BRISTOL MYERS SQUIBB, ABBOTT AND SANOFI AVENTIS DEMOS IN ITALY


We wake up at 6 am and at 8.00 we are at the gates of a huge site of Bristol Myers Squibb in the middle of the countryside, near the city of Latina. It always incredible to look at this big factories and labs built in the middle of nowhere. Here BMS has also some labs with animals imprisoned. We stop all the cars entering the car-park showing them our posters and screaming against them the worst things you can imagine. The police and the security are totally ignorant and are not able to manage the situation. Over here they never had this kind of demo before. They try to intimidate some activists grabbing them when they are too close to the cars and asking IDs to some of them. Really funny demo! It is like a football match and we’re of course more professional than them. Every time that a car approach we manage to run behind the security lines and put ourselves in front of the cars! Great!

The second demo of the day is at another huge site protected with lots of security: Abbot International in Campoverde di Aprilia, with production plant and labs. Even if not many cars enter the site while we are there, we concentrate all our anger for the lucky few. A journalist take some pictures and the day after we’ll find an article in a local newspaper. Funny part of the demo? A car from an Abbot employee almost run over a plain clothes police!
In the afternoon we move to a production site of Sanofi-Aventis in Anagni, near Frosinone. It is raining a lot and the cops refuse to let us demo in front of the building, we’re confined at the entrance of a car-park where not many people drive by. We stay there just one hour during which we still talk to many employees (who never had a demo before) giving them leaflets and explaining them what happen to the animals poisoned by Sanofi at HLS. Funny part of the demo? One of the employees, not interested at all by the information we want to give him, jump out of his car grabbing an activists by the neck. When a plain clothes police intervenes he tries to punch him! He’s then controlled by the police who ask him ID and stop him at the side of the road till we leave!

The last demo of the tour is at another site of Bristol Myers Squibb. Almost all BMS sites are situated in this part of Italy and it is a duty for us to visit them all. Under the pouring rain and a very low temperature we demo the place for two hours waiting for the cars to leave and drive near our demo. We distribute many leaflets to the employees willing to learn more about HLS and the vivisection industry and chant against those who don’t want to see the truth behind their company. One of them says he’s an environmentalist and that BMS is an ethical company who take care of the impact on people and nature of the poisons it produces. We try to tell him how big this lie is but he refuses to accept that he’s wrong and become very angry. Sometimes it is so hard to make people understand that they’re living in world very different from what corporations, governments and the medias are selling us. And when one is making money upon the torture and the oppression of the weak he will never understand unless there are people willing to stop him.

On Saturday evening we had a benefit hardcore punk show in a squat in Rome with vegan food, speeches and videos about the campaign to close down HLS.
In these three days we had the chance to know many amazing local activists who joined the demos and are willing to organize more protests in their area in the future. For almost all the demos we had more than 20 activists, everyone determined to see HLS closing its gates once and for all.
It was very inspiring!
Smash HLS!

www.stophls.net