The next day 300 000 demonstrators marched in favour of the protection of the rights of migrants. The police attacked frequently with great violence and use of tear-gas.

During the night of 22-23 July the carabineri occupied a school that was being used as a dormitory by many of the demonstrators. I well remember the moment of the attack, being 80 metres away from the school in the close vicinity of the Genoa Social Forum in the company of Walden Bello, a Philippino activist organiser for ’Focus on the Global South’ based in Bangkok. We saw the carabinieri prevent ambulance staff from gaining access to the school for more than half an hour, while the carabinieri themselves attacked many of the occupants. Stretchers passed by carrying motionless victims and we were convinced there would be more dead. Fortunately that was not the case, the victims being probably knocked unconscious. The aggressions continued over the following days in a barracks where the detained were beaten and made to sing fascist songs.

As was described in Le Monde in April 2015, “We have had to wait 14 years to get a conviction. Finally, it’s the whole country that has been convicted. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemned Italy on 7 January for never having prosecuted, or even identified, those police officers who perpetrated violence against demonstrators and activists during the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001, inflicting treatment so bad that it can be considered to have been torture.” see (in French): http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/articl...

Delegations were present from all over Europe. A large number of Greeks including Alexis Tsipras, 27 years old at the time, were prevented from arriving when their special train was blocked by Berlusconi’s police. Pablo Iglesias, 22 years old at the time, the present leader of Podemos, was in a big delegation from Spain.

After Genoa the G8 |2| decided that henceforth demonstrations should not be allowed to approach the meeting place so closely.

The Genoa demonstrations were a part of the rising anti-globalisation movement. We can identify 1994 as being the beginning of this rise with the apparition of the neo-Zapatist movement in Mexico in January of that year and the big demonstrations against the World Bank in October under the banner of “50 years is enough”. |3| Other dates such as the anti G7 rally in Paris in July 1989 calling for the abolition of Third World Debt, the ’intergalactic’ gathering in the Chiapas in Mexico around the neo-Zapatists in 1996, the Worldwide mobilisations against the WTO meeting in Seattle in November 1999, the great demonstrations in Bangkok in February 2000 quickly followed by Washington in April of that year and Prague in September were milestones in the movement, not forgetting the first ’World Social Forum’ in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in January 2001. This ascending phase reached its zenith with the demonstrations against the war in Iraq in February 2003. The war was finally engaged on 20 March 2003. These demonstrations were worldwide with more than 10 million participants. |4|

The World Social Forum, the European Social Forum, the Latin American Social Forum, the African Social Forum and the Asian Social Forum started to decline from 2005-2006 when some members adopted moderate positions, compromising with governments such as that of Lula in Brazil (as from 2003), the Congress Party in India (2004-2009) and the Prodi government in Italy. The WSF encountered setbacks in Belem (2009), in Dakar (2012), and in Tunis in 2013 and 2015. Its decline is ongoing whilst no other structure has appeared to replace it. This absence of a worldwide structure to bring together resistance and alternatives is a very serious problem. For more information on this period see the five articles in the series “The International Context of Global Outrage” http://www.cadtm.org/Looking-back-on-the-movements-that; http://www.cadtm.org/The-global-crisis-that-preceded; http://www.cadtm.org/From-the-Arab-Spring-to-the; http://www.cadtm.org/Common-features-of-the-various; http://www.cadtm.org/Indignadas-and-Indignados-of-the See also http://www.cadtm.org/Eric-Toussaint-The-Social-Forum

The Arab Spring and the great ’Indignados’ movement have not produced the new international basis for struggle that is so urgently needed.

My talk at the conference on the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt in Genoa on 19 July 2016 briefly presented debt repudiations that have happened over the last two centuries. I also pointed out, as did other speakers, the age-old practice of regularly cancelling private debts, starting with the abolitions that periodically occurred in Mesopotamia over 3000 years ago, |5| as well as the birth of Athenian democracy under Solon and the biblical tradition. I emphasised the importance of cancelling private illegitimate debts, whether they be illegitimate mortgages (12 million US families have had their homes repossessed by the banks since 2007 and 300 000 families in Spain have been also been evicted from their homes since 2009); illegitimate student debts (particularly in the UK and the US); the illegitimate debts of Indian smallholders; or elsewhere, in Morocco and many other countries, the debts incurred by the abusive commercialisation of micro-credit. I have stressed the need to disobey creditors when they try to impose conditions that are illegitimate or incompatible with human rights. I summarised the lessons to be learned from the capitulation of the Tsipras government in Greece in July 2015 that was caused by its refusal to suspend debt repayments, its refusal to act on the findings of the Greek Debt Truth Commission, its refusal to respect the result of the 5 July referendum despite the fact that it had been called by Alexis Tsipras himself.

