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Anti-G8 Alliance Cologne: Against the Black, Red & Gold Block and its violent monopoly of power
Solidarity to rebellion and resistance!
15th of June 2007
Even months before the summit a wave of repression and exclusion was put into operation against those parts of the spectrum of protest that fundamentally reject the intitutions of capitalism.
From outside there were the Schäubles police raids of the 9th of May, the police attacks on a left Anti-EU/G8-demonstration on the 28th of May in Hamburg, the snooping-attack of the police taking smell samples of those accused, the closure of the borders to participants of the summit protests and the denial of accreditations to critical journalists.
Within the movement of opponents to the G8, leading cadres of ATTAC and the Rostock Alliance supplemented state offences with rituals of dissociation hurrying ahead of any demand, and denouncements of the not state-supporting parts of the Anti-Summit-Movement. In a declaration of the G8-Coordination-Circle dating from the 3rd of February 2007 it is said that “We will not tolerate violent forms of action”. The chairwoman of ATTAC, Sabine Leidig, added in a press release the same day: “For sure there will be some irrationals, that might not be put off throwing paintbombs or a cobble stone”.
These invectives were continued after the big international demonstration of the 2nd of June in Rostock. In the days follwing the violent police attacks on the demonstration, these self-proclaimed spokespersons of the anti-G8-protests sided with police and the smear campaign of the media. The person that registered the demo with the police, Monty Schädel (member of the german peace society/united opponents of war DFG/VK and former member of provincial parliament for the PDS), told the TV-channel ZDF that “they will cooperate more closely with the police in the future and inform them about alledgedly lawbreakers”. Peter Wahl (WEED, ATTAC and the person responsible for the escort-summit of the NGOs) said in direction to the anti-capitalist blocks: “We don´t want to see you here, we don´t want you to take part in this”. Tim Laumeyer (Antifascist Left Berlin and Interventionist Left) and Werner Rätz (ATTAC and Interventionist Left s well) apologized to the citizens of Rostock. Rätz added in the tone of a police officer in charge “If someone shows up hooded wearing a mask we will tell him, that he is not welcome” (Junge Welt, 5th of June 2007). Immidiatelly after the demonstration Monty Schädel had compared Nazis and Leftists in the ZDF: “…is was exactly these pictures, that we wanted to avoid especially in Rostock. The repetition of such pictures, pictures like we already had during the attack on the hostel of asylum-seekers in 1992, to have these pictures again in Rostock is a great failure, is exactly what we did not want” (ZDF, G8-Spezial, 3rd of June, http://de.indymedia.org/2007/06/184705.shtml).
We condemn the active collaboration of parts of the Rostock Alliance and ATTAC with the police and their repressive offences. We also condemn their dissociation from grassroots, antifascist and left opponants of the summit. Rebellion is justified! The ruling capitalist order is based on exploitation and violence. Considering 100.000 people dying of hunger each day, imperialist wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, increasing patriarchal violence and the unrestrained devastation of the natural basis of life, the opponants of this order have the right to resist with the means they think appropriate to struggle for an “entirely different world”. Such resistance inevitably questions the monopoly of power of the police – as happened at the 2nd of June or during the blockades and the siege laid to the summit in Heiligendamm.
We demand to release all political prisoners, to put an end to the practice of summary courts, and the dismissal of all law suits against opponents of the summit.
Declaration of the Anti-G8 Alliance Cologne
- Contact: AntiG8Koeln@gmx.net
- http://www.anti-g8-koeln.de.ms/
Meeting to look back and forward: »This has been the summit«; Friday, 6th of July 2007, 6 p.m., Café Chaos, Gronewaldstrasse 2, Faculty of Human Sciences of the University Cologne