"The G8 summit is held in Genoa July 20-22nd, 2001" "In a city guarded by police 300,000 people protest against the summit 2 days of clashes, 200 arrests, 1000 wounded and 1 protester killed" "The operational base of the Genoa Social Forum, coordinating the associations promoting the protest is the Diaz School." "July 22nd: the police identifies this school as the base for the Black Bloc, held responsible for the devastation during the G8" "The intelligence report allowed us to divide into groups the potential protesters, based on ideological characteristics and to fo cus our attention on the most dangerous group, the Black Bloc, made up of around 500 Italians and 2,000 foreigners." "On the basis of what happened in the early hours of the riots and in the clashes that followed caused by the so-called Black Bloc, some things need to be considered." "The Black Blo c travel in an anonymous form, they don't always have a base, they don't hold regular meetings but they come from all over the world to attend important events with a prefect understanding of the territory" "and assault techniques." "BERLIN" "The real squatting of houses went on until 1990." "All the houses that have contracts now were squatted before German reunification." "MULI-31" "When I was young, in '94 -'95, no one squatted anything anymore." "During my crazy punk-rock period we'd squat in an apartment or we'd stay in houses that were already occupied." "I moved into the house where I live now in 2002, after Genoa." "At first it was a war about who wanted to negotiate and who didn't." "Some people said:" ""We'll squat, we don't want contracts, it's our right, everyone has the right to own the house they live in and no landlord has the right to exist, to take money as rent"." "Others said:" ""That would be right politically, but in the world we live in it's utopian"." "I'm glad I live in a house which, thanks to negotiations, is now in the hands of a cooperative and has therefore been removed from the speculative market." "I could never be one that follows the crowd." "Maybe that's why I became a punk when I was 13." "I'm an atypical case," "I had a good childhood and fantastic parents." "The key moment was when I was in school, aged 14." "And there was a very competitive mentality in school:" "everyone against everyone." "Everyone had to create their own space in order to succeed." "But I was unable to do this." "It wasn't the world as I imagined it and I never found my own space." "I thought: "I don't give a damn"" "and so I left." "I went to one of the camps occupied by caravans, called "East Side"." "Almost a thousand people lived there, from the most extreme scenes, mostly the punk-rock one." "And I don't know, I immediately felt at home." "Being together... was different to how I'd experienced it." "Different to how it was at school or how football fans were." "I don't want to be influenced by so ciety, but I want to influence it." "How can I say... even on an emotional level I feel that my life cannot only be about this consumerist so ciety." "I don't want to live like that." "Why did I come to Genoa?" "Because when important things are criticized, when you experience..." "It's true that protests can always be ignored," "I can run through the streets shouting that capitalism is shit." "The question is: "Who cares?" "Who will listen to me?"" "It's a problem young people face:" "who will listen to them?" "That's why in Prague I was happy to be able to participate directly, of the fact that we were able to interrupt the summit." "It was the lntemational Monetary Fund summit." "And this got me hooked somehow." "So afterwards I wanted to go to Genoa at all costs." "I have many memories." "I was struck by how different people came together." "I think it's one of life's rare experiences." "I never experienced it again:" "being with thousands of people who are totally different, with different political motivations, from different groups, with different objectives." "The way they got in touch, the interaction that to ok place, the recipro cal interest and curiosity..." "Farmers came to protest about the politics of agriculture and found themselves alongside anarchists and punks" "and it was a peaceful meeting." "They showed no aggression towards one another." "The change happened so quickly, from what I saw." "There was already a lot of tension that moming when it all started." "The police attack on the Tute Bianche group happened suddenly, with no warning." "The quantity of gas they used against people meant you had no chance of escaping." "Pure terror broke out." "I'd never seen such a thing happen and I never want to again." "Also because it was nothing like a normal police intervention." "For me it was like a military intervention and like many others, I immediately feared for my life." " Film that." " Shit, there's a guy..." "Oh, God!" "Murderers!" "Murderers!" "It was only when I got to the Carlini stadium that I found out that not far from us Carlo Giuliani had been killed." "The next day, when they started spraying that gas again," "I couldn't go any further." "There was a demonstration along the seafront." "I started finding it hard to breathe." "Then panic spread through the crowds which started retreating." "I was trapped among the crowds, I couldn't move," "I couldn't even walk." "I was so squashed." "If I'd lifted my feet, I wouldn't have fallen over." "The people were so squashed that the tear gas bounced off them without even touching the ground." "In Genoa, after that second day, the atmosphere was..." "A policeman on the roadside was enough to create negative energy." "No one had the courage to go within 50 