Solidarity with our comrades in Italy

The fight against ISIS is not a crime!

January 3rd in Turin, DIGOS (special operation forces of Italy’s State Police) notified a two-year request of special surveillance and prohibition of residence in the city to five supporters of the Revolution in Rojava. The request has been issued by Turin public prosecutor Emanuela Pedrotta.

Recipients of the measure are Paolo, Eddi, Jak, Davide and Jacopo, five youths that under various circumstances supported on the field, the struggle for Northern Syria’s population.

The five subjects have been accused of social danger for joining and participating from 2016 onwards the Confederalist Revolution, defending it from the aggression of the Islamic State.

The same accusation was made against Pierluigi, a youth from Sardinia that also supported the efforts of the regional population against the IS and joined YPG. For him like the others, was also notified a request of special surveillance.

Special surveillance is a measure of invasive control that, following a judicial pronouncement, bans the recipient from leaving the dwelling to which he or she have been assigned and with the obligation of showing up to surveillance authorities in set days or whenever demanded. Conditions include; confiscation of the recipients passport and driving license, along with the prohibition of leaving the house in the evening and meeting more than two people at the same time.

It is a measure that, although carved and chiseled in the various “Security Decrees” of recent years, is part of the legal and “spiritual” lineage of analogous measures present in the Fascist penal code. Code that in the transition to the Republic of Italy remained largely intact.

Such measure is highly repressive and abusive of personal freedom and originates in Rocco’s Civil Code of the fascist period in Italy. Over time it has repeatedly been amended restrictively, leaving to the promulgating court the faculty to reiterate it.

The defensive deeds of the five youth involved in the trial in Turin, have been received by the court on January 23rd . Among them, documentation on the actions of SDF and the civil wings of the confederalist revolution that the five subjects have partaken. Along with a defensive reconstruction on police investigations prompted by Pedrotta’s accusatory system, aimed at proving the social dangerousness of the five subjects. Spontaneous declarations have also been produced to the judge. By contrast, the request of admitting a lawyer that had travelled to Rojava to give informed testimony on Northern Syria’s socio-political situation has been rejected. Public Prosecutor Pedrotta challenged the request of admitting movie director Carlo Bachschmitt with a camera operator to court. Notwithstanding the favorable pronouncement by the judges, police impeded his presence on the basis of the aversion by the Prosecution. This practically overstepped the pronouncement by the competent court, with the aim of avoiding any recording of the struggle for legitimacy in the fight against the IS, which has been pursued by supporting Northern Syria’s revolutionary experience. The trial has been postponed to March 25th.

In February 21st the trial of Pierluigi has been also postponed to March 19th because the judge of the court of Cagliari was required to talk with Prosecutor of Nuoro about the reasons surrounding the social danger that the Sardinian youth present.

It seems by the hypothesis of social danger brought about by all of the subjects which, by joining YPG and YPJ, the people protection units, are supposed to have become acquainted with the use of weapons. Indeed a hasty and self-apparent reconstruction: if on one side it is to be taken for granted that in a war zone it becomes necessary to protect civilians from terrorist forces by any means, and granting protection is what YPG and YPJ do, at the opposite of social danger. On the other hand not all of them have joined military and popular forces, Contributing to the defense of Rojava by taking part in the civil structures of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria. This has been attested by numerous reports and testimonies by all of the subjects.

Such generalization is dangerous and seems to undermine the right and duty of reporting from the complex realities of war zones. This is particularly true in the context of the Syrian conflict, which is subject to heavy mystification by the Western media.

We as Internationalist Commune of Rojava stand, in solidarity and complicity, with all the accused, against every oppression by any National State.

The Revolution in Northeastern Syria will be successful. Repression will not stop us. We will rise, capitalism and fascism will fall!

March 2, 2019

Internationalist Commune of Rojava

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