Italian police fired tear gas and a water cannon as dozens of protesters clashed near a Winter Olympics hockey venue on Feb. 7 in Milan, according to an Associated Press report by Colleen Barry.
The brief confrontation followed the end of a peaceful march involving thousands of people against what demonstrators said was the Games’ environmental impact and against the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Italy, the report said. By the time the skirmish ended and police held back the most violent demonstrators, the larger peaceful protest—made up of families with small children as well as students—had dispersed.
Police said the road and route near the athletes’ area were secured with a heavy police presence and police vans positioned behind temporary fencing. Demonstrators nevertheless moved in a way that led to the confrontation, with the report describing attempts to reach the Santagiulia Olympic ice hockey rink.
Earlier, a smaller group of masked protesters had set off smoke bombs and firecrackers on a bridge that overlooked a construction site about 800 meters (roughly half a mile) from the Olympic Village, which the report said was housing about 1,500 athletes. After that initial disruption, the confrontation shifted to the route leading toward the hockey venue.
The AP report said there was no indication that the protest and the resulting road closure interfered with athletes’ transfers to their events on the outskirts of Milan. It also linked the demonstrations to U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s visit to the city as head of the American delegation attending the opening ceremony on Friday.
Vance and his family visited Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” closer to the city center, the report said, away from the protest area. The report also said demonstrators were opposed to ICE agents’ presence despite official statements that only a small number of agents from an investigative arm would be present in U.S. diplomatic territory and not operating on the streets.
At the larger peaceful demonstration, which police said numbered 10,000, participants carried cardboard cutouts representing trees felled to build a new bobsled run in Cortina, the report said. Dancers performed to drums, and music played from a truck leading the march, including a profanity-laced anti-ICE anthem, according to the AP account.
The protesters included groups calling themselves the Unsustainable Olympic Committee and the Association of Proletariat Excursionists, the report said. A banner read “Let’s take back the cities and free the mountains,” and homemade signs included “Get out of the Games: Genocide States, Fascist Police and Polluting Sponsors,” with the final line cited as a reference to fossil fuel companies sponsoring the Games.
Speaking to the report, protester Guido Maffioli said, “They bypassed the laws that usually are needed for major infrastructure project, citing urgency for the Games,” adding concerns that the private entity organizing the Games could pass on debt to Italian taxpayers. The report also described a sign reading “Infernal Olympics” carried by a woman on the back of an artificial tree.
The demonstration followed a protest the previous week, when hundreds demonstrated against the deployment of ICE agents, the AP report said. As with Saturday’s march, demonstrators said they opposed ICE agents’ presence despite official statements described in the report, including that the ICE investigative arm would be limited to U.S. diplomatic territory rather than working streets in Italy.