Issue 13 — Protesters, a Pipeline, and the Police

Aug 11, 2023

PUGLIA, ITALY—The mole arrived after dark — an almost 20-yard, 75-ton machine sent to bore a tunnel beneath the Adriatic Sea and into southern Italy. The tunnel would house the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), a multinational fossil fuel project critics say would threaten Salento’s turquoise coast, upend local farms, and enrich a corporation at the expense of the local population.

The following evening, dozens of locals gathered in the streets to defend their territory against the pipeline’s incursion, and for the second time in two years, a rural swath of southern Italy’s Salento region was declared a “red zone” in early 2019. Riot police in blue helmets, shields, and batons at the ready, closed coastal highways and country roads, stood guard at major intersections, and restricted movement for the sake of a pipeline that no one seemed to want.

“Mafioso! Merda!” the protesters yelled, cursing at the officers. “What you are doing is dirty and you know it!”

A middle aged man with a blading head, olive skin, and sunglasses, stands in the middle of a rural paved road bordered by a low white rock fence and a higher grey brick fence. He is wearing a grey polo shirt and long denim shorts. Behind one of the fences, the tops of several yellow metal poles shine in the sunlight.

Among those present was Gianluca Maggiore, an olive-skinned, bespectacled Salentino, who first heard rumors of an innocuous “pipe” coming to southern Italy’s Puglia almost a decade ago, but soon learned better. In the years that followed, Maggiore became part of a movement to stop the pipeline, defending the region’s gnarled and wind-beaten olive trees from those who would unearth them; at one point, he even slept in a protest camp opposite the pipeline construction site.

At the protest against the mole in January 2019, Maggiore covered the lens of a police officer’s camera to prevent activists from being filmed. While photos and videos of activists struck by riot shields, bloodied by batons, or in one case, crushed by a gate, failed to hold the state accountable, police footage could — and would— be used as evidence against protesters. In the scuffle for the camera, Maggiore swore at the officer, something akin to “motherfucker.” In doing so, the court summons reads, he “offended the honor and prestige” of the police officer — an offense that comes with a sentence of six months to three years imprisonment.

Before the pipeline, Maggiore would not have expected to face trial for swearing or even joining a protest. But in the post-pipeline world, Maggiore began to suspect his human rights were only respected until they interfered with something more lucrative.

Read the full story in the March 2023 print issue of In These Times or online.

A cloudy blue sky hangs over a field of low shrub, knobby olive trees, and white and brown rock earth. In the distance, several green and yellow metal poles stand out among the natural scene.

Yellow, red, and green metal poles track the below-ground route of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) across Southern Italy's Salento. Photos by Alessandra Bergamin

Three metal yellow and red poles make a line through a field of tall, leafless trees, olive trees, low bushes, and overgrown grass. The sky is a grey-blue and a white rock, hand built fence borders the front of the field.

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