Bourgeois repression increasing in Europe: anarchists arrested in Italy

Members of the revolutionary cultural project Parole Armate (Armed Words) were arrested on March 29th by Italian Military Police (carabinieri). People of Anarchist ideology were arrested in Pisa, Chieti, Ravenna, Catania, Genoa and other towns. 

The Penal Code's articles applied imply that they are being accused of terrorism. However no armed group other than those pertaining to the state or the mafias is currently operative in Italy. This implies that it is probably a set up.

A letter from the only person whose home was searched in this raid but not arrested can be read at Contra Info:

On Thursday, March 29th, during the night, by order of the general prosecutor’s office of Perugia and the pubblico ministero (public prosecutor) Manuela Comodi, diverse house searches were carried out against four anarchists in various cities (Pisa, Ravenna, Genoa, etc.); different divisions of the carabiniers were mobilized, including the Anti-Crime Section from Bologna and the Anti-Subversion and Technical Investigations units of the Special Operations Group (Raggruppamento Operativo Speciale, ROS) from Rome. 

At 4.05, I found myself with six carabiniers that plunged into the house (2 local, 2 ROS and 2 of the aforementioned Anti-Crime Section) in search of documentary material, useful material for assembly of explosive parcels, and so forth. All this happened because of my affinity relationships with the comrades of Culmine and my comrade who is involved along with me in the project ParoleArmate.

During the house search, the cops commented in sarcastic way on everything they could lay their hands on, which only increased my feeling of nausea, hatred and disgust towards them.

After three hours of searching and rummaging, they returned to the police department with two cardboard boxes full of material (the one was returned to me immediately, while the other was kept as it was considered useful for investigation purposes).

They took everything: a computer, 3 cell phones, around forty books, pamphlets, leaflets, letters (with particular attention to material about the comrades of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, which comprised two letters and a few brochures), a pair of gloves, old handwritten sheets, and so on.

I was compelled, that very morning, to go to the provincial department of carabiniers, where I was handed the record of house search and sequestration; that’s when I found out that, among the four whose houses were searched, I was the only one not to be put under investigation.

My comrades have been charged under articles 110, 112, 270bis and 280 (of the Italian Criminal Code).

This operation is not just the umpteenth attempted act, in order to repress and intimidate those who are refractory and rebellious, trying to put off the anarchist and insurgent fire that burns inside of us. Needless to say they haven’t even remotely succeeded in their aim. We continue in the non-path, the one of flames and hatred, without retreating even one millimeter.

Words, thoughts and hands arm themselves; we concretize our rage, our desire and need for destruction. We attack.

An accomplice embrace of fire to all the prosecuted comrades and all in affinity who have demonstrated their vicinity and solidarity, among whom are the comrades of the Cerberus Editions (Edizioni Cerbero) and the comrades of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire. May the blaze of anarchist insurrection spread and propagate from the heart and the eyes of the indomitable in the whole world to the streets of cities and metropolises, notwithstanding all the attempts to confine and extinguish it.

This is why I join the cry of my comrades:

VIVA L’ANARCHIA! LONG LIVE ANARCHY!
LET THE POWDER ROAR AND THE FLAMES DESTROY!

Tomo, April 2nd, 2012, al Culmine del Nulla
… at the Culmination of Nothing.

The blogs related to the groups attacked by police raids of the Goldman Sachs government seem to be still available online (in Italian): Parole Armate and Culmine.

A letter of solidarity from Mexico emphasizes that these kinds of persecutions are exclusively political and aim to demoralize the activists, reminding that people is arrested with charges as stupid and ideological as "fighting against civilization":

A few days ago, the security apparatus at the hand of the Italian State perpetrated a repressive raid against anarchist comrades and the Culmine blog, a raid carried out in various cities and towns of that country, resulting in 4 comrades arrested under accusations that are the most common accusations in Italy and under which many other comrades have been arrested and incarcerated in the past, in similar repressive raids. Accused of Terrorism and subversive association, our comrades find themselves in the clutches of the State and need to be vindicated in the same way that those anarchist comrades in affinity in Italy have shown themselves in solidarity with the struggles and the prisoners in other parts of the World.

