions. It may have been to prevent us reporting their outrageously violent raid on the peaceful protesters’ billet on the other side of the street. Either way, it was an attack on the media – your media as much as mine.
The deterioration of the freedom of speech is a global trend. Journalists are being beaten by police forces, editors are being persecuted for their work, and the normal people are not allowed to express their opinion. The Patriotic Act is taking over the world and is threatening to turn Orwell’s “1984” into reality. Where are we going from here?
