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Two days ago it was reported that the 15 guilty, sentenced two days before (I wrote about it 7.15), of the 2001-G8 brutality will not go to jail (*). Well, that's not a surprise, not really! But y'day the British newspaper Guardian published following very impressing/horrifying report about...

The Bloody Battle of Genoa

When 200,000 anti-globalisation protesters converged on the Italian city hosting the G8 summit in 2001, all but a handful came to demonstrate peacefully. Instead, many were beaten to a pulp by seemingly out-of-control riot police. But was there something more sinister at play? And will the victims ever see proper justice?

Riot cops surround a seriously injured anti-globalisation protester lying

on a pavement in central Genoa

It was just before midnight when the first police officer hit Mark Covell, swiping his truncheon down on his left shoulder. Covell did his best to yell out in Italian that he was a journalist but, within seconds, he was surrounded by riot-squad officers thrashing him with their sticks. For a while, he managed to stay on his feet but then a baton blow to the knee sent him crashing to the pavement.

Lying on his face in the dark, bruised and scared, he was aware of police all around him, massing to attack the Diaz Pertini school building where 93 young demonstrators were bedding down on the floor for the night. Covell's best hope was that they would break through the chain around the front gates without paying him any more attention. If that happened, he could get up and limp across the street to the safety of the Indymedia centre, where he had spent the past three days filing reports on the G8 summit and on its violent policing.

It was at that moment that a police officer sauntered over to him and kicked him in the chest with such force that the entire lefthand side of his rib cage caved in, breaking half-a-dozen ribs whose splintered ends then shredded the membrane of his left lung. Covell, who is 5ft 8in and weighs less than eight stone, was lifted off the pavement and sent flying into the street. He heard the policeman laugh. The thought formed in Covell's mind: "I'm not going to make it."

The riot squad were still struggling with the gate, so a group of officers occupied the time by strolling over to use Covell as a football. This bout of kicking broke his left hand and damaged his spine. From somewhere behind him, Covell heard an officer shout that this was enough - "Basta! Basta!" - and he felt his body being dragged back on to the pavement.

Now, an armoured police van broke through the school gates and 150 police officers, most wearing crash helmets and carrying truncheons and shields, poured into the defenceless building. Two officers stopped to deal with Covell: one cracked him round the head with his baton; the other kicked him several times in the mouth, knocking out a dozen teeth. Covell passed out.

There are several good reasons why we should not forget what happened to Covell, then aged 33, that night in Genoa. The first is that he was only the beginning. By midnight on July 21 2001, those police officers were swarming through all four floors of the Diaz Pertini building, dispensing their special kind of discipline to its occupants, reducing the makeshift dormitories to what one officer later described as "a Mexican butcher's shop". They and their colleagues then illegally incarcerated their victims in a detention centre, which became a place of dark terror.

The second is that, seven years later, Covell and his fellow victims are still waiting for justice. On Monday, 15 police, prison guards and prison medics finally were convicted for their part in the violence - although it emerged yesterday that none of them would actually serve prison terms. In Italy, defendants don't go to jail until they have exhausted the appeals process; and in this case, the convictions and sentences will be wiped out by a statute of limitations next year. Meanwhile, the politicians who were responsible for the police, prison guards and prison medics have never had to explain themselves. Fundamental questions about why this happened remain unanswered - and they hint at the third and most important reason for remembering Genoa. This is not simply the story of law officers running riot, but of something uglier and more worrying beneath the surface.

The fact that this story can be told at all is testament to seven years of hard work, led by a dedicated and courageous public prosecutor, Emilio Zucca. Helped by Covell as well as his own staff, Zucca has gathered hundreds of witness statements and analysed 5,000 hours of video as well as thousands of photographs. Pieced together, they tell an irrefutable tale, which began to unfold as Covell lay bleeding on the ground.

The police poured into the Diaz Pertini school. Some of them were shouting "Black Bloc! We're going to kill you," but if they genuinely believed they were confronting the notorious Black Bloc of anarchists who had caused violent mayhem in parts of the city during demonstrations earlier in the day, they were mistaken. The school had been provided by the Genoa city council as a base for demonstrators who had nothing to do with the anarchists: they had even posted guards to make sure that none of them came in.

One of the first to see the riot squad bursting in was Michael Gieser, a 35-year-old Belgian economist, who subsequently described how he had just changed into his pyjamas and was queuing for the bathroom with his toothbrush in his hand when the raid began. Gieser believes in the power of dialogue and, at first, he walked towards them saying, "We need to talk." He saw the padded jackets, the riot clubs, the helmets and the bandanas concealing the policemen's faces, changed his mind and ran up the stairs to escape.

