BY LAUREN CARROLL-HARRIS
SYDNEY — Forty activists protesting the police murder of 23-year-old Genoa protester Carlo Giuliani were met with large black steel barricades and dozens of police and security guards when they descended on the Italian consulate on July 27.
Giuliani was shot twice in the face and then run over by a police van during massive protests against the G8 summit of world leaders in Genoa, Italy, on July 20. Protests against the killing have taken place worldwide.
Protest participants, who marched down to the consulate through wind and rain after picketing Nike's city store, described the security preparations for them as somewhat symbolic of the police repression, red zones and blockades of Genoa, providing a miniscule taste for Australian activists of the atrocities in Italy.
Italian activist Diego Bonetti blamed the Italian state's security preparations for the murder, asking "Who armed the 20-year-old police officer who shot Carlo with a weapon in the first place?"
The International Socialist Organisation's Arianne Welch, freshly returned from Genoa, said that it was "unlikely that Carlo was the only protester who was killed", while the Resistance's Daniel Ooi drafted a statement, later handed to the Italian consulate, condemning the police violence and brutality that occurred in Genoa.
In Canberra, Jamie Miller reports that activists held a minute's silence outside the Italian embassy on July 28 to mourn Giuliani.
"Everyone at the protest was Carlo Giuliani, Resistance activist", Stuart Munckton told the crowd. "If the world's rulers wanted to stop our voices, they will have to kill us too".
A Sudanese activist sang a song of solidarity, telling the crowd that in her country they don't hold a minute's silence for someone who died for what they believed in, but sing for them instead, as they are heroes.
In Hobart, the Resistance club at Tasmania University organised an action on July 25 in Genoa, drawing a silhouette of a body on the ground. Many students spoke of their anger at the killing.