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Police target CJA spoke people
Following yesterday's arrest of Tadzio Muller after the Climate Justice Action press conference, and about four more spokespeople were violently snatched out of the crowd today. At 18:00 a CJA press conference will address the arrests of the media spokespeople that aim to limit their freedom of speech.
As was reported yesterday, a CJA activist and spokes person, Tadzio Muller was violently snatched by police minutes after he left a Climate Justice Action press conference at the Bella Centre, where COP15 is held. The conference presented the rationale behind today's Reclaim Power! action, that aimed to take over the climate conference for one day, and turn it into a people's assembly. Some mainstream media has since branded Tadzio as the "leader" of CJA, which is blatantly rubbish, while others relay a more balanced view, and echo fears that the police is trying to silence dissent by targetting spokes people.
These fears seem to have materialised: at todays action, Reclaim Power!, up to four additional CJA spokes people seem to have been arrested in a targetted manner by plain clothes police using pepperspray and plenty of muscle. Another arrest in the morning is unconfirmed. At 9:19 am the 6 plain clothes officers arrest, one of the CJA spokes people at the Tornby station, as the Green Block was assembling. Later in the day at 11:43pm, the police attack the Blue block, take over the van, and arrest a further 2 CJA spokes people, it seems in a targetted fashion. (YouTube vid)
Following these arrests CJA is calling a special press conference, tonight at 6:00pm, to denounce the deliberate targetting of spokes people. This has as an effect stop people from being able to express the opinions of CJA to the public and journalists, without having any operational impact on the actual actions. This is a narrow attack on the freedom of speech of activists, after many days of attack on their freedom to protest.
Today many activists were again arrested in a preventive maner, before doing anything, others trying to make it to the Bella Centre were charged with batons and pepper sprayed to prevent them from holding a people's assembly there. In a perverse twist, the police even threated with arrest and the assaulted delegates and raccredited COP15 paraticipants that tried to join the assenbly from inside the negotiations.
Source: http://indymedia.dk/articles/1885