MILAN (AP) — Italian police fired tear gas and water cannon at dozens of protesters who threw flares and tried to enter a highway near a Winter Olympics venue on Saturday.
The brief confrontation came at the end of a peaceful march by thousands against the environmental impact of the Games and the presence of American agents in Italy.
The Police detained those violent demonstrators, who appeared to be trying to reach the Olympic ice hockey rink of Santagiulia, after the ordeal. By then, the larger peaceful protest, including families with young children and students, had dispersed.
Earlier, a group of masked protesters had thrown smoke bombs and flares at a bridge overlooking a construction site about 800 meters (half a mile) from the Olympic Village which houses about 1,500 athletes.
Police vans behind a temporary metal fence blocked the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest broke out, continuing its march towards the Santagiulia venue. A strong police presence patrolled the entire route.
There was no indication that the protest and resulting road closures interfered with the athletes’ transfers to their events, all on the outskirts of Milan.
The demonstration coincided with the visit of American Vice President JD Vance to Milan as head of the American delegation that attended the opening ceremony on Friday.
He and his family visited Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” closer to the city center, away from the protest, which also opposed the deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to provide security for the US delegation.
US Homeland Security Investigations, a unit of ICE that focuses on cross-border crimes, often sends its officers to foreign events such as the Olympics to help with security. The branch of ICE at the forefront of immigration enforcement in the United States is known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, and there is no indication that its officers are being sent to Italy.
In the larger and peaceful demonstration, which police said numbered 10,000, people carried cardboard cutouts to represent the trees cut down to build the new bobsled run in Cortina. A group of dancers played beating drums. Music blasted from a truck leading the march, an anti-ICE anthem laced with profanity.
“Let’s take back the cities and free the mountains,” reads a banner from a group calling itself the Unsustainable Olympic Committee. Another group called the Association of Proletariat Excursionists organized the felling of trees.
“They exceeded the laws that are normally required for a major infrastructure project, citing the urgency for the Games,” said protester Guido Maffioli, who expressed concern that the private entity organizing the Games would eventually pass the debt on to Italian taxpayers.
Homemade signs read “Exit the Games: Genocidal States, Fascist Police and Polluting Sponsors,” the last one a reference to fossil fuel companies that are sponsors of the Games. One woman carried an artificial tree on her back decorated with the sign: “Infernal Olympics.”
The demonstration followed another last week when hundreds protested against the deployment of ICE agents.
Like last week, protesters on Saturday said they were against the presence of ICE agents, despite official statements that a small number of agents from the investigative branch would be present in the diplomatic territory of the United States, and not operational on the streets.