Others were slower. They were still in their sleeping bags. A group of 10 Spanish friends in the middle of the hall woke up to find themselves being battered with truncheons. They raised their hands in surrender. More officers piled in to beat their heads, cutting and bruising and breaking limbs, including the arm of a 65-year-old woman. At the side of the room, several young people were sitting at computers, sending emails home. One of them was Melanie Jonasch, a 28-year-old archaeology student from Berlin, who had volunteered to help out in the building and had not even been on a demonstration.

She still cannot remember what happened. But numerous other witnesses have described how officers set upon her, beating her head so hard with their sticks that she rapidly lost consciousness. When she fell to the ground, officers circled her, beating and kicking her limp body, banging her head against a near-by cupboard, leaving her finally in a pool of blood. Katherina Ottoway, who saw this happen, recalled: "She was trembling all over. Her eyes were open but upturned. I thought she was dying, that she could not survive this."

None of those who stayed on the ground floor escaped injury. As Zucca later put it in his prosecution report: "In the space of a few minutes, all the occupants on the ground floor had been reduced to complete helplessness, the groans of the wounded mingling with the sound of calls for an ambulance." In their fear, some victims lost control of their bowels. Then the officers of the law moved up the stairs. In the first-floor corridor they found a small group, including Gieser, still clutching his toothbrush: "Someone suggested lying down, to show there was no resistance. So I did. The police arrived and began beating us, one by one. I protected my head with my hands. I thought, 'I must survive.' People were shouting, 'Please stop.' I said the same thing ... It made me think of a pork butchery. We were being treated like animals, like pigs."

Officers broke down doors to the rooms leading off the corridors. In one, they found Dan McQuillan and Norman Blair, who had flown in from Stansted to show their support for, as McQuillan put it, "a free and equal society with people living in harmony with each other". The two Englishmen and their friend from New Zealand, Sam Buchanan, had heard the police attack on the ground floor and had tried to hide their bags and themselves under some tables in the corner of the dark room. A dozen officers broke in, caught them in a spotlight and, even as McQuillan stood up with his hands raised saying, "Take it easy, take it easy," they battered them into submission, inflicting numerous cuts and bruises and breaking McQuillan's wrist. Norman Blair recalled: "I could feel the venom and hatred from them."

Gieser was out in the corridor: "The scene around me was covered in blood, everywhere. A policeman shouted 'Basta!'. This word was like a window of hope. I understood it meant 'enough'. And yet they didn't stop. They continued with pleasure. In the end, they did stop, but it was like taking a toy away from a child, against their will."

By now, there were police officers on all four floors of the building, kicking and battering. Several victims describe a sort of system to the violence, with each officer beating each person he came across, then moving on to the next victim while his colleague moved up to continue beating the first. It seemed important that everybody must be hurt. Nicola Doherty, 26, a care worker from London, later described how her partner, Richard Moth, lay across her to protect her: "I could just hear blow after blow on his body. The police were also leaning over Rich so they could hit the parts of my body which were exposed." She tried to cover her head with her arm: they broke her wrist.

In one corridor, they ordered a group of young men and women to kneel, the easier to batter them around the head and shoulders. This was where Daniel Albrecht, a 21-year-old cello student from Berlin, had his head beaten so badly that he needed surgery to stop bleeding in his brain. Around the building, officers flipped their batons around, gripping the far end and using the right-angled handle as a hammer.

And in among this relentless violence, there were moments when the police preferred humiliation: the officer who stood spread-legged in front of a kneeling and injured woman, grabbed his groin and thrust it into her face before turning to do the same to Daniel Albrecht kneeling beside her; the officer who paused amid the beatings and took a knife to cut off hair from his victims, including Nicola Doherty; the constant shouting of insults; the officer who asked a group if they were OK and who reacted to the one who said "No" by handing out an extra beating.

A few escaped, at least for a while. Karl Boro made it up on to the roof but then made the mistake of coming back into the building, where he was treated to heavy bruising to his arms and legs, a fractured skull, and bleeding in his chest cavity. Jaraslaw Engel, from Poland, managed to use builders' scaffolding to get out of the school, but he was caught in the street by some police drivers who smashed him over the head, laid him on the ground and stood over him smoking while his blood ran out across the Tarmac.

Two of the last to be caught were a pair of German students, Lena Zuhlke, 24, and her partner Niels Martensen. They had hidden in a cleaners' cupboard on the top floor. They heard the police approaching, drumming their batons against the walls of the stairs. The cupboard door came open, Martensen was dragged out and beaten by a dozen officers standing in a semicircle around him. Zuhlke ran across the corridor and hid in the loo. Police officers saw her and followed her and dragged her out by her dreadlocks.