Lessons for the future: future popular governments (and left-wing movements that participate in government) must resist creditors, disobey institutions and European treaties, find their strength and legitimacy in popular movements and respect the choices of the people. Those at the bottom must maintain maximum pressure on favourable governments to ensure that they do not capitulate and that they really do put an authentic alternative programme into place.

Translated by Vicki Briault and Mike Krolikowski

Footnotes

|1| The two speakers for CADTM International on 19 July 2016 were Chiara Filoni and Eric Toussaint. Note that ATTAC Italy joined CADTM International in April 2016 at the CADTM World Assembly held in Tunis.

|2| At present the G8 is again reduced to a G7 because of the tensions with Russia. The last G7 meeting was held in Japan in May 2016. See http://www.japan.go.jp/g7/summit/

|3| The CADTM was created in 1990 in the wake of the big 1989 rally in Paris and supported the neo-Zapatist movement by going to Mexico in July 1994 and co-organising the demonstrations against the WB and the IMF in Madrid in October 1994.

|4| See particularly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prote...

|5| See Eric Toussaint, "The Long Tradition of Debt Cancellation in Mesopotamia and Egypt from 3000 to 1000 BC”, 24 August 2012; http://www.cadtm.org/The-Long-Tradition-of-Debt

Notas

|1| Los dos ponentes del CADTM Internacional el 19 de julio de 2016 fueron Chiara Filoni y Éric Toussaint. Hay que señalar que ATTAC Italia se adhirió al CADTM Internacional en abril de 2016, durante la asamblea mundial del CADTM celebrada en Túnez.

|2| También subrayemos que dadas las tensiones con Rusia, el G8 re redujo nuevamente al G7. La última reunión se realizó en Japón en mayo de 2010. Véase: http://www.japan.go.jp/g7/summit/

|3| Recordemos que el CADTM fue creado en 1990, después de la gran manifestación de París de 1989 y que sostuvo activamente el movimiento neozapatista yendo regularmente a México desde julio de 1994. También coorganizó la manifestación contra el BM y el FMI en octubre de 1994 en Madrid.

|4| Véase especialmente: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifestaciones_contra_la_invasi%C3%B3n_de_Irak_de_2003

|5| Véase Éric Toussaint, «La amplia tradición de anulación de deudas en Mesopotamia y en Egipto del 3º al 1º milenio antes de Cristo», http://www.cadtm.org/La-amplia-tradicion-de-anulacion, publicado el 24 de agosto de 2012.

Eric Toussaint es maître de conférence en la Universidad de Lieja, es el portavoz de CADTM Internacional y es miembro del Consejo Científico de ATTAC Francia. Es autor de diversos libros, entre ellos: Procès d’un homme exemplaire, Ediciones Al Dante, Marsella, 2013; Una mirada al retrovisor: el neoliberalismo desde sus orígenes hasta la actualidad, Icaria, 2010; La Deuda o la Vida (escrito junto con Damien Millet) Icaria, Barcelona, 2011; La crisis global, El Viejo Topo, Barcelona, 2010; La bolsa o la vida: las finanzas contra los pueblos, Gakoa, 2002. Es coautor junto con Damien Millet del libro AAA, Audit, Annulation, Autre politique, Le Seuil, París, 2012. Este último libro ha recibido el premio Prix du livre politique, otorgado por la Feria del libro político de Lieja. Ultimo livro : Bancocracia Icaria Editorial, Barcelona 2015. Es coordinador de las publicaciones Comisión de la Verdad Sobre la Deuda.

http://www.cadtm.org/Genoa-the-fifteenth-anniversary-of