[Imc] G8 and the Italian embassy

[Jacqueline Waters]

I have been reading with growing horror about what has been going on in Italy.  Many of the first hand accounts have ended with cries for help and letters and phone calls from those outside.  I haven't been sure who to call, where to send the letters, so I wrote up the following and sent it to the Italian embassy in the U.S.  I think many other people would be willing to send messages of protest too if they only knew to who or where.  If anyone has any suggestions or a list of places please share them - I would like to help in disseminating the information.  The following was my letter:

As an American citizen, as a world citizen, I am shocked and outraged at the Italian treatment of peaceful protestors at the G8 convention in Genoa.  I am offended by your country's armed forces attempts to lie to us like stupid children, as if we can not see the photos and hear the accounts of hundreds of first hand witnesses that tell us that none of the protestors have been armed.  Your police hid behind lies that they were under threat of violence when they shot protestors.  What will be their lie when they explain entering the sleeping quarters of unarmed, non-violent protestors and beating them violently?  How will you explain how dozens of full armed police had no choice but to break limbs, bludgeon heads and kill sleeping, peaceful people in a country that claims to have a constitution that defends the right of it's people to non-violently protest?  What were their crimes?  There were none, and even if their had been, they would have been obviously non-violent ones.  Is this how your country treats anyone they vaguely suspect of some crime?  I am disgusted and demand an immediate halt to your countries police actions, to the arresting of injured people, to the torturing we have many first hand accounts of happening in your jails.  

As a person of Italian decent I am disgusted and ashamed.  This is a dark day for your country, one of shame, and I hope only that the leaders of Italy will come to their senses and stop this insanity immediately.  I am one voice among thousands, maybe millions, that cry out against your countries actions and I do not believe for one second that the home countries of many of the foreign protestors you have injured and beaten will stand for it.  

Jacqueline Fiocchi Waters
Champaign, IL
U.S.
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