A regulation that violates fundamental human rights by using repressive instruments. Together with the network In Difesa Di, Un Ponte Per stands alongside those who defend human and environmental rights around the world, expressing their opposition to DDL 1660

A healthy society must also be able to express itself through forms of dissent and peaceful protest, particularly of those who, like environmentalists and conservationists, fight for climate and therefore social justice in the world

Bill 1660, approved on 18 September in the Chamber of Deputies, is in the groove of repressive pan-penalism that has characterised the institutions' response to protest, dissent and unease for many years.

This tendency has characterised successive governments and parliamentary majorities at least since 2001, with the recurrent adoption of 'security packages' that introduced new crimes and aggravating circumstances - or new parapenal sanctioning systems, such as the DASPO - and increased penalties for those already provided for (in March 2001 Giuliano Amato was Prime Minister and Enzo Bianco was Interior Minister, but other 'packages' are remembered for the names of the ministers of the time, from Maroni to Veltroni, from Minniti to Salvini).

DDL 1660 is characterised, however, by a considerable 'quantum leap' in the repressive clampdown and in the construction of what we could call a true 'criminal law (and not only) of the enemy', and also in redesigning certain institutions by profoundly changing their nature.

Thus, there are regulations that raise the penalties for the crime of occupation by also introducing new offences (failure to leave the rented property after an eviction procedure will also be a criminal offence), that allow for the imprisonment of pregnant women and women with newborn babies (in provisions that have been significantly christened the 'anti-Roma women rule'), che introducono il reato di “detenzione di materiale con finalità di terrorismo” (per cui sarà reato il semplice possesso di materiale, al di là del concreto pericolo che il soggetto intenda porre in essere attività terrorista, così anticipando la soglia di punibilità sino al limite della sfera esclusivamente privata della persona), che introducono nuove ipotesi di Daspo disposto dal questore o di cd. "These regulations introduce new cases of Daspo ordered by the police commissioner or the so-called 'Daspo giudiziario' (imposing a ban on access to certain places for those convicted of certain offences and making the granting of a suspended sentence conditional on compliance with this ban), which establish the obligation for foreign citizens to show their residence permit in order to be able to activate a mobile phone (a rule aimed at preventing irregular migrants from being able to have a mobile phone, thus making them 'scorched earth'), which increase the possibility of revoking the Italian citizenship acquired by foreign citizens, which increase the penalties for the crime of begging.

In addition to these regulations, there are also some that intend to severely repress protests and reduce the spaces for the possible expression of dissent, hitting even (and in some cases specifically) the environmentalist movements, and others that tend to demolish years of democratic conquests (in total institutions and in the relations between authorities and citizens), in fact attempting to 'turn back the hands of history' eighty years.

In this last regard, one cannot fail to refer to the 'new' crime of prison and CPR riots (but also in hot spots and reception centres for migrants, thus not only in places of detention and deprivation of liberty), which is intended to punish (with penalties ranging from a minimum of one to a maximum of twenty years, depending on the hypothesis) not only (undefined) violent riots, but also acts of resistance, even passive resistance to the execution of orders given, which prevent the performance of acts of office or service: a 'new' model of detainee (but not only, also of migrant received in a centre) is designed that is completely depersonalised, deprived even of the right to use non-violent and peaceful methods of protest and from whom 'blind and absolute' obedience to orders is expected.

The detained person and the migrant person (detained or received) are to be docile objects of control, on pain of perpetuating their condition of persons deprived of their personal freedom (the crime of prison riot would also be included among the so-called offences obstructing alternative measures to prison). This 'first time' in the repression of passive resistance risks becoming a precedent that will allow, in the future, the punishment of any form of disobedience to any order and in any sphere (just as the Daspo, born in stadiums to repress ultras, was then extended to urban areas and is now an instrument of administrative repression - the violation of which, moreover, makes the person concerned fall into the penal system - good for all forms of unease and/or dissent).

Another blatant example of this involution is the (unconcealed) desire to redesign the relationship between the 'public security' forces and the people subject to them, moving away from what the Constitutional Court defined as a 'different discipline of the relations between citizen and authority in liberal-democratic systems and in totalitarian regimes respectively' that had characterised the post-Fascist republican normative production (the Court had used that definition with regard to the discriminating factor of reaction to arbitrary acts of the public official, whereby the citizen who reacts, even with violence, to an illegitimate and arbitrary act of the public official is not punishable).

In the sense of consolidating an even formal supremacy of the public security apparatus over the people go: the introduction of an aggravating circumstance for offences of violence and resistance to a public official when the acts are committed against a public safety agent or officer (thus resistance to a police officer could be punished much more severely than to a municipal employee, a hospital doctor, even a judge) the provision of an increase in the penalty for the offence of injury if caused to a public security officer (thus, also in this case, the 'supremacy' of the victim-agent over any other victim is enshrined); the provision that public security officers may carry weapons without a licence even when off duty; the coverage of the expenses for a trusted lawyer (up to 10.000 for each level of judgement) for public security officers (as well as fire fighters and military personnel) investigated or charged for acts inherent to their service (subject, indeed, to possible recourse if ultimately convicted of intentional wrongdoing; there would be no recourse, for example, in the case of manslaughter of an arrested person). The public security forces, therefore, are placed normatively (one might say ideologically) in a position of supremacy over the entire population and of pre-eminence even within the State apparatus.

The Bill contains, then, a long series of provisions specifically intended to repress dissent, often blatantly designed on a 'specific' subject evidently considered to be particularly to be repressed: a veritable construction of a special author's sanction law (in which the seriousness of the crime, and sometimes the very existence of a crime, depends not so much on the 'fact' that has been committed as on the 'type of author' who committed it).

Already with the so-called 'ecovandals' decree, moreover, this legislature had accustomed us to the construction of offences on environmental activists and on their modes of protest (think of the aggravating circumstance provided for the crime of defacement if committed on 'showcases, cases and other structures used for the display, protection and preservation of cultural goods exhibited in museums, picture galleries, galleries and other exhibition places of the State, regions, other territorial public bodies, as well as any other public body and institution'; it is clear that certain protests and activists were specifically targeted).

Among the provisions specifically aimed at the repression of dissent (and of environmental activists in primis) stands out the aggravating circumstance (and therefore the provision that the penalty is increased, with a maximum that can reach 20 years) for the crimes of resistance and violence to a public official (but also other crimes, such as threats) in the case in which the act 'is committed in order to prevent the realisation of a public work or a strategic infrastructure'. Here the will to hit harder at movements fighting against large-scale works (such as the No Tav movement, the No Tap movement, the No Ponte movement, to name but a few) is very clear.

Again, an aggravated penalty is introduced for damage committed during demonstrations (a hypothesis that had already been introduced in 2019) if committed with violence or a threat (here too, it is clear that this rule is aimed at repressing dissent and conflict, it being sufficient that the damage is accompanied by simple threatening conduct).

In the same way, an aggravating circumstance (with a consequent aggravation of punishment) is provided for the offence of defacement if committed on property used for the exercise of public functions with the purpose of damaging the honour, prestige or decorum of the institution (certain symbolic protests come to mind, such as the placing of piles of manure at institutional premises).

The provisions of DDL 1660 currently under discussion, therefore, seem to want to design a new set-up in the relations between the executive power (whose ultimate expression is precisely the public security forces) and the population, and to strike at any form of dissent, reducing the citizen (we want to use this term in a technical sense, not as an Italian citizen but as a person who is subject to that sovereign power) to a docile object of control, in a society that would like to be plebiscitary. Whoever rebels (today especially in prisons or in CPRs, but with a model that can be extended to anyone), whoever even merely protests (perhaps claiming the right to a healthy environment and ultimately to a future) is a subject alien to the model of society that must be punished.

It is a model of society that is extremely dangerous and alien to constitutional principles; this is why the In Difesa Di network, which since 2016 has been gathering and organising organisations and associations committed in Italy and around the world to defending human and environmental rights, believes that if the bill is definitively approved, many of its provisions will then probably be declared unconstitutional; but in the meantime it will have made the political and cultural evils that nourish them germinate in society (in addition to having affected the people who will have been its victims in the meantime).

Joint communiqué of the In Defence Of network
with Ultima Generazione, Extinction Rebellion, Legal
Team Italy, Repression Observatory, Democratic Jurists