I believe this is a reference to the military raid on the Armando Diaz elementary school, in Genoa, Italy, which took place exactly ten years ago: July 21, 2001. After that raid, over 70 peaceful political activists were hospitalized, 93 were taken to military barracks where they were tortured for days, three were left in critical condition requiring life support and one was left in a coma. The military attackers initially justified the raid saying that it was the “lair” or “hideout” for a bunch of “anarchists” depicted much the way Rat is here. (Actually, it was a legally rented space donated by the city to the civic organization called the Genoa Social Forum.) At the time, Amnesty International called it “the gravest violation of human rights in a Western country since World War Two.” Several years later, the Italian investigative judges acquitted all of the Diaz School victims of all charges against them, having found that they were entirely unarmed at the time of the raid and had put up no resistance whatsoever as they were attacked. The mass media’s images of molotov-throwing masked “hooligans” contrasted sharply with the actual documentary footage taken during the raid, which showed people in their sleeping bags, stretching their empty hands up in the air, as chants of “Pacifisti” and “No Violenzia” mingled with the sounds of breaking bones and screams of pain.
I believe this is a reference to the military raid on the Armando Diaz elementary school, in Genoa, Italy, which took place exactly ten years ago: July 21, 2001. After that raid, over 70 peaceful political activists were hospitalized, 93 were taken to military barracks where they were tortured for days, three were left in critical condition requiring life support and one was left in a coma. The military attackers initially justified the raid saying that it was the “lair” or “hideout” for a bunch of “anarchists” depicted much the way Rat is here. (Actually, it was a legally rented space donated by the city to the civic organization called the Genoa Social Forum.) At the time, Amnesty International called it “the gravest violation of human rights in a Western country since World War Two.” Several years later, the Italian investigative judges acquitted all of the Diaz School victims of all charges against them, having found that they were entirely unarmed at the time of the raid and had put up no resistance whatsoever as they were attacked. The mass media’s images of molotov-throwing masked “hooligans” contrasted sharply with the actual documentary footage taken during the raid, which showed people in their sleeping bags, stretching their empty hands up in the air, as chants of “Pacifisti” and “No Violenzia” mingled with the sounds of breaking bones and screams of pain.