2007-05-26

May 26th 2007, Heiligendamm

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Number of Legal Team/ Lawyers

Greetings,

we want to inform you of the number of the legal team (Anwaltlicher Notdienst / Ermittlungsausschuss in german) for the upcoming protests in Heiligendamm, Germany:

038204 - 768111

By this number we will be available from the 28th of Mai onwards. People are encouraged to call us whenever they get into conflict with police forces or witness police assaults or arrests. We will then try to take care of the persons concerned.

For people taken into custody by the police, the following information should be held ready whenever possible, so we can ask for it at the phone:

* forname and surname
* date of birth (or approximated age, if unknown)
* hometown
* nationality
* the reason --as said by the police!-- why the person has been taken into custody

In *no case* do want want to hear any description of what really happened! Our phones will likely be wiretapped around the clock!

People that are affected by repression either directly or indirectly and have questions may come to our daily consultation-hour at the camp in Reddelich from 7 to 9 pm. The consultation-hour is also the right time and place to write and hand over notes about what has been experienced and seen. (Writing the notes on site will make sure that they will not get into the wrong hands. Also, this way, people may ask questions about how to write notes in a way that they are most helpful to us.)

A few general hints on what to think about when planning for demonstrations or actions may be found on our website

http://ermittlungsausschuss.eu

and soon also in printed form at various places around Heiligendamm.

Finally, the legal team is still asking for funds:

Schwarz-Rote-Hilfe Münster e.V.
Account-Nr.: 282 052 468
BLZ: 440 100 46
Postbank Dortmund
Reason for payment: Gipfel-EA 2007
IBAN: DE02 4401 0046 0282 0524 68
BIC: PBNKDEFF

With kind regards,

some person from the G8 2007 legal team

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problems at the german border

On the 24th of mai I was hitchhiking towards Berlin. I crossed the german border with a ride and was dropped in Aachen. I continued hiking but after 5 min. a police car drove by, returned and stopped. The coppers said to me that it was illegal to hitchhike in Germany and I had to go with them to the police station. They kept me there for an hour of so and asked me questions like: why are you in Germany, how long are you going to stay, where are you going to sleep, ... They didn´t put me in jail but kept asking me these questions untill they were sure I wasn´t an activist. Afterwards they brought me to the train station and said that I had to continue my trip by train. So I did.
My story for the coppers: I´m an art student traveling to Berlin to see some art expositions, I´m only staying untill the end of the weekend and I´m staying at a friends place. I don´t know where my friend lives but I have to send an sms when I´m almost in Berlin and he will get me from the station.
I kept repeating this story and they believed me.
For other people who are coming to the G8, it´s not illegal to hitchhike in Germany. But you better prepare a similar story because the reppression already started.

[http://de.indymedia.org/2007/05/178487.shtml]

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Courts Grant Appeal: Star March Can Happen

Star March Coalition

Press Release May 25th 2007

*G8 2007 Protests in Germany*

The Star March Intends to go all the Way to the Kempinski Hotel
'State of Emergency' Does Not Justify a General Ban
The urgent appeal of the Star March Coalition lodged at the Schwerin Court has been successful. The Coalition had lodged a law suit against the general demonstration ban issued by the police department. A general injunction over a 40 square kilometer area had been designated as a demonstration free zone. Such an injunction would have been unprecedented in the history of Germany.

The Schwerin Court has only granted a partial lift of the injunction. The Star March Coalition had registered their final rally at the Kempinski Hotel. With this, the protest was to be taken to the addressees: The meeting of the Heads of State of the G8. The Court has decided that demonstrations are allowed to take place on 4 of 6 of the planned routes and at a distance of 200 m from the fence.

The Court has explained that the "suspected threats to public security can be sufficiently contained with less extreme measures than a general ban." Of course we are happy that our right to demonstrate has been confirmed in the first instance. A huge thank-you to the lawyers", Susanne Spemberg and Peter Kromrey of the Star March Coalition explain. There had been a broad wave of international criticism in response to the injunction. "However, we will continue to question the ban on demonstrations within the area sealed off by the fence. We will decide in the next few days whether to appeal against the decision."

At the beginning of the week the groups affected by the total prohibition of all assemblies at the military airport Rostock Laage had also lodged an appeal. In the next days, the organization 'Jewish Voice', who had registered a rally at the fence on June 5th, will also lodge an appeal. "We expect that with the decision to allow the Star March to happen, all other bans will be lifted too", Matthias Monroy of the Gipfelsoli Infogruppe states. All organizers have to make individual cases against the ban.

The Star March Coalition is represented by the Hamburg-based lawyers Carsten Gericke, Ulrike Donat and Cornelia Ganten-Lange. "We were all convinced from the beginning that a complete ban could never be upheld", Carsten Gericke comments.

The lawyers critcise that the police have been planning this injunction for months: "Other de-escalating and staggered concepts were at no point taken into consideration", it states in the appeal.

The police had argued that the ban was necessary because of a 'state of emergency'.
A line of argument that invokes a 'state of emergency' denies citizens their basic rights. The assumption that all large political events demand the declaration of a 'state of emergency' would be a poor showing for the German constitutional State, that could in future regularly curtail civil liberties via such injunctions, without sufficient reason to do. Injunctions have never stopped assemblies but have only contributed to escalation, because not enough space was left for people to articulate their protest legally.

Carlo Paul of the Star March Coalition states,"With the Star March we want to make our ideas for another possible world visible. Social revolutionaries, globalization critics, peasants, trade unions, the environmental movement and radical feminists: on June 7th we will all raise our voices against the pernicious politics of the G8."

[Star March Coalition]

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Bordercrossing G8 from the Netherlands

Many people want to resist the G8-summit in Heiligendamm. The authorities will not hesitate to combat this resistance with repression. This can already start at the moment that you try to enter Germany. Our weapon against this consists of solidarity, good information and communal action!

If you meet any control or check at the border, or other incidents, please warn fellow activists via telephonenumber (+31) 06-49702887

Information about the situation on the border will be given on a special website: http://www.linksehulp.nl/g8

Also we have supportpoints at some border crossings (especially Nijmegen and Groningen). In case you get into trouble or are being sent back, you can go there to get help and more information. In Nijmegen the adress is: Van Broeckhuysenstr 46. The information about other places we will give if needed via phone.

In case you get into juridical problems during or after the G8-summit in the Netherlands, then do not hesitate to contact Linkse Hulp for assistance.

[linkse hulp/dissent-nl]

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U.S. State Department alerts Americans that travelers to Germany might come across large protests next month

WASHINGTON: The U.S. State Department alerted Americans on Friday to the possibility for "large-scale anti-globalization protests" in Germany before and during next month's G-8 summit in Germany. Leaders of the Group of Eight developed countries - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States_ meet June 6-8 at the northern Germany resort of Heiligendamm. The State Department Public Announcement said protests could be expected throughout Germany.

[The Associated Press