In the corridor, they set about her like dogs on a rabbit. She was beaten around the head then kicked from all sides on the floor, where she felt her rib cage collapsing. She was hauled up against the wall where one officer kneed her in the groin while others carried on lashing her with their batons. She slid down the wall and they hit her more on the ground: "They seemed to be enjoying themselves and, when I cried out in pain, it seemed to give them even more pleasure."

Police officers found a fire extinguisher and squirted its foam into Martensen's wounds. His partner was dragged by her hair and tossed down the stairs head-first. Eventually, they dragged Zuhlke into the ground-floor hall, where they had gathered dozens of prisoners from all over the building in a mess of blood and excrement. They threw her on top of two other people. They were not moving, and Zuhlke drowsily asked them if they were alive. They did not reply, and she lay there on her back, unable to move her right arm, unable to stop her left arm and her legs twitching, blood seeping out of her head wounds. A group of police officers walked by, and each one lifted the bandana which concealed his identity, leaned down and spat on her face.

Why would law officers behave with such contempt for the law? The simple answer may be the one which was soon being chanted outside the school building by sympathetic demonstrators who chose a word which they knew the police would understand: "Bastardi! Bastardi!" But something else was happening here - something that emerged more clearly over the next few days.

Covell and dozens of other victims of the raid were taken to the San Martino hospital, where police officers walked up and down the corridors, slapping their clubs into the palms of their hands, ordering the injured not to move around or look out of the window, keeping handcuffs on many of them and then, often with injuries still untended, shipping them across the city to join scores of others, from the Diaz school and from the street demonstrations, detained at the detention centre in the city's Bolzaneto district.

The signs of something uglier here were apparent first in superficial ways. Some officers had traditional fascist songs as ringtones on their mobile phones and talked enthusiastically about Mussolini and Pinochet. Repeatedly, they ordered prisoners to say "Viva il duce." Sometimes, they used threats to force them to sing fascist songs: "Un, due, tre. Viva Pinochet!"

The 222 people who were held at Bolzaneto were treated to a regime later described by public prosecutors as torture. On arrival, they were marked with felt-tip crosses on each cheek, and many were forced to walk between two parallel lines of officers who kicked and beat them. Most were herded into large cells, holding up to 30 people. Here, they were forced to stand for long periods, facing the wall with their hands up high and their legs spread. Those who failed to hold the position were shouted at, slapped and beaten. Mohammed Tabach has an artificial leg and, unable to hold the stress position, collapsed and was rewarded with two bursts of pepper spray in his face and, later, a particularly savage beating. Norman Blair later recalled standing like this and a guard asking him "Who is your government?" "The person before me had answered 'Polizei', so I said the same. I was afraid of being beaten."

Stefan Bauer dared to answer back: when a German-speaking guard asked where he was from, he said he was from the European Union and he had the right to go where he wanted. He was hauled out, beaten, given a face full of pepper spray, stripped naked and put under a cold shower. His clothes were taken away and he was returned to the freezing cell wearing only a flimsy hospital gown.

Shivering on the cold marble floors of the cells, the detainees were given few or no blankets, kept awake by guards, given little or no food and denied their statutory right to make phone calls and see a lawyer. They could hear crying and screaming from other cells.

Men and women with dreadlocks had their hair roughly cut off to the scalp. Marco Bistacchia was taken to an office, stripped naked, made to get down on all fours and told to bark like a dog and to shout "Viva la polizia Italiana!" He was sobbing too much to obey. An unnamed officer told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that he had seen brother officers urinating on prisoners and beating them for refusing to sing Faccetta Nera, a Mussolini-era fascist song.

Ester Percivati, a young Turkish woman, recalled guards calling her a whore as she was marched to the toilet, where a woman officer forced her head down into the bowl and a male jeered "Nice arse! Would you like a truncheon up it?" Several women reported threats of rape, anal and vaginal.

Even the infirmary was dangerous. Richard Moth, covered in cuts and bruises after lying on top of his partner, was given stitches in his head and legs without anaesthetic - "an extremely painful and disturbing experience. I had to be held down." Prison medical staff were among those convicted of abuse on Monday.

All agree that this was not an attempt to get the detainees to talk, simply an exercise in creating fear. And it worked. In statements, prisoners later described their feeling of helplessness, of being cut off from the rest of the world in a place where there was no law and no rules. Indeed, the police forced their captives to sign statements, waiving all their legal rights. One man, David Larroquelle, testified that he refused and had three of his ribs broken. Percivati also refused and her face was slammed into the office wall, breaking her glasses and making her nose bleed.