metres of him." "And they were right, in my opinion." "They were like a hostile army, an enemy army." "I was mentally distraught and rather exhausted." "I didn't even want to go back to the stadium." "It was too big, chaotic and dangerous for my liking." "In hindsight it tumed out to be the wrong decision." "I'd have been safer among 10,000 people." "Yes, and so I went to the school, also because, like many others I wanted to get out of the city." "We were quite upset about what had happened." "So we decided not to leave on that day and to spend the night somewhere on the beach." "But then we decided to go to the Diaz School because we'd found out we were allowed to sleep there." "We parked almost in front of the school gates." "Lena and I went in and we looked for somewhere where we could be on our own." "We didn't want too many people around, we wanted to rest after what had happened." "We parked the car." "Stefania and Valeria went to sleep right away." "I was getting ready too," "I was talking with some friends, waiting to be able to use a computer." "After everything we'd experienced we had the impression that this was a finale... a tranquil and comforting finale." "Then all of a sudden we heard someone shouting:" ""Police, police!"" "I immediately ran up to the first floor, where my stuff was." "It was a reaction caused by panic." "I thought: "Get my stuff and run"." ""If the police burst in here, I don't want to be here"." ""I want to try to escape"." "In the exact moment in which I was about to get my rucksack" "I saw the police van banging against the entrance gate." "The courtyard filled up with police officers entering through the gate, running towards the door of the scho ol which was shut." "The police officers were running towards the window like rabid dogs." "They smashed the windows with their truncheons." "At that moment, I was filled with panic and I knew I had to get myself to safety." "It was a mob of frightened people, it was chaos." "Everyone was frightened..." "A mob of frightened people running away." "Then there were those who'd just woken up and were still half-asleep in their sleeping bags," "trying to understand what was going on around them." "We were running aimlessly around the school." "We tried leaving via the scaffolding." "But it was impossible and so we continued running up and down." "On the third floor we found a store cupboard near the toilet and we thought we'd hide in there so they wouldn't find us." "For an instant I found myself on my own in front of this door." "There was no one around, no one was running." "The gym was calm." "I imagined all the people, everyone in the place they had chosen to face what was about to happen." "I couldn't hear shouting or any other noises except for the police trying to break down the door." "Then I saw the first police officer appear." "He was probably the first one that entered the Diaz Scho ol." "He stormed in with vehemence" "full of hatred, with great eagerness to eliminate us." "He came closer and soon after he picked up a chair and as I was about to sit down on the floor he threw the chair at us." "I heard the sound of the police officers' boots coming up the stairs and I knew they'd attack us." "Those are moments when time stands still." "You're fully aware that something is about to happen to you." "Our door opened and we put our hands in the air." "They dragged Niels out and started beating him up." "Then they started hitting and kicking me until I fell to the ground in the corridor." "I barely saw Lena being dragged away." "I was dragged out of the store cupboard to o." "I had a semi-circle of police officers in front of me." "Between eight and eleven officers." "I kept my hands in the air and they hit me on the head and shoulders." "After the first blows, I fell to the ground." "I tried to protect my head so they hit me in my ribs and they kicked me on the back." "I felt almost immediately that my ribs had been broken." "There was a coat rack on the wall and they kept picking me up and throwing me against the ho oks." "As I sto od up wearily, they kicked me on the legs and so I fell down again then they picked me up and threw me against the coat rack again." "They pushed me down the corridor with a stick until we got to a small landing with three steps." "I was lying face down on the flo or and they bashed me down the stairs." "I held my hands out to protect myself and the police bashed my fingers and kicked me in the head." "And then one of them pulled me up by my hair and dragged me downstairs" "and the others who were behind and beside them hit me in the back and kicked me in the side." "There were 5 police officers, more or less, who for quite a while, while I was on the ground kicked me and beat me with their truncheons." "For the whole time I tried to protect my head with my arms and so I curled up into a ball to avoid receiving to o many blows so most of the blows were kicks to my back." "After quite a while, the officers left and I was left there, lying in a po ol of blood in the corridor." "A few minutes later another police officer arrived." "He picked up a fire extinguisher that was beside me and he sprayed my whole body with it." "And as my face was covered in blood and I had a lot of open wounds the powder from the extinguisher stung like hell." "I managed to get close to a radiator and I had lots of people around me." "It was quite a protected position." "All of a sudden I looked up and looked into the eyes of a police officer who started hitting me." "I tried to shield myself with my arms as best I could and he was hitting me in the back." "Around me people were covered in blood." "There