L’Aquila is dying

It’s difficult to talk about the situation in L’Aquila. It’s painful. I’ll let the figures do it.

17 months after the earthquake, 50.000 people are still displaced. Of these, only 15.000 have been temporarily accommodated in the c.a.s.e. project buildings – the huge plasterboard barracks sold by the government as a miracle. The “miracle” consists of 19 settlements placed around the destroyed city and far from each other, which cost the Italians 2.700 Euro by square metre, just like luxury flats. The truth is they are sleeping quarters, without public services, shops, community centres.

Letter from a resident of L’Aquila

Yesterday a woman called me from a debt recovery company, on behalf of Sky. She tells me that according to the records I haven’t been paying Sky since September 2009. She asks me why. I tell her that I left my house on April 4 last year and I never went back. Because of the earthquake. My Sky decoder lies crushed somewhere under the ruins.

A story of ordinary repression: earthquaked and beaten up

Let's rebuild L'Aquila and its region

Berlusconi’s regime deals with Abruzzo’s earthquaked inhabitants in the only way it knows: by spinning the story to avoid the blame. Now the inhabitants are protesting, they have become the new “monsters” of the media, no better than the anti-globalists who obviously have to be beaten up and repressed at every opportunity.

Abruzzo’s groups called a demonstration in Rome on the 7th July, to demand the government’s serious committment in the re-construction and assurances for all the workers who lost their jobs because of the earthquake. The forces of  “law and order” charged and beat up the above 5,000 people who wanted to reach the Parliament building in Piazza Colonna. This is the completion of a repressive scheme that started with silence over “the Abruzzo question”: a silence heavy with the hot air of politicians and world leaders, oblivion and hypocrisy.

L’Aquila: “the people of the wheelbarrows” back to the streets!

Extraordinary participation at the demonstration called in L’Aquila (Abruzzo) on 16th June. At least 20,000 people present occupied the local motorway for longer than an hour. The demonstration was organised after the Government announced a deferment of tax payments till January 2011 for the city residents, hit by a tremendous earthquake in April 2009.

“Even if the conditions of our country force us to a politics of small steps, we will take all those necessary steps, however small, to find solutions for the people of L’Aquila and for all Italians” declared Gianni Letta, Under Secretary to the Council of Ministers, in a press conference at Palazzo Chigi (residence of the Prime Minister) in early June. The speech did nothing to convince the residents of L’Aquila, who decided to protest once again to obtain a permanent suspension.

16,000 of the 70,000 inhabitants are unemployed or redundant, and about 4,000 traders of the historical centre are still in limbo. “We don’t even have money to pay back the emergency expenses already made, and no measurement has been taken to deal with our economic crisis. Many residents are still forced to live outside L’Aquila, with no sign of a possible return” – reads the communiqué released by the demo’s organisers.