Italy: Why is landfill an official secret?

This is a guest post by Cecilia Anesi and Giulio Rubino

A rally “for life” takes place today, starting in Terzigno, a small city of a complex of three, with Boscoreale and Boscotrecase, a few kilometres away from Naples. Protesters will come from the whole of Campania region, since many feel Terzigno’s fight against a new landfill is their fight for an alternative way of managing waste.

Citizens of the three towns, located at the bottom of Vesuvius National Park, have been in turmoil for days, as the Italian government attempts to open a new landfill in the park.

Vesuvius National Park already holds a major landfill, built by the government two years ago, breaching the law that institutes national parks. Moreover, this landfill contains a mix of unprocessed solid and toxic waste, and although this breaches EU regulations in matter
of waste, the landfill was built — as others — by issuing an “emergency decree”. Moreover, the same emergency decree (dlg 90/2008 issued by Berlusconi’s Government) turned landfills and incinerators into “military areas” protected by state secrecy laws (issued by the Prodi government) and thus inscrutable for the people, civil authorities and the press.

A week ago the “Movimento per la difesa del territorio/Area Vesuviana” (Movement for the defence of Vesuvius Area) noticed the increase in the number of waste trucks that were entering the landfill. Naples was once again covered in rubbish, and the government had to quickly find a solution before a media scandal would explode again.

The solution was found in sending as many trucks as possible to Terzigno’s landfill. Hundred of citizens of all ages started blocking the entrance, scared that as soon as that landfill was been full the government would inaugurate a new landfill in a quarry few hundred metres away.

On the second day, riot police were called in the scene. On mainstream Italian media the protesters were shown for a few seconds, and although the reasons of the protest weren’t explained in depth, it was possible to see some seriously injured people. The blocade was violently removed by riot police, and the rubbish trucks were escorted inside and outside the landfill as if they were carrying gold. People were prevented from peacefully demonstrating, and from physically blocking with their bodies the access to trucks into the landfill.

Locals claim to have the right to protest, as it is the state that is acting against the law — firstly by opening a landfill in a national park, secondly by making it wihout following EU regulations, thirdly by breaching the internationally recognised right to health and life, and last but not least, because the government is not acting transparently and democractically by preventing both citizens and the press from entering the landfills of Campania.

Moreover, people have the right to protest because it is a fundamental right included into the Italian Consitution, and Berlusconi’s government is simply ignoring it.

But, as the citizens of Terzigno and other places of Campania will say, when the State thinks as a business and acts as a dictatorship, democracy can be proclaimed dead.

www.wasteemergency.com

Ethiopia: Protest on Facebook for political prisoner

Opposition activists are urging people to change their Facebook profile pictures to that of political prisoner Birtukan Mideksa on 11 September. The opposition party leader is serving a life sentence after she was first arrested during disputed elections in 2005. Mideksa was released after two years in prison, before being arrested again in 2008 after saying that her release was due to opposition pressure on the government. The protest has been timed to coincide with the beginning of the Ethiopian new year.

Tony Blair and censorship 2

The argument that mob censorship is what stopped Tony Blair from going ahead with his London book signing and subsequent private shindig at Tate Modern holds no water. A much larger mob of millions marched against the invasion of Iraq in 800 cities around the world. But in those days Blair ran Britain. And his mate George ran the United States.

These days Tony Blair cuts a tragicomic figure who embodies the oxymoron. He’s charged with bringing about Middle East peace when his actions fuelled fires in those deserts. He’s pulled out of public events due to “threats of protest” from a gaggle of anti-war activists yet was cloth-eared to the millions shouting against an Iraq invasion before a single shock had been awed.

The demonstrations in Dublin set a precedent but would you have expected anything less? Hundreds of thousands of war dead may have been wiped off this earth but the violence that brought those deaths have scarred the skin of our humanity. The world was screaming “stop” but the men who held the guns still shot. We’ll never forgive Blair or Bush for that.

By publishing his book, he’s exercised his right to speak. He’s sated his ego by ensuring he won’t be forgotten. The people who planned to demonstrate at Waterstone’s and Tate Modern would’ve been exercising their right to protest. Both are freedoms of expression we should fight to protect. Both are freedoms the dead do not have.

Blair is having a crisis of conscience. He’s not having second thoughts about causing the deaths of soldiers and civilians and upsetting the balance of the Middle East for generations. Ever the considerate host, he feared a thousand people with placards calling him a war criminal would “hassle” his guests. Perhaps cancelling his events is muzzling him. But it’s not censorship that stopped him. It’s cowardice.

SUPPORT INDEX'S WORK