was a very young Italian girl who was hysterical and shouting." "The police came in running and they immediately got the first person and hit them right in the face with the grip of the Tonfa." "They looked like a herd of wild boars on speed." "It was a battering of constant blows." "I don't think it went on for more than thirty seconds otherwise I wouldn't have been able to survive." "The only scene I can remember is of an officer who kept kicking me in my ribs and stomach." "I couldn't breathe and I seriously thought I would die from lack of oxygen." "A savage beating." "The most violent one I've experienced, without a doubt." "All my ability to resist was engaged in those minutes and I didn't know how long I would resist." "Then the blows stopped." "So I opened my eyes." "And the scene that I saw was dramatic." "Then all I know is that I came round and there was blood everywhere, above me, in front of me..." "I'd never seen so much blood in all my life and I never want to again." "I thought the person in front of me was dead." "He lying in a huge pool of blood coming from his head and it was getting bigger." "The only words I said to the woman next to me were:" ""He's dead, isn't he?"" "I thought:" ""Nothing matters now, they're going to kill me anyway"." "By then I'd accepted the fact that I wouldn't survive." "Then they threw me on top of two people who were lying on the floor covered in blood" "and I remember wondering if they were dead or alive because they weren't moving or talking." "And I couldn't even get off them, my arm was pressing against my broken ribs and it was almost impossible for me to move." "Then I realised that my legs were moving up and down by themselves." "I saw that someone along the corridor was having the same convulsions and so I calmed down" "because I thought that maybe it was normal in those conditions." "A few at a time, the police officers started going down the stairs and they started going onto the other floors." "So I was able to see the rest of the corridor." "It was a truly devastating scene, there were people everywhere on the floor, covered in blood." "There was a young guy who'd been thrown to the floor, there was..." "They made us go down to the ground floor." "With their truncheons they pushed us towards the ground flo or." "They kept insulting us and telling us they would kill us." "Then the police officers left the school." "As they went by some of them stopped and spat at me." "Others took off their helmets in order to aim their spit better." "At that moment I thought, even if the comparison sounds stupid," ""This is like Chile or Argentina"." "It was like those images I'd seen in films." "The police were all over the stairs, spitting at us." "One officer on the landing was hitting people as they went by." "I tried to get up." "I managed to stand up for a moment, as they had hit me hard on the head." "They had broken my fingers, nose and ribs." "My right side was black and blue with bruising." "And in the emergency room," "I saw Niels again." "He saw me and came over to my stretcher." "He looked like a zombie, his face was bruised and swollen and his eyes were bloodshot." "Lena couldn't speak, she just about managed to move her arm." "She was making strange sounds, like groans." "I spoke to her but she didn't reply." "She was in terrible pain." "Then a doctor came and told me that he was going to make a cut under my breast to insert a tube that would enable my lungs to breathe." "They had been pierced by the broken ribs and they needed to drain the blo od." "And I thought: "That's exactly what needs to happen now"." "Then they took us up to the next flo or in wheelchairs, where the people that had been arrested were." "On the do or a sign read:" ""Crisis station", it was in a closed part of the hospital, in the basement." "And there the torture started all over again." "We were dragged away in our wheelchairs..." "The "penitentiary police officers" were like a gang of Rambos, with the bullet-pro of vests and all the equipment they had." "They were muscular like bodybuilders." "And there was this small guy, in a blue shirt, an ordinary officer, who was like a dictator." "He yelled at us and slapped us." "Then they took me to another ro om where I had to get undressed slowly." "With each item of clothing I removed, they hit me." "Then I had to do push-ups and with each push-up, they hit me and so on until we reached the bathro om." "In the shower some police officers intimidated me and they were excited as if they wanted to eat me alive." "They surrounded me and shoved me, yelling at me to hurry up." "They sprayed disinfectant on my head." "The shower was all red, stained with the blood from the previous day." "I couldn't see anything anymore." "The guy who was with me was wearing dark clothes, he had tattoos and looked like a punk." "So what they did to me was just a warm-up." "He was beaten by everyone." "They opened up all his wounds again." "He had to clean off his blood from the tiles." "How can I say... it was a really unpleasant experience." "The next 24 hours in the hospital bed were totally horrific." "We expected the worst." "When something like this happens, you don't know what their limit is." "I woke up and saw an officer in front of me, touching his balls and as he insulted me another officer removed the safety catch from his gun." "The guy in the bed next to me had it worse, they played games with him." "One officer pretended to sho ot him while another stopped him." "Of course now I know it was all just an act but in that situation I believed it." "At first I was unable to work it out." "For years I didn't remember those