Early in the morning of Thursday, December 10, the residents of the small Italian Alpine town of Giaglione woke up to find that their town had been put under police blockade overnight, with checkpoints on every road, and military forces patrolling the forests. As the news broke in the morning and word spread across the rest of the Susa Valley, in the northwest of Italy, local residents reacted in anger and disbelief, and a demonstration outside one of the checkpoints was called for that very evening, which was promptly dispersed by several volleys of teargas fired directly at protesters.
The disproportionate use of military force against a civilian population is in itself always awful to witness, but that this should happen on International Human Rights Day of all days only added insult to injury. However, Giaglione, a very small town that numbers just over 600 residents, is sadly no stranger to a heavy police presence. Since 2011, a large wooded area nearby has been sacrificed for the construction of a new railway tunnel that should eventually connect Italy to France, and local opposition to the project has escalated to such an extent that the whole area surrounding the construction site – including vineyards, fields and the forest itself – has been placed under direct control of the state and the military, where it remains to this day.
The reason for the police blockade which lasted from Thursday morning until Saturday night was because the project promoters had planned an expansion of the construction site. By all accounts, this represents a fairly modest operation but one which nonetheless involved cutting down a portion of the forest that is also home to several endangered species. One species in particular that stands out is the Xerynthia Polyxena butterfly, recently the subject of a high-profile conservation effort spearheaded by the University of Turin in partnership with Tunnel Euralpin Lyon Turin, the company in charge of delivering the new Turin-Lyon railway line.
