Veneto ‘independence plot’: Italy police arrest 24, seize ‘tank’
Italian police have arrested 24 “separatists,” including an organizer of the online Veneto independence referendum. Police suspect them of plotting to take over Venice’s iconic St. Mark's Square with a bulldozer which they converted into a “tank.”
According to police, the suspects had built an armored vehicle, planning to deploy it to Piazza San Marco, in a similar move to the symbolic several-hour takeover of the square by secessionists in 1997, AP reported. As police video footage shows, the “tank” was a just tractor with firearms that had yet to be attached.
The activists had been planning to "liberate" the piazza using weapons from the Albanian mafia and set up a new independent government, AFP cited the police statement as saying.
They were planning an attack “by hundreds of people, some of them armed” and “an insurrection from the inhabitants of northern Italy most affected by the economic crisis,” according to police.
The “tank” was built to be used for a “spectacular” action on Venice’s famous piazza.
The activists had been planning to "liberate" the piazza using weapons from the Albanian mafia and set up a new independent government, AFP cited the police statement as saying.
They were planning an attack “by hundreds of people, some of them armed” and “an insurrection from the inhabitants of northern Italy most affected by the economic crisis,” according to police.
The “tank” was built to be used for a “spectacular” action on Venice’s famous piazza.
The 24 were arrested on suspicion of terrorism, subversion of democratic order, and making and possessing weapons of war. Twenty-seven others are under investigation. Such crimes are punishable by up to 15 years behind bars.
The suspects are members of a group called The Alliance, which unites radical separatists from Italy’s Lombardy, Sardinia, and Veneto regions. Among the arrested was Franco Rocchetta, a former lawmaker and campaigner for Venetian independence who helped organize an unofficial online “referendum” in March, in the wake of Crimea’s independence from Ukraine.
One of the organizers of the referendum, Gianluca Busato, said the crackdown - which comes just days after the online poll - is a “ridiculous” overreaction by the state, insisting that she and her colleagues are “peaceful democrats.”
Those arrested also reportedly include two people involved in the 1997 St. Mark's takeover, the founder of the secession-minded Liga Veneta, and organizers of last December’s ‘Pitchfork Protests’ aimed at ousting Italy's entire political class.
In March, some 89 percent of respondents in the poll – more than two million people – voted for the Veneto region to split from Italy and set up an independent state. However, the Corriere del Veneto reported this week that most of the votes in the “referendum” supporting the secession were generated by computers abroad.
The suspects are members of a group called The Alliance, which unites radical separatists from Italy’s Lombardy, Sardinia, and Veneto regions. Among the arrested was Franco Rocchetta, a former lawmaker and campaigner for Venetian independence who helped organize an unofficial online “referendum” in March, in the wake of Crimea’s independence from Ukraine.
One of the organizers of the referendum, Gianluca Busato, said the crackdown - which comes just days after the online poll - is a “ridiculous” overreaction by the state, insisting that she and her colleagues are “peaceful democrats.”
Those arrested also reportedly include two people involved in the 1997 St. Mark's takeover, the founder of the secession-minded Liga Veneta, and organizers of last December’s ‘Pitchfork Protests’ aimed at ousting Italy's entire political class.
In March, some 89 percent of respondents in the poll – more than two million people – voted for the Veneto region to split from Italy and set up an independent state. However, the Corriere del Veneto reported this week that most of the votes in the “referendum” supporting the secession were generated by computers abroad.
Italy Troops Crack Down on Secessionists Nationwide
Troops Seize Bulldozer in Venice, Weapons in Lombardy
by Jason Ditz, April 02, 2014
With secessionist sentiment continuing to soar across Italy, the nation has deployed its special forces in multiple operations nationwide, but primarily centered on northern secessionist regions, arresting 24 “suspected secessionists.”
During the crackdown, police captured a bulldozer in Venice, which they claimed was being dressed up to look like an armored vehicle for deployment during a secessionist protest, and unspecified weapons in both Lombardy and Piedmont, as well as on the island of Sardinia.
A referendum earlier this month showed 89 percent support in Venice for returning to its role as an independent republic, while Sardinia-Piedmont continues to have designs on splitting from Italy and seeking annexation by Switzerland.
Protesters complain that Italy’s central government is an excessive drag on their regional economies, particularly in Venice, one of the wealthier parts of the country, but one which is heavily taxed to subsidize the poorer south.
