Rellen bij Biotech Trade Exhibition

(Italië, 26 nov. 1999)

Van NoGen, Burgtstraat 3, 6701 DA Wageningen

In de Italiaanse stad Padua braken vrijdag 26-11-99 rellen uit nadat de politie een vreedzame demonstratie aanviel, waarbij een demonstrant gewond werd en een Groene burgemeester gearresteerd.
Aan de demonstratie namen honderden mensen deel van de Sociale Centra, die deel uitmaken van de zogenaamde antagonistische beweging.
Resultaat van de demonstratie was wel dat een Biotech Expo -waarheen de demonstratie op weg was- de hele morgen gesloten werd.

Hier volgt het bericht zoals wij dat binnen kregen vrijdag avond 26-11-1999

---

Hallo to everybody,

An hysterical police attack took place this morning in Padova (Padua), at the Biotech Trade Exhibition "Bionova".

Padua is the Italian city most favourable to biotechnologies, so much to open a university course on biotechnology. Immediately Milan did the same at the new university pole "Bicocca". A real race after a supposed lot of corporate money!

On the other side, many Italian cities, especially small ones, declared themselves "biotech-free zones" in these last months.

However, this morning in Padua several hundreds people from the Social Centers, environmentalist and greens gathered outside the Trade Exhibition gates to pay a peaceful visit inside and show their opposition to biotechs directly to the top managers of Monsanto, Dupont, Novartis, etc, all together there to illustrate the "advantages" of this wonderful technology.

Well, the Padua demonstrants tasted on their own skin some of this advantages: the repression brought into society by this bunch of pirates. Infact, as soon as the demo moved toward the exhibition, the police made a first, very heavy attack. The demo was lead by the Venezia city councillor Beppe Caccia, a famous pacifist and a Green, to show its absolutely peaceful character. As a result, the city councillor was beaten up and -- according to the first reports -- arrested.

The demonstrants reacted to the police attack as they could -- after some riots the demo continued, only to run into an even heavier attack which sent several people to the hospital, one -- a camerade from Rovigo -- quite seriously wounded.

At this point, seen the heavy corporate/police reaction and in order to avoid falling into the corporate trap of depicting anti-GMO demonstrants as a bunch of freaks and hooligans, the demonstration ended -- but not the anti GMO struggle, of course. One nice thing, the only one, was that the riots forced the police to close the Trade Exhibition for the whole morning, so nobody could get in or out. Hundreds of visitors could see with their own eyes what happens when you try to stop biotechnologies by direct action, not only by attending to TV talk shows.

And now there will be the actions on Nov. 27/ Nov. 30 + the eviction of a main squat in Milan (The "Deposito Bulk") which received an eviction notice for last Monday (not applied yet -- lots of people is guarding the place). Hot december foreseen, despite the freezing weather.

Giuliano

NB - for more info, check the Italian Antagonist Web Page: www.ecn.org then "Presenze", then "Radio Sherwood" or check the mailing lists -- some release is already in English.

 
_____
menu | dDH