scenes after the shower." "It was only when I met the guy who had been with me again that I remembered we hadn't been beaten up again in the hospital but they had been hours of pure terror." "Basically, a trauma happens because of an event you cannot understand." "Of course it's caused by violent situations." "Typical symptoms are insomnia, recurring nightmares." "And anxiety too, the sensation of being in constant danger." "Your adrenaline levels are always up." "And for this reason, you sometimes become detached from society." "Then I was taken to another ro om to be checked over." "There was another doctor there." "He asked me some questions and made me do some exercises." "He said that if I could walk unaided, I would be able to leave the hospital." "At a certain point, they to ok us outside." "They put us in a police van" "and drove off." "After a while we arrived at a sort of Mussolini-style ancient villa." "We were in Bolzaneto, but nobody told us." "I don't think anyone knew about the existence of that place until then." "A detention and punishment centre for people before prison." "They made us get out of the van and they stood us against the wall." "The police officers surrounded us, yelling at us and insulting us." "I was shaking." "The officer who Io oked like he was in charge had a pen in his hand and he made a cross on my cheek." "Like we were cattle." "They were marking us." "I was screaming with pain, I couldn't even stand up and so they called a sort of doctor or at least that's what they said even though he had a police uniform." "He touched my back and asked me where the pain was." "After a while he found my sorest spot and there was a big bruise there." "He asked me if that was where I felt pain and I said it was." "And he dropped me right onto that spot." "I fell to the ground in pain." "The cell stank of rancid blo od." "People still had open wounds." "From the cell window the police officers insulted us and laughed at us." "Then they to ok me into another room to be searched." "There was a table in there with a police officer behind it, while the other officers sto od around it." "An officer started searching me, it was the third time I was searched but this time was totally different to the previous times." "I had to strip down naked." "The police officer passed the metal detector over my clothes." "They saw I was in to o much pain, that I couldn't move properly so they forced me to do some push-ups, naked, in front of the officers who were enjo ying the scene." "The pain was too much, I couldn't take it anymore but I had to continue." "It was obvious that we had no rights in that place." "We couldn't make any calls or see a lawyer." "I remember that we asked to but it was all so surreal." "It was a situation... a situation in which you knew you were beyond legal help." "Some people aren't immediately affected by the trauma endured." "They carry on like before." "Maybe they have the sensation that there's a before and after." "Life is divided into a before and an after." "A sensation like: "I stared death in the face and now it's all changed"." "You've lost a part of yourself." "Two days later, two nights later, they started to... all this... now I know they were taking me to prison, but I didn't then." "They put me on a coach with other expelled girls and they took us to the prison in Voghera." "In the prison it was like being in a hotel." "For the first time we had a hot meal, we hadn't had one for a long time." "There was a TV in the cell and we saw the first images on the news." "We saw the first demonstrations and they were for us." "It was a very emotional moment, because they carried huge banners that read "Diaz..."" "In the end you knew that someone out there was thinking of you." "Of course m y brother had heard about it all in Germany." "It was all very complicated." "My family tried to find information about my whereabouts." "They called the embassy in Rome, they called everyone." "My brother looked everywhere without finding out where we were and..." "Yes, sorry but this is the hardest part for me." "My brother, without knowing..." "Sorry..." "My brother simply got into his car to come and get me." "He found out where I was and he came to the police station." "I was inside and I saw him outside." "We touched hands but it wasn't easy because of the metal bars." "I hadn't had any contact with my loved ones for four days." "I was..." "I felt completely alone," "I didn't even know what had happened to Lena." "I was lost, at the mercy of the police and the prison guards." "For years I was unable to sleep, I had nightmares." "I couldn't forget about what had happened." "In the end I realised that I was suffering from a "trauma"." "I accepted this fact for the first time in 2004 when I saw it on the leaflet of a group." "The leaflet described post-traumatic stress disorder and its symptoms." "I think I cried all night long." "I was so relieved that someone had described my situation." "I realised that I wasn't completely mad, that I wasn't weak and that I wasn't crazy but that mine was a normal reaction to an abnormal event." "So after 5 years I felt a glimmer of hope, when I went back to Genoa for the trials." "And so I started living again." "I had to pull through for myself." "And that's where I started from." "GENOA" "After giving evidence in Genoa" "I started seeing a psychotherapist who helped me a great deal." "For me starting over was really important because after Genoa I'd taken a long pause." "I'd not done much politically." "I felt like they'd taken away my ability to take action." "As soon as I saw a group of police officers, I'd start sweating." "Even