We know well that these kinds of raids are directed to debilitate and “demoralize” those anarchist scenes and groups that operate in various parts of the world. Today in Mexico we have the comrade Braulio imprisoned, accused of fighting against civilization and attacking those who contribute to the continual exploitation of animals and nature; Braulio is accused of setting fire to a pair of ATMs in the — fascist — city of León Guanajuato. In Indonesia, the comrades Billy and Eat likewise accused of attacking capital, setting fire to a bank in that country’s capitol city and being active part of the “Long Live Luciano” cell / Informal Anarchist Federation. Billy and Eat are comrades in affinity who have expressed their solidarity with the local peasant struggles and with the anarchist prisoners of war in the world. In Greek the trial continues against the comrades of the CCF-Greece and of Revolutionary Struggle, likewise against other imprisoned anarchist individuals for not aligning their lives to the way of life imposed by the system and fighting actively for the destruction of the State/Capital. The comrade Gabriel Pombo Da Silva continues in prison awaiting his transfer to the Spanish State. Gabriel, who identifies himself in affinity to anarchist insurrectionalism and to the FAI/IRF, is an active comrade who has always contributed critically and positively to the spread of what we fight for, likewise he has openly expressed his solidarity with the imprisoned comrades and those in struggle in the entire world. Marco Camenish remains behind bars. The imprisoned comrades in Chile, the US, Canada, and in many other parts of the world where anarchist action is daily present. So then do we wait for the cities to keep burning? In the continuation of the beautiful creative Destruction, what are we waiting for?

It is quite clear that the struggle against the prisons and revolutionary solidarity with our imprisoned comrades is not an isolated struggle, it is the same as the daily struggle for the destruction of this same system, the same as the daily struggle for our individual-collective liberation, and clear that though their repressive blows weigh on us the bombings, arsons and barricades continue to illuminate the night. This has remained demonstrated in more than words… in practice and in deeds!

From Finland to Peru, Barcelona which recently has started to burn, passing through Greece, Poland, England, Italy, Spain, the US, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Indonesia, etc. Thousands of anarchist comrades in affinity who under their won and unique ideas, “organizational models,” methods, signed or unsigned, cells, nuclei or individualities, anonymous or “public” began their own insurrection and who today are present in an immense international/informal anarchist coordination which continues dealing blows against power. Each one under its own possibilities, times and spaces. There are not superior forms of struggle, everything is valid, we need everything, everything that focuses on the destruction of the present system of death and oppression. Without armed vanguards, nor weighty, obscurantist or clandestine organizations. Without centralism nor populist directives, anarchist action must continue striking and every time with greater potency.

We do not go through life under illusions, thinking that with “4 little bombs” or some arsons — as some of our more fierce critics have expressed — we are going to change the world, more than anything this is about vindication, daily conflict, anarchist action that form part of a project of total destruction of the State/Capital as a unique real form of creating and constructing a free life in its totality, and for us it is much more valid than to merely remain as activists-spectators. Moreover we do not want to change the world, changing it is equivalent to reforming it, we want to destroy it, to destroy the capitalist world and along with it to destroy its social relations, such as domination.

We know that construction must also be immediate, but we also know that this construction must be coolly calculated, departing from ethics and models that as much as possible are not recuperable by power, since the way in which we live in the present is like we desire to live in the future some day. That construction, that way of living anarchically from the present must depart — also — from the point of view of confrontation with power and its values, not conforming, not escaping, and not accepting.

This new repressive strike against the comrades in Italy, tomorrow may be succeeded in any other part of the world where there is activity, we must be prepared and informally coordinated for an immediate response to attack many points complicit in the incarceration of our comrades. Whether we are near or far, everything is possible, we don’t need to see each others’ faces for this, we all already know how this works. SOLIDARITY AMONG ANARCHISTS IS MUCH MORE THAN A WRITTEN WORD.

From the editorial collective of CONSPIRACION ACRATA we express our solidarity with those comrades arrested in this raid and with the comrades affines of CULMINE whose mail the repressive apparatus has seized and surely — very surely — are investigating everyone who we communicate with through this medium, near or far. We must stay on the alert.

For the total destruction of the State/Capital!
Fire to the prisons and the prison guards too!
For each imprisoned comrade… fire in the streets!

Conspiración Acrata editorial collective
Publication of insurrectional anarchist tendency.
Mexico. April 2012.