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Protesters clash with police outside La Scala

The glamourous season opener at Milan's Scala opera house was marred on Sunday by clashes between riot police and protesters which left two wounded.

Protesters clash with police outside La Scala
The protesters were demonstrating against austerity in the recession-hit country as well as demanding rights for social housing following a series of squat evictions. Photo: o2ma/Flickr

Around 300 demonstrators, using banners reading “fight the power” and “we resist!” as shields, threw flares and Molotov cocktails at baton-wielding police in front of La Scala, where musical director Daniel Barenboim was taking his last opening-night bow.

Two policemen were reported to have sustained injuries during the clashes with the protesters, who were demonstrating against austerity in the recession-hit country as well as demanding rights for social housing following a series of squat evictions.

The season premier “Fidelio” marks the end of Barenboim's nine years at the prestigious opera house and the glitzy evening at the 18th-century theatre was attended by fashionista, show girls and leading politicians.

Milan's prefect Francesco Paolo Tronca, among the guests, slammed the “unacceptable violent protests against police” and the “hijacking of cultural events which serve to give strength and value to our city.”

There was also little sympathy from president of the Lombardy region where Milan is situated, Roberto Maroni, who said “what a way to ruin a party.”

“We always present the worst image of ourselves to the world. La Scala's opening night is a unique spectacle and we manage to ruin even that,” he said.

But the demonstrators received some support from former minister of economic development Corrado Passera, who said there was “such a level of need among some parts of the population that it is wrong to get angry with those who protest.”

The riot darkened an already uneasy season following a summer which saw Rome's conductor Riccardo Muti quit the Teatro dell'Opera amid bureaucratic difficulties and threats of strikes.

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PROTESTS

Calls for special police tactics to be available across Sweden

The chairwoman of the Police Association West Region has said that police special tactics, known as Särskild polistaktik or SPT, should be available across Sweden, to use in demonstrations similar to those during the Easter weekend.

Calls for special police tactics to be available across Sweden

SPT, (Särskild polistaktik), is a tactic where the police work with communication rather than physical measures to reduce the risk of conflicts during events like demonstrations.

Tactics include knowledge about how social movements function and how crowds act, as well as understanding how individuals and groups act in a given situation. Police may attempt to engage in collaboration and trust building, which they are specially trained to do.

Katharina von Sydow, chairwoman of the Police Association West Region, told Swedish Radio P4 West that the concept should exist throughout the country.

“We have nothing to defend ourselves within 10 to 15 metres. We need tools to stop this type of violent riot without doing too much damage,” she said.

SPT is used in the West region, the South region and in Stockholm, which doesn’t cover all the places where the Easter weekend riots took place.

In the wake of the riots, police unions and the police’s chief safety representative had a meeting with the National Police Chief, Anders Tornberg, and demanded an evaluation of the police’s work. Katharina von Sydow now hopes that the tactics will be introduced everywhere.

“This concept must exist throughout the country”, she said.

During the Easter weekend around 200 people were involved in riots after a planned demonstration by anti-Muslim Danish politician Rasmus Paludan and his party Stram Kurs (Hard Line), that included the burning of the Muslim holy book, the Koran.

Police revealed on Friday that at least 104 officers were injured in counter-demonstrations that they say were hijacked by criminal gangs intent on targeting the police. 

Forty people were arrested and police are continuing to investigate the violent riots for which they admitted they were unprepared. 

Paludan’s application for another demonstration this weekend was rejected by police.

In Norway on Saturday, police used tear gas against several people during a Koran-burning demonstration after hundreds of counter-demonstrators clashed with police in the town of Sandefjord.

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