The outside world was treated to some severely distorted accounts of all this. Lying in San Martino hospital the day after his beating, Covell came round to find his shoulder being shaken by a woman who, he understood, was from the British embassy. It was only when the man with her started taking photographs that he realised she was a reporter, from the Daily Mail. Its front page the next day ran an entirely false report describing him as having helped mastermind the riots. (Four long years later, the Mail eventually apologised and paid Covell damages for invasion of privacy.)

While his citizens were being beaten and tormented in illegal detention, spokesmen for the then prime minister, Tony Blair, declared: "The Italian police had a difficult job to do. The prime minister believes that they did that job."

The Italian police themselves fed the media with a rich diet of falsehood. Even as the bloody bodies were being carried out of the Diaz Pertini building on stretchers, police were telling reporters that the ambulances lined up in the street were nothing to do with the raid, and/or that the very obviously fresh injuries were old, and that the building had been full of violent extremists who had attacked officers.

The next day, senior officers held a press conference at which they announced that everybody in the building would be charged with aggressive resistance to arrest and conspiracy to cause destruction. In the event, the Italian courts dismissed every single attempted charge against every single person. That included Covell. Police attempts to charge him with a string of very serious offences were described by the public prosecutor, Enrico Zucca, as "grotesque".

At the same press conference, police displayed an array of what they described as weaponry. This included crowbars, hammers and nails which they themselves had taken from a builder's store next to the school; aluminium rucksack frames, which they presented as offensive weapons; 17 cameras; 13 pairs of swimming goggles; 10 pen-knives; and a bottle of sun-tan lotion. They also displayed two Molotov cocktails which, Zucca later concluded, had been found by police earlier in the day in another part of the city and planted in the Diaz Pertini building as the raid ended.

This public dishonesty was part of a wider effort to cover up what had happened. On the night of the raid, a force of 59 police entered the building opposite the Diaz Pertini, where Covell and others had been running their Indymedia centre and where, crucially, a group of lawyers had been based, gathering evidence about police attacks on the earlier demonstrations. Officers went into the lawyers' room, threatened the occupants, smashed their computers and seized hard drives. They also removed anything containing photographs or video tape.

With the courts refusing to charge the detainees, the police secured an order to deport all of them from the country, banning them from returning for five years. Thus, the witnesses were removed from the scene. Like the attempted charges, all the deportation orders were subsequently dismissed as illegal by the courts.

Zucca then fought his way through years of denial and obfuscation. In his formal report, he recorded that all the senior officers involved were denying playing any part: "Not a single official has confessed to holding a substantial command role in any aspects of the operation." One senior officer who was videoed at the scene explained that he was off duty and had just turned up to make sure his men were not being injured. Police statements were themselves changeable and contradictory, and were overwhelmingly contradicted by the evidence of victims and numerous videos: "Not a single one of the 150 officers reportedly present has provided precise information regarding an individual episode."

Without Zucca, without the robust stance of the Italian courts, without Covell's intensive work assembling video records of the Diaz raid, the police might well have evaded responsibility and secured false charges and prison sentences against scores of their victims. Apart from the Bolzaneto trial which finished on Monday, 28 other officers, some very senior, are on trial for their part in the Diaz raid. And yet, justice has been compromised.

No Italian politician has been brought to book, in spite of the strong suggestion that the police acted as though somebody had promised them impunity. One minister visited Bolzaneto while the detainees were being mistreated and apparently saw nothing or, at least, saw nothing he thought he should stop. Another, Gianfranco Fini, former national secretary of the neo-fascist MSI party and the then deputy prime minister, was - according to media reports at the time - in police headquarters. He has never been required to explain what orders he gave.

Most of the several hundred law officers involved in Diaz and Bolzaneto have escaped without any discipline or criminal charge. None has been suspended; some have been promoted. None of the officers who were tried over Bolzaneto has been charged with torture - Italian law does not recognise the offence. Some senior officers who were originally going to be charged over the Diaz raid escaped trial because Zucca was simply unable to prove that a chain of command existed. Even now, the trial of the 28 officers who have been charged is in jeopardy because the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is pushing through legislation to delay all trials dealing with events that occurred before June 2002. Nobody has been charged with the violence inflicted on Covell. And as one of the victims' lawyers, Massimo Pastore, put it: "Nobody wants to listen to what this story has to say."

That is about fascism. There are plenty of rumours that the police and carabinieri and prison staff belonged to fascist groups, but no evidence to support that. Pastore argues that that misses the bigger point: "It is not just a matter of a few drunken fascists. This is mass behaviour by the police. No one said 'No.' This is a culture of fascism." At its heart, this involved what Zucca described in his report as "a situation in which every rule of law appears to have been suspended."