Italy Splitting? Venice Votes for Secession, Is Sardinia Next?
Sardinian Movement Seeks Accession Into Switzerland
by Jason Ditz, March 23, 2014
Secessionist sentiment seems to be hugely on the rise in Italy, and at this rate the nation may soon be sloughing off autonomous regions like skin flakes, with Venice virtually out the door.
A week-long referendum in the area around Venice proposed the idea of reforming the Repubblica Veneta, which existed independently for centuries until its conquest by Napoleon and military annexation by Austria. Strong turnout was reported and 89 percent of the votes were in favor of secession.
The vote was non-binding, but the overwhelming nature of the vote suggest self-rule may be inevitable in Venice, and is going to be virtually impossible for Italy to ignore.
Sardinia may not be far behind. The autonomous region, itself independent for centuries before the formation of Italy, isn’t looking to go it alone like Venice, however, and activists are suggesting an accession into Switzerland, suggesting that as a way out of both Italy and the EU for the economically struggling region.
No wonder Vento wants secession from southern Italy ? What a shambolic situation in Naples ! For twenty year this has been tolerated by Italy's government ????
‘Triangle of Death:’ Italy sends army to Mafia toxic waste dump
The Italian government is sending soldiers to the Mafia controlled areas north of Naples, which have become an illegal dumping ground for highly toxic chemicals and other garbage, known as the “Triangle of Death”.
Since the local mafia syndicate, known in the Naples area as the Camorra, decided to branch out into the lucrative waste disposal business in the 1980s, an area of the Campania province north of Naples has been ruined.
The Mafia, instead of paying high sums of money to have the waste disposed of legally, paid mobsters to dump it in fields, rivers, wells and lakes, Gazzetta Del Sud reports. This clandestine business was mostly carried at night to minimize detection.
Hidden away, although easy enough to find, are vast mounds of illegal and hazardous rubbish, ranging from highly dangerous industrial waste to asbestos and car tires.
Sometimes these garbage mountains are set alight and billow toxic fumes towards the neighboring towns of Nola, Acerra and Marigliano – the area north of Naples called the “Triangle of Death”.
But the ugly mountains of trash and the toxic fumes are the least of the locals’ worries. The real danger is in the water table and the aquifers feeding tomato and broccoli crops as well as vineyards and orchards, which have been poisoned with arsenic, heavy metals and chloroform.
10 million tons of industrial waste was trucked into the area at night between 1991 and 2013, according to Legambiente, an environmental protection association. One and half million people living in the Naples and Caserta provinces are affected.
The government has decided to send in the army to try and deal with the problem.
“To deal with the phenomenon of the environment mafia in the area between Naples and Caserta,”the army is being deployed, Defense undersecretary Gioacchino Alfano said on Monday.
He told a meeting of the National Public Safety and Order Committee, which he chaired in Naples on Monday that “the military is staying as long as needed.”
The aims of the 850 troops who will be sent to the “Triangle of Death” will be “to punish those responsible, reclaim the lands to avoid the risk of further mafia activity and prevent the paradox of those areas that have already been reclaimed from being used again for illegal dumping,” he added, as The Independent quotes him.
But the army will not be able to deal with the mounting health problems for the local population that the illegal dumping has already caused.
A group of Italian and US scientists, from the Sbara Institute for Cancer Research at Temple University in Philadelphia, found that 30 years of the Camorra mafia disposing toxic refuse in the area north of Naples were to blame for breast cancer rates 47percent above the national average, while another study found birth defects were 80 percent above the norm.
As the authorities begin to crack down on the so-called Ecomafia business, the 90 Mafia clans and their 4,000 or so affiliates have begun to fight turf wars over who controls what, leading to series of “brutal Camorra murders” since the beginning of February.
This is not the first time that the army has been sent to the south of Italy after surges in Mafia activity. Massililiano Manfredi, a Naples born MP for the Democratic Party and a member of the parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission, said that the way to battle the Camorra is to root out the corrupt officials who make mafia deals possible, and not with the army alone.
“You don’t fight the Camorra with the army. Its real strength stems from the fact that it’s embedded in the public administration. We need to insist on the renewal of the ruling class to break the continuity between political power and organized crime,” he told the Independent.
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