THE BORDERS OF DEMOCRACY: Immigrants Killed, Rebels in Prison

On Thursday, May 12, five anarchists from Lecce were arrested as part of yet another investigation for "subversive association with the intention of terrorism" (bis 270). On the basis of this investigation, anarchist homes and spaces throughout Italy were searched. The occupied space Capolinea in Lecce was closed and subjected to judiciary seizure. Known for their constant and uncompromising opposition to the concentration camps that the language of the state calls "Centers of Temporary Residence"(CPTs), these comrades were causing to much trouble. Now that the brutality of the CPT in Lecce has come out in such a clear way that its director, Father Cesare Lodeserto, was arrested with charges of private violence and kidnapping, now that various locked-up immigrants have begun to rebel with courage and continuity, the voices of those who time and again expose the ones who are responsible for and entire concentration camp system are shut up. These comrades are accused of a series of attacks against the property of the managers and financiers of the CPT in Lecce, sabotage against Esso* and some direct action against Benneton. We don't know if they are innocent or guilty, and we don't care. We don't look for the things that we consider justified in the lines of the state's legal codes. If they are innocent they have our solidarity. If they are guilty, they have it even more.
Responding with determination to those who lock up men and women whose only crime is that they are poor and don't have their papers in order, making those who get rich from the mass slaughter of the Iraqi population (like Esso) or the dislocation of the Mapuche (like Benneton), are absolutely sharable practices. From bombings to CPTs, from banks to multinational corporations, aren't the enemies of the exploited the same everywhere?

While these comrades of ours get arrested, in a single day, the police in Turin evict a nomad camp, kill a Senegalese man in cold blood at a roadblock, cause the death of another immigrant who tries to get away from a police sweep. When will it stop? For weeks the inmates of via Corelli in Milan have been on hunger strike. They protest on the roof. They cry out their desire for freedom. Meanwhile hundreds of refugees are locked up in "welcome centers" from which they try at all costs to escape.
This is the cry that reaches us from the debris of this world in ruins.
We can pretend not to hear it. We can hypocritically celebrate the armed struggle against nazi-fascism* without noticing that the concentration camps are not our past, but our present. We can take refuge behind respect for the law - the same law in whose name people are starved and bombed, the same law that is suspended every day for millions of the damned of the Earth. Or we can decide to raise our heads, finding in ourselves the sense of what is justified, arming our hearts and our hands. We can hid or we can fight.
It seems to us that the best way to be in solidarity with the comrades of Lecce is to continue the struggle to close down the concentration camps, to jam the machinery of expulsion. For a world without borders.

FREE SALVATORE, SAVERIO, CRISTIAN, MARINA, ANNALISA!
BURN DOWN THE CPT'S! FREE EVERYONE!

On May 12, at the conclusion of the operation called "night-time, sixteen home searches were carried out. The homes of comrades were searched with the usual violent means characteristic of the police: men of the Digos, some of them hooded, who ransacked everywhere, helicopter pilots and bomb-disposal experts, for a deployment of 150 men just for the province of Lecce. Cops took a comrade to the Capolinea center in via Adua (they opened the door with his keys) where he witnessed the search, the video shots taken and the seizure of objects present at the location (books, t-shirts, buttons and flyers).

Five comrades were arrested on the charge of subversive association with the intention of terrorism. Eight others are under investigation while at large for the same charge and two for unauthorized demonstration. The charges are supported by utterly conjectural evidence, derived from telephone and environmental wire-tapping, not to mention the GPS detector installed in a comrade's car.

From this material, the investigators infer the responsibility of the comrades in attacks against the ATMs of Banca Intesa, against the pumps of the Esso distributor, against the doors of the cathedral in Lecce and against the house of Father Cesare Lodeserto's sister. Writings on walls have been attributed in an absurdly arbitrary manner.

It is clear that the operation, spiced up by the ballyhoo of the local press, is yet another example of judiciary frame-up based on non-existent proof. Their lordships know that anarchists recognize no leaders or directors. Therefore they have not brought any "peaks" or "minds", whatever that means, into prison. The minds of comrades are distinct, independent and unitary in the daily struggle against every form of exploitation.

The aim of this scenario is to discourage any sort of expression of dissent, to criminalize comrades by carrying out a "scorched earth policy" around them. We know that in a society in which everything is a commodity, prison is the deterrent tool for every form of dissent, useful for guaranteeing an approval, a social apathy necessary to capitalism. They would like us to sadly be content with the crumbs that fall from the banquet table of those in power. Instead what we want is a different world, egalitarian and anti-authoritarian. The comrades have been brutally attacked for having acted in solidarity with other excluded ones, the exploited, immigrants who are deported and locked up because the lack permission, who are mocked as subhuman and covered by social indifference. Solidarity among the exploited is the thing that the powerful most fear, it is the possibility that makes the earth shake under the feet of those who call us terrorists. Today we express our complete solidarity with those attacked and imprisoned; tomorrow, we will again be together in the struggle as always.

FREEDOM FOR MARINA, ANNALISA, SAVERIO, SALVATORE AND CRISTIAN
FREEDOM FOR ALL THE IMPRISONED - BURN DOWN THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND PRISONS

Salvatore Signore, Saverio Pelligrino and Cristian Palladini are imprisoned at:
Casa circondiale
Borgo San Nicola
73100
Lecce, Italy

Marina Ferrari and Annalisa Capone are under house arrest.