Fifty-two days after the attack on the Diaz school, 19 men used planes full of passengers as flying bombs and shifted the bedrock of assumptions on which western democracies had based their business. Since then, politicians who would never describe themselves as fascists have allowed the mass tapping of telephones and monitoring of emails, detention without trial, systematic torture, the calibrated drowning of detainees, unlimited house arrest and the targeted killing of suspects, while the procedure of extradition has been replaced by "extraordinary rendition". This isn't fascism with jack-booted dictators with foam on their lips. It's the pragmatism of nicely turned-out politicians. But the result looks very similar. Genoa tells us that when the state feels threatened, the rule of law can be suspended. Anywhere.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/17/italy.g8

* Genoa riots: 15 guilty of G8 brutality will not go to jail

Somehow(^^) related:

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Already last week (7.08) BWI initiated an on-line Solidarity Campaign for S. Korea:

Support the Branch of the Pohang Construction Plant Workers Union!

Take two minutes to sign our solidarity campaign to support the Branch of the Pohang Construction Plant Workers Union, KFCITU in South Korea.

POSCO, a major steel production company in the country, launched a systematic campaign to break the union since the strike in 2006 by forcing union members to quit if they want to work and limiting access of union officials entering sites to address members issues. Members are still in jail.

We cannot tolerate that POSCO has used its political and economic clout in Pohang, where the company controls at least 70% of the economy to implement a deliberate and strategic plan to break the union through various tactics.

We call upon you to participate and forward this message to your fellow union members and co-workers. It is very important that you involve people in your union, in your workplace, who haven't yet had the satisfaction of sending off a message...

The full text of the Soli Campaign you can (MUST!!) read and sign here:
http://www.bwint.org/default.asp?Index=1788&Language=EN

Related/background:

☞ Korea: Anti-union repression continues (ITUC, 7.17)

☞ KFCITU Member Killed by Riot Cops

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BTW.. it would be very pleasant to hear on tomorrow's anti-gov't protests NOTHING about the f.. Dok-do issue, because there are (likely^^) many more important disgraces to protest/fight against! For example the massive exploitation of millions of "irregular" workers, the situation of migrant workers (i.e. the ongoing crackdown and the oppression of MTU!), the f... education system, the idiotic N"S"L, the presence of USFK, but also the nationalism in parts of the "progressive" movement etc. etc...

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It's now almost 7 years ago that the Italian gov't tryed to supress the/all protests against the 2001-G8 summit in Genoa with a wave of massive state terror. "Death and terror in Genoa" - like that observers described the time in July 2001 there.

The Italian anarchist C. Guliani, killed 2001.7.20 by the police during a demonstration

Yesterday, after years of delay, a few state servants who realized the policy of state terror by committing crimes against the human/civil rights of hundreds of protesters, were sentenced.., as the Guardian (UK) reported today:

Rape threats, beatings and racist chants: 15 Italians jailed for abuse of G8 Genoa protesters

Fifteen Italian police officers and doctors were last night sentenced to jail terms of up to five years after being found guilty of abusing protesters detained during riots at the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa.

Thirty other defendants were cleared of charges ranging from assault to the denial of basic human rights. The judges issued their verdicts after 11 hours of closed-doors deliberations.

The sentences totalled less than a third of what had been demanded by the prosecution. But they will nevertheless be embarrassing for Silvio Berlusconi and his rightwing allies, in office in Italy both then and now.

The court heard former detainees including Britons testify that they were insulted, beaten and sprayed with asphyxiating gas. Some were threatened with rape.

Detainees were made to join in chants in praise of Italy's late fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. Another chant, lauding Chile's Augusto Pinochet, ended: "Death to the Jews."

Between 100,000 and 200,000 demonstrators converged on Genoa seven years ago to take part in anti-globalisation protests. Most were peaceable, but some were not, and the situation deteriorated as the police employed tactics that many witnesses described as heavy-handed.

The violence peaked with the death of a 23-year-old Italian demonstrator, shot dead by a conscript Carabiniere. More than 250 of those arrested were taken to a holding camp that had been created at Bolzaneto, six miles from Genoa, where the abuses took place.

The heaviest sentence, five years, was given to the camp commander, Antonio Biagio Gugliotta. Twelve other police officers, eight men and four women, received jail terms of five to 28 months.

The chief of medical services at Bolzaneto, Giacomo Toccafondi, was given one year and two months in jail; he was accused of insulting detainees and failing to inform authorities after they were sprayed with asphyxiating gas in cells.

The detainees at Bolzaneto included about 40 who were arrested in a raid on a school being used as a dormitory. A judge ruled that there was no evidence to show any of those demonstrators had been involved in the violence in Genoa.

One, a Briton, Richard Moth, later told the Guardian that, despite injuries sustained in the raid that had him "screaming with pain", he was made to stand for hours spread-eagled against a wall.

