2007-03-09

[Gipfelsoli Infogruppe] Legal Update Heiligendamm March 9th 2007

07.02.2007
The chief organizer of the Munich NATO Security Conference, Horst Teltschik, is in favour of dictatorships: “It is the tragedy of all democracies that everybody can express their opinion, and that politicians have to be protected. This would not happen in dictatorships”.. Teltschik is a politician with very good corporate relations.

13.02.2007
There will be no fence in the sea as reported last autumn. The sea will be blocked by two different security zones. It is no longer permitted to go their by boat or surfing board (see: http://gipfelsoli.org/rcms_repos/images/24/sperrgebiet_heiligendamm.jpeg).

14.02.2007
New details on police collaboration: Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has allocated 5.500 police officers to the G8. The German army will help with hosting them. Contact to “international security forces” is going well. First contingents of police forces from other countries are expected mid-May. The Hamburg police will stay at home because of anti G8-actions planned in Hamburg.

18.02.2007
Political oolice want to seize the Anti g8-Newspaper “G8xtra”. The judge refuses their appeal (the same judge that allowed the raids in Munich concerning the NATO-conference). ‘Under no circumstances may the call to blockade the G8 be understood as a threat of or incitement to criminal offences, because legal possibilities of blockading are thinkable, an example of which would be simply a high volume of summit protesters’

21.02.2007
Obviously police will block demonstrators at the march on July 7th. In a public event near Heiligendamm “Kavala” promises “not to let many protestors pass by”.

21.02.2007
The number of police officers has been raised again: It’s now at 18.000. Previously they had not included the 2.000 Federal police officers in their figures.

21.02.2007
The police headquarters to coordinate all Federal Police will be in Bad Bramstedt (between Kiel and Hamburg). The intention is to, "Secure all the events concerning the German presidency of the G8 and EU ". This headquarters will also manage police missions around anti-nuclear power protests (Castor). Close collaboration with other police forces like the Federal Criminal Police Office and the police in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania already exists: “We telephone daily”.

22.02.2007
The Police announce “erweiterten Maßnahmenraum”; meaning: They will not allow camps or political actions in the area surrounding the fence (see http://www.gipfelsoli.org/rcms_repos/images/22/erweiterter_massnahmenraum.jpeg). Obviously the police are trying to ban all protest activities south of the B 105 road.

24.02.2007
The Police are using four former barracks of the German Army. This is the result of a “small request” to the parliament of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania: Karow, (Damerow-Kaserne), Demen (Warnow-Kaserne), Dabel (Moltke-Kaserne) and Schwerin/ Stern-Buchholz (Blücher-Kaserne). Further info: http://gipfelsoli.org/rcms_repos/images/22/Maps_Police_Update_070225.jpeg. The local government states: “Further collaborations with the German Army are not fixed yet”.

02.03.2007
“Kavala” ends their first “Infotour”. They organized 13 public events in villages around Heiligendamm. They informed the public of planned road closures and that it will be illegal to enter the sea by boat etc. But they did not say anything about the work of “Kavala”, a special police unit of 130 police officers who have been working on the summit for over a year. They talked a great deal about militant protestors and the damages they might inflict: “For each citizen in the region there will be three policemen. There will be enough colleagues to protect you”. Now hospitals and medics report that they need more resources. They expect a high “willingness for violence”, resulting in “masses of injured people”.

02.03.2007
G8-material has been seized in Hamburg. Eight plain clothes police officers entered a bookshop and took stickers of the dissentnetwork.org (see http://dissentnetzwerk.org/files/sticker1_print.tif)

03.03.2007
One of the police labour unionists visits “Kavala”, the special police force for the G8 2007
. They talk about the housing of police officers in schools, hotels and B&Bs. Police labour union representatives stress that there is no need to change the constitution to accept the help of the German Army. Kavala says they want to prove that “only the police is the guarantor of inner security”.

04.03.2007
The German Army “Bundeswehr” is moving towards more “civil-military collaboration”. This was tested in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Now they focus their work on “helping” with G8 “security”. The local representatives were visited by the chief of their command, Vice Admiral Kühn. Normally this “civil-military-collaboration” is only intended for catastrophes or national disasters.

06.03.2007
In a recent interview, the head of the “Office for the Protection of the Constitution”, Fromm, was asked about the Red Army Fraction R.A.F. and also the G8 summit preparations. The R.A.F. is a former militant group that kidnapped and attacked politicians (and other institutions) in the 1970s and the 1980s in Germany. They no longer exist and issued a final declaration in 1998 (‘The Revolution says: I had been, I am, I will be’). Some activists are still imprisoned and are due to be released soon (after serving maximum penalty sentences of 25 years). Fromm stated that he did not fear the R.A.F. anymore, but the left-extremist mobilization around the G8. The United Press reports, “some observers have warned that ‘remaining structures’ of the R.A.F. could come back to plan extremist attacks during the G8 summit”. The Berliner Zeitung writes that Fromm and his office plan to observe the G8 movement very closely with regard to the national debate about the R.A.F.

06.03.2007
Repression against G8-resistance in Berlin: People wanted to demonstrate in front of the offices of the Berlin representative of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (a kind of embassy) in support of the group that is trying to secure sites for activist camps. About a dozen people wanted to camp outside. The police were obviously alerted beforehand. Activists were searched and checked for their identity. The police were repressive and the atmosphere was tense. Activists were stopped from getting close to the area.

08.03.2007
A further “Security Conference” was held in Schwerin, the capital of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The assistant US embassador Koenig met the interior minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and 35 other “security experts” like the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Federal Police. Koenig says he was “impressed” by the police preparations for Heiligendamm. American approaches are to become a more permanent feature of the “security concept”.

08.03.2007
The Brandenburg police are preparing for the meeting of the interior ministers of the G8 countries. They will meet in Potsdam, close to Berlin on May 31st. Condoleezza Rice will travel on a special train. The police are publicising that international demonstrators will go there to protest on their way to Heiligendamm. They state that the “Black Block” have not yet announced that they will come. They fear actions of the “militante gruppe”, a direct action group that has targetted police cars in the last month, relating their attacks to the G8 summit 2007.

---