participating in normal demonstrations had become hard." "I've never analysed it fully." "I met people who'd had similar experiences to mine, people who came from leftist political activism and they each had their own experience they had to work through." "And we created a group that deals with this sort of thing." "It's called "A ctivist trauma support"." "They work a bit like paramedics at demonstrations." "Their task is to stitch up physical wounds." "Whereas we are there to heal the mental wounds." "At the G8 in Germany we effectively provided this psychological support to provide people with help and information." "It was a good way for me to restart taking part in political resistance." "The G8 has become a sort of symbol." "We'll try to stop the next G8 as well." "But I wanted to continue with this direction because I'd experienced it." "So for three years I attended an alternative medicine course." "It allows you to work in the medical field without being a doctor." "After doing this initial course" "I'd have the opportunity to continue with my studies." "I could go to university and study psychology and then I'd finally be able to provide therapy for traumas." "I'm still politically active." "I try to do things that go beyond my daily work." "What's different about how my life was before Genoa is that I do things on a more personal level." "When I was younger politics meant big demonstrations for me, action, meeting people." "But now politics influences my daily life." "I try to live what I think could and should exist even on a wider scale." "That which I fight for." "But only a revolution would achieve this." "I don't think that'll happen." "But this is how I want to live, it's my way of fighting for the cause." "I still think today that what was done to us at the Diaz School was, considering what happened, an act of forced repression." "They wanted to show what can happen when you bother those in power, when you get too close to them." "The fact that they beat us up until we were black, blue and purple was their objective and they achieved this." "When I returned to Berlin, people hugged me, crying." "They were crying, not me, even though I'd been through it." "I think their aim was to traumatize the movement with what they did to us." "Lots of things have happened to me in my life." "Genoa was such a powerful experience that it marked me deeply and the one thing the police did not achieve was to make me give up." "We can say they achieved the opposite." "I cannot, nor do I want to retire and lead a bourgeois life." "I don't want to do that." "Maybe I'm no longer on the front line in many demonstrations." "But I'll continue doing what I want to do." "They failed to break my spirit in that school." "After the police raid on the Diaz School, 93 people were arrested." "They were charged with aiding and abetting destruction and theft, aggravated resistance possession of firearms." "After 3 years of investigations, the charges were dropped." "Following the protesters' statements 29 officers were investigated and committed for trial for assault and making false accusations." "On Appeal 25 officers were sentenced to a total of 85 years in prison and disqualified from public offices for 5 years." "The protesters received one million euros in compensation." "While awaiting the Court of Cassation the police officers have kept their jobs or received promotions." "The ex-chief of police, De Gennaro, was sentenced to 1 year and 4 months for induction to perjury in a trial connected with the Diaz Scho ol." "At present, he is the chief of the Department of Information Security, a body which supervises the Italian secret services." "Ulrich Reichel: "Muli"" "After the traumatic events of 2001, Ulrich began his training as an altemative therapist." "Father of a daughter just a year old, he lives in an occupied house in Berlin with his Italian girlfriend, and wishes to enrol in university to earn a degree in psychology." "Michael Gieser" "A businessman, he is continuing his activity as multilingual facilitator in creative learning methods." "He lives in southern France with his two children, who are 3 and 5 years old." "Daniel Mc Quillan" "In 2001, after founding Multikulti, the multilingual website for asylum applicants and refugees, he met and married Njomeza, a refugee from Kosovo" "The father of two children 3 and 7 years old, he is now a university instructor." "He organizes intemational "hack days" to create innovations using digital technologies." "Niels Martensen" "A vegan, since before 2001 he has been active in defending the environment and trees in particular." "Today, Niels is a professional arboriculturist and has founded and directs, along with Lena, the Arborartist cooperative, which has 15 emplo yees." "He lives in Hamburg in a Wagenplatz." "Chabi Nogueras" "Lives in Zaragoza and, a conscientious objector, has been in the Antimilitary Alternative since before the G8." "He now works at the Pantera Rossa, an independent social centre." "In a few months, his daughter will be born, and he dreams of returning to Genoa with her." "Mina Zapatero" "Upon completing her Arabic studies, she moved to Beirut in 2002." "She now lives in Paris, where she is active in the world of independent media with the "Regarde à vue" collective." "Lena Zuhlke" "A student of Indology at the University of Hamburg in 2001, Lena is writing a doctoral thesis and working alongside Neils as an arboriculturist." "She lives in a commune of 30 people, and is committed to the ecology movement, and especially to the struggle against nuclear power." "Interviews held and organized in collaboration with Mina Zapatero"