The Bolzaneto trial was one of three arising from the Genoa G8 summit. In December 2007, 24 demonstrators were found guilty of damage to property and looting. They were given sentences ranging from five months to 11 years. In the third, ongoing trial, 28 defendants, including some of Italy's most senior police officers, face charges related to the raid on the school, which left 62 injured, three in comas.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/15/italy.g8

An expression of another opinion.. led to a "special treatment" by the Italian riot cops! 

 
Related reports/articles (July 2001):

☞ The Horrific Torture of Genoa Protesters

☞ Death and Terror in Genoa

☞ Fascism in Genoa

☞ The Raid on Diaz school

☞ Gipfelstuermer - The Bloody Days of Genoa

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It's almost some days ago, that the S.K. bourgeois (English) media mentioned the anti-US-beef/anti-gov't movement and its activities (*).

Now, the movement is preparing for the next "mass rally" - i.e. the "7.12 Candlelight Culture Festival" - against the LMB-gov't.

But - to be somehow realistic - it could be the "last battle"! While last Friday 30,000 people joined the "Candlelight Vigil", today - the event was mainly organized by the KCTU - only 1,500 people paricipated at the final "Candlelight Culture Festival" in downtown Seoul (Chyeonggyecheon Plaza), according to Chamsesang.

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1. While the S.K. ruling class and its gov't is assuming that the protest movement is "short before the final collapse", the 'security forces' are threaten now another part of the society with repressions:
☞ Police Warn Religious Leaders Over Candlelit Protests (K. Times, 7.07)

2. Last week Scot B. (www.kingbaeksu.com) published following interesting(*) impression/view about the recent protest events in Seoul(**):

Tonight I walked to City Hall at around 7:30pm and was disgusted by what I saw. A group at Ch'onggye Plaza was protesting human rights abuses in China, but all of 5 people were stopping to listen to a speech that was being made. Nearby, on the corner by Seoul Finance Center, another group was protesting against global warming and advocating green living and vegetarianism, but again nobody was even listening. Then I went to City Hall, and it was flooded by people listening to a monk give a speech about the need to renegotiate the beef deal. I'm sorry, but why is a vegetarian monk promoting eating beef at all? Shouldn't he be calling for outright cancellation?

I left after a few minutes and spoke with the anti-global warming people once again. They had a large-screen TV showing how cows produce methane gas which in turn increases global warming. I spoke with the nice halmoni there for a while and asked her what she thought of the beef issue. At first she said she didn't care because she was a vegetarian, but then after some prodding, she said, "Those people have low consciousness" and went on to talk about how traditionally Koreans didn't even eat much meat, and that the cattle industry in both the US and Korea was harming the environment in serious ways. I agree with her completely. She ended by saying, "Those people don't seem to really understand what's going on in the world we live in. All I want to do is give some information about the Earth." Too bad nobody really cared about what she had to say, because they were all too busy protesting their right to cram their faces with "safe" beef at City Hall.

Well, if they are really as radical as they fancy themselves to be, they should simply announce that they will stop eating beef entirely and start actually giving a fuck about the environment for a change. I mean, I cannot even begin to imagine how much trash has been generated by two months of daily protests comprising millions of people.

I must say that while 2MB certainly sucks, this movement is starting to seem more and more morally bankrupt the closer I look at it...

Well, it’s a very long post, and must be read in its entirety:

Yesterday during a "conversation" with Jamie (TwoKoreasBlog) he wrote following:

"..I have to say that at this point, this whole protest movement can be characterized as the Korean left being sore losers.

They fucked up in the last elections (Dec. '07 and April '08), but that's their fault not Lee's. An equivalent analogy would be if a runner lost a marathon race because he didn't prepare or train hard enough beforehand, and then blamed the winner for his loss.

Again, at this point they're simply being sore losers. Everyone knew what Lee was about prior to the Dec. election. The progressives and the left here have no one to blame but themselves.

Last night people were telling me in all seriousness that Lee needed to be assassinated."

* Well, that's interesting, but - probably - it's not reflecting the entire "reality"...

** Related stuff (incl. nearly 100 comments to Scot B's impressions):

☞ Excellent Commentary on Demonstrations (The Marmot's Hole)

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REACTIONARIES OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!

Yo, tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon and evening could present us a very special, extraordinary event/performance in downtown Seoul!

The S.K. daily newspaper Hanguk Ilbo reported that "with tensions between protesters and anti-protest protesters on the rise" (just remember my yesterday's contribution!), hundreds of resident foreigners will be attending an

 "Anti-Candlelight Protest Demonstration" :

The "Citizens Alliance Against Radical Illegal Candlelight Demonstrations"

(NoNoDemo) announced before yesterday that 500-600 foreign students and about 100 English teachers planned to attend a rally set for 5–8pm on July 5. Some 100 foreign laborers and Korean-Americans will also attend.

An official from the group said hundreds of resident foreigners have expressed their intention to voluntarily attend the demonstration. The official said that in the face of loud demands for the beef import deal to be renegotiated, the foreigners could not voice their own opinions about US beef, and that after they learned of the alliance’s online cafe, they contacted it looking to participate. He said the largest number of foreigners would be students in their 20s—30s.

He noted that the students not only wished to oppose the radical demonstrations, but also ask the candle crowd to pay attention to North Korean human rights.

Foreigners from all over, including the United States, Australia, Canada, Europe and Japan would attend.

Korean-Americans plan to attend following a performance asking the protesters to raise their candles instead for North Korean human rights. According to the alliance, the protest will also put to rest arguments that Americans don’t eat 30-month-old beef.

The anti-protest protesters will be protected by some 300 volunteer body guards from an association of ex-North Korean soldiers (*) who have defected to the South. The alliance official said this was because previous protests have met with friction with the candle crowd, and they wished for no more.

The demonstration is expected to get some 1,000 participants, making it the largest counter-demonstration yet. The demonstration will take place at the same time as a major anti-US beef demonstration, so some are worried about a potential conflict.

* Harrharr.. that seems to be a f... good idea!! Just imagine: "ex-N.K. soldiers" are meeting thousands of KCTU militants and other "skilled street fighters"! Of course, very likely, at least 10,000 of the notorious riot cops will be also at the scene.. (BTW.. it will be - once again - "good oportunity" for "activists" of the paramilitary HID and other similar semi-fascist gangster organisations, supporting the current S.K. gov't, to come out of their dirty holes!!)

☞ Foreigners to Join Protest Against Anti-US Beef Rally (K. Times)

☞ 촛불시위 반대집회에 국내 거주 외국인 대규모 참여키로 (쿠키뉴스)

☞ Foreigners & Ex-North Korean Soldiers to Protest Beef Protesters (ROK Drop)

☞ Why Don’t You Raise Candles for the North Koreans? (DailyNK)

But despite all any possible - or better said impossible!! - efforts by the S.K. (and their affiliated foreign) reactionaries to disturb the current anti-gov't movement (and this includes also many migrant workers, organized in the MTU!!!):

        THE STRUGGLE GOES ON!!!      

(according to KCTU's struggle plan: at least from Saturday afternoon until Sunday 10 p.m.)

PS:
And the S.K. reactionary idiots are preparing for another "highlight"!!! (according to y'day's Money Today):

Conservative groups will be holding a US beef tasting party for some 10,000 people in downtown Seoul on July 12...
Organizers plan to get the beef for free from a Korean-American rancher in the United States.
One conservative group member said the event would be an opportunity to promote the safety of US beef to the public.

☞ 1만명 美쇠고기 시식파티 열린다

본문

Yesterday night a group of gangsters, organized in the Headquarters Of Intelligence Detachment (HID) attacked the office and activists of the New Progressive Party (NPP) in Seoul. (*)

본문

Well, tomorrow there will be the next "highlight" for the (current) anti-gov't struggle in S. Korea: KCTU's "General Strike" (*)

민주노총

투쟁대회
7.2, 18시 ~ 7.3, 00시, 서울시청 앞

The central strike rally/demonstration will be staged tomorrow(Wednesday) at 6 p.m. on (surprise, surprise!!) Seoul's City Hall Plaza (until after midnight, according to KCTU)!

BTW... The LeeMB gov't "vowed to deal harshly with the general strike to be staged by the KCTU on Wednesday, branding it politically motivated and illegal", according to Chosun Ilbo (7.01).

* Today's Korea Herald is reporting following about the "General Strike":

Tens of thousands of union workers will stage a joint strike tomorrow in protest against the resumption of U.S. beef imports.

Workers at major carmakers including Hyundai Motor Co. will join the action called by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions.

The government pledged a stern response. The Labor Ministry declared the planned walkout illegal because it is not related to corporate issues such as wage and work conditions.

"We will fight and damage production," warned Lee Suk-haeng, leader of the labor umbrella group, during a news conference before yesterday...

Tomorrow, more than 200,000 will join the strike nationwide, he said. Its members will gather in Seoul from tomorrow through Saturday to join candlelight vigils against the beef imports.

This will be a start of the annual summer strife, which will be longer and fiercer this year than before, he threatened.

"The summer struggle will go on well beyond July and I expect it will continue through September given the government's plan to restructure the public sector," he said.

The action comes after a general strike by truck drivers between June 11-19, which has been estimated to cost the nation about $6.6 billion in lost trade.

The government and business organizations demanded the union cancel the plan, which will devastate an economy already suffering from record-high oil prices and a sagging global market.

Workers at Hyundai Motor, Korea's top car maker, plan to stage a two-day partial strike as part of the nationwide protests and its own collective action for wage increase.

The union is part of the Korean Metal Workers' Union, a key member of the KCTU. The metal industry union, consisting of about 230 companies, approved the strike plan on Sunday with the support of 76 percent of its voting members.

The Hyundai Motor union said some 45,000 will stop work for two hours each on Wednesday and Thursday. They will not work overtime until the settlement of wage talks.

They demand the company come to automobile industry-level negotiations, in which labor unions will have greater leverage. The carmaker rejected it.

Workers at Kia Motors Corp., GM Daewoo Auto & Technology Co., and Ssangyong Motor Co. will join the two-day partial work stoppage, union officials at the companies said.

The Labor Ministry refused to recognize the legitimacy of the planned strike.

It said the action is motivated by the political purpose of blocking U.S. beef imports. Especially, Hyundai workers did not sit for a wage negotiation with management before undertaking industrial action, which violates the law, the ministry said...

The KCTU rebuffed the criticism. "The beef matter is directly related to the health and everyday life of workers. It is natural that we fight over the issue," Lee said...

본문

1. Today's Korea Herald "predicted" that the.. "Protests against U.S. beef imports, which have been going on for two months, will either continue or die down as a result of government clampdowns.."

And today's reality: Right now (it's 11 p.m., KST) tens of thousands of people (some activists are estimating 70,000!!), "ordinary" citizens, incl. some Christian and Buddhist clerics, anti-FTA, KCTU and student activists etc.., are occupying since around 7 p.m. the avenue between Namdaemun, the City Hall Plaza and the police barricades (aka the MB Castle) near the Jong-no/Sejong-no intersection.. DESPITE THE ANNOUNCED CRACKDOWN (by the S.K. gov't) against the protest movement!!

2. Today's Hankyoreh said that..

6.29 becomes 5.18
 

The police, thoroughly armed with shields and truncheons, arrived en masse. Citizens cried out in distress and scattered, and one by one, many of them fell when they were hit. A young woman who had fallen to the ground was surrounded by police who stamped on her with military boots and slammed her down with the edges of their shields. A lady well over sixty who had been standing on a sidewalk fainted after being hit on her face and shoulders with a truncheon. A doctor in his thirties who had been administering first aid was dragged away by police and beaten. A 24-year-old female office worker who protested when police were beating on people was hit in the head by a group of riot police and left bleeding. One woman’s rain clothes were drenched in blood. A man in his fifties lost consciousness. A high school student’s lips were bleeding.

That was the scene along Taepyeongno, the street that extends from the Gwanghwamun intersection to Namdaemun in downtown Seoul, early on the morning of June 29. It was just like the Gwangju of May 18, 1980, without the gunshots. The indiscriminate violence began again exactly 21 years after June 29, 1987, when the military government of Chun Doo-hwan, which had committed the atrocities in Gwangju, finally surrendered to the country’s demands for democratization. Did the clock get turned back a few decades to the past?

This comes just a few days after National Police Agency chief Eo Cheong-soo said, on June 26, that he “might like to use severe eighties-style tactics sometime.” In other words, police behavior early on June 29 was not just something that unfolded spontaneously, it was something that had been planned in detail. One can see the motive. The calculation that has been made is that by inciting a clash, and thereby isolating the candlelight protests, it will be easier to quiet them.

The police and government must not try to legitimize their violent suppression of protests. While it would be hard to figure out which side the violence originated with, no matter what the situation police cannot escape responsibility for excessive violence that goes beyond the boundaries of what is legal and appropriate. Like the military, the police are highly trained in the use of physical force, making the abuse of that training all the more dangerous. In Gwangju in 1980, the group called the “New Military Leaders” used excessive force in suppressing citizens protesting the usurpation of power and, in so doing, brought about a tragedy in resistance and slaughter, and still it said it was carrying out the law legitimately. This is something that should not be repeated.

The candlelight protests are an important outcry of popular sentiment, one that must not end with having been a clash with police. While we understand the sentiment of protesters angry at how the government has shut its ears and is trying to put them down with the police, they still must not treat as enemies young riot police who are easily excited. Many citizens have been hurt, but they say not a few riot police have been injured by citizens wielding steel pipes and wood clubs. That is sad. Are not the ones who should be held responsible for the situation somewhere else?

3. Related articles/reports:

->Police Raid Offices of Protestest Organizers (Korea Times)
->Protesters trampled, beaten by police (Hankyoreh)
->[6.29/30] NewsCham Report
->[6.28/29] Video Report