Protesters swoop in Rome, Turin and Pisa as students march all over Italy. Scuffles involving police officers and demonstrators in Florence
MILAN – Police clashed with demonstrators in Florence as protesting students stormed the Colosseum, the Mole Antonelliana and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Up and down Italy, another day of protests against university reform came to an end after a government defeat in the Chamber of Deputies over a Future and Liberty (FLI) amendment. The final vote has been postponed until Tuesday 30.
GELMINI – Should the reform be fundamentally altered, “I will be forced to withdraw it”, warned Mariastella Gelmini after this latest setback in the lower house. Speaking on the Mattino Cinque breakfast TV programme, the education minister assured listeners that resources for universities had been found and were entirely sufficient. “Without the reform, universities are heading for bankruptcy and will be ‘put into receivership’ by the banks”, said Ms Gelmini. “The stability budget allocated a billion euros, which is enough to pay for the right to study as well as university running expenses”. Regarding the protest, Ms Gelmini said that “the most anomalous element is the alliance between the professors who pull the strings and some of the students”.
PROTESTS – After Wednesday’s sit-in and the raid on the Senate, student protests at the Gelmini reform continued yesterday. In Rome protesters managed to get into the Colosseum and climb to the second tier of columns, where they hung out a banner with the message “No cut, no profit”. The students then staged a march inside the capital’s most iconic monument. Many chanted “We are the real lions” and lit red smoke flares as puzzled tourists looked on. The Colosseum demonstration lasted for only a few minutes and concluded without incident. Police presence in Rome has been beefed up and Piazza Montecitorio, where the Chamber of Deputies is located, has been cordoned off.
Yesterday morning, a banner appeared outside the Sapienza university in Rome, where the rector has postponed the inauguration of the academic year, scheduled for today. The banner said: “Freedom for the [two – Ed.] arrested students”. In Milan about 400 secondary students marched through the city centre. There were tense moments at the Polytechnic as students and police clashed and in Piazzale Loreto, where two students suffered bruising. In Pisa students scaled the Leaning Tower and unfurled a banner. In Naples, the Orientale university was occupied, as was the rector’s office at the Federico II university. In Palermo about a thousand students in six marches homed in on the provincial schools administration and then blocked the station for an hour, and the entrance to the harbour. In Bari about twenty students occupied the engineering faculty at the Polytechnic. In Turin, university researchers defied the cold to spend a second night on the roof of the arts faculty. Polytechnic buildings were occupied and pickets stood guard outside the physics and chemistry faculties. Eggs and smoke flares were thrown at the Piedmont regional authority offices and Porta Susa station was blocked for half an hour. As in Rome and Pisa, protesters in Turin targeted the city’s most iconic building, the Mole Antonelliana, which was occupied without incident for about an hour. In Ancona a group of students occupied the roof of the engineering faculty at the Polytechnic. In Bologna several hundred marching students created problems for city centre buses. In Florence police officers charged to break up students outside the social sciences building, where about 500 demonstrators from leftwing collectives had gathered to protest at junior minister Daniela Santanchè’s participation in a debate on immigration. Earlier, protesters had thrown smoke flares. In Cagliari students occupying the roof of the science building were joined by researchers.
English translation by Giles Watson
www.watson.it
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