Rome in Grip of Guerrilla Warfare

Clashes and barricades in city centre streets, police armoured cars torched and about a hundred casualties

ROME – “Ge-no-va, Ge-no-va”. The grim, shiver-engendering chant rose from the march in Via delle Botteghe Oscure, bringing to mind the events of 2001 at the G8 summit in Genoa, when Carlo Giuliani died. An ill omen. In Rome on 14 December 2010, showdown time in Chamber of Deputies, opposition movements met to “withdraw confidence from below” in the Berlusconi government. With them were thousands of secondary school and university students, who have been protesting at the Gelmini reforms for some time. This self-styled “book bloc” was marching behind rectangular foam rubber shields that looked like books, but weren’t. Rome was under a security clampdown and the demonstrators were openly intent – as a glance at their websites the day before revealed – on breaking into the “red zone” protecting the Chamber, the Senate and Palazzo Grazioli, the prime minister’s residence. There were also chants of “Just like London”, a reference to the attack on Charles and Camilla’s limousine. Police, Carabinieri and financial police closed off the streets with vehicles and deployed officers behind them. Also on the streets were the FIOM union, L’Aquila earthquake victims, the feisty mums protesting against the landfill at Terzigno, the newly formed Brigate Monicelli [named after the recently deceased director – Trans.] and jobless Neapolitans all aiming to march “united against the crisis”.

Soon, however, the march was taken over by black bloc protesters, anarchists and insurrectionalists from north-east Italy and Piedmont, Ultrà football fans from Rome and Neapolitans with helmets and black hoods. A total of six cars were torched, along with a financial police armoured car and a rubbish van. Fire crackers, paint balls and manure flew in Via degli Astalli, banks were attacked in Corso Vittorio Emanuele, shop windows were smashed in Via del Corso, Bulgari flower boxes on the Tiber embankment were ripped up and the AMA waste enterprise’s iron baskets were broken up for use as missiles. Storekeepers and passers-by on Rome’s shopping streets watched in terror. Barricades were raised and skips set on fire in Piazza del Popolo. Demonstrators threw paving stones and petrol at police officers, who responded with tear gas. The civil protection agency’s headquarters in Via Ulpiano also came under attack and traffic was seriously disrupted. Four hours of urban guerrilla warfare left more than a hundred people injured – 57 police officers and 62 demonstrators – while 41 were detained on charges of violence, resisting police officers and criminal damage. Later on, there were protests against Rome’s mayor, Gianni Alemanno, from residents furious at the vandalism in the city centre, as well as from the students. At the same time, students were occupying the stock exchange in Milan while in Palermo students blocked the airport. In Catania, a motorist trapped by a march collapsed and died shortly afterwards in hospital. Meanwhile, Silvio Berlusconi secured the confidence of the Chamber by three votes.

English translation by Giles Watson