Demonstrations are being held across Italy on Wednesday evening in protest against a new security bill described as “repressive” and “dangerous for the country’s democracy”.
The 24 laws contained in the bill, which passed its first hurdle in the lower house of parliament last week and now needs approval in the senate, is the latest attempt by Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government to get tough on law and order. It comes down especially hard on climate activists and migrants.
Under the laws, anyone who blocks roads or railways will face a jail term and fines of up to €300,000 (£250,000), while penalties will be more severe for those who protest against “strategic” public works, such as the Italy-France high-speed rail project TAV, and a bridge connecting Sicily to mainland Italy.
If passed, the laws will also give authorities and the police the power to enforce wider surveillance in prisons and pre-deportation migration detention centres, with rioting criminalised and “passive resistance” to orders, including hunger strikes, carrying sentences of between one and five years.
Another element of the bill envisages the criminalisation of businesses that sell sim cards to people who do not have ID documents and a residence permit.
Cgil, Italy’s largest and most powerful trade union, said the bill was “dangerous for the country’s democracy” and has joined forces with a number of associations, including Anpi, the anti-fascist group, to organise protests against the bill’s “freedom-killing idea of security”.
“The right wing continues to regard security only in terms of repression and punishment of social struggles,” the associations said in a joint statement. “[The government] is making penalties more harsh and introducing new crimes that will hit the most peaceful forms of protest and compress the spaces for democracy in our country.”
Opposition parties are also joining the demonstrations. The centre-left Democratic party said: “The security bill is an attack on individual and collective freedoms. It represses dissent and aims to create subjects instead of citizens.”
Angelo Bonelli, the leader of the Greens and Left Alliance, said the bill would “transform our country into a permanent police state”.
“If this authoritarian measure is approved by the senate, the government will be able to arrest and ‘silence’ workers who protest against losing their job, and any young activist who fights against social, environmental and ecological injustices,” he added. “We’re facing an authoritarian and freedom-killing drift that cannot leave us indifferent. Protesting is a civil duty.”
Valentina D’Orso, a deputy with the Five Star Movement, accused the government of “writing a series of legal, ethical and civil aberrations. This includes the crime of revolt against orders issued, even in migrant centres and facilities housing unaccompanied foreign minors.”
Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister, has asked for the bill’s approval to be given “utmost priority”.
He has long pushed for jail time and stiffer fines for climate activists amid a series of roadblock protests and activism targeting famous artworks, monuments and cultural sites.
There have already been examples of alleged repression against climate activists. On 14 October, a Rome court will rule on whether to approve a request from the city’s police headquarters to put Giacomo Baggio Zilio, a member of Ultima Generazione (Last Generation), under surveillance. The request came after Zilio’s involvement in the group’s nonviolent protests. The activist also alleges he was a victim of police aggression after a protest in May.
“A state begins to increase repression when it feels insecure,” Zilio said in a statement issued by Ultima Generazione on Wednesday. “If the population can no longer criticise, then this is not a democratic situation. Here there is a government that does not listen, and this does not only concern us, it concerns the workers who strike and block the streets, it concerns the students.”
Ultima Generazione activists said they would bombard Rome’s police headquarters with emails in response to the surveillance request, adding that the security bill would not stop their protests: “Until the government really listens to the reasons for the protests carried out by Giacomo and many other people and decides to seriously address the climate crisis and the devastation that it is already causing to our country, [to] the people who live there, there will always be those who peacefully, but with all the necessary anger and hope, will take to the streets to protest.”
A Climate Rights International report last week exposed the increasingly heavy-handed treatment of climate activists in wealthy democratic countries in the global north, including Australia, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK and the US.
The report found the measures in these countries – such as lengthy prison sentences, preventive detention and harassment – were a violation of governments’ legal responsibility to protect basic rights to freedom of expression, assembly, and association.
The Italian government’s security bill follows a crackdown on illegal raves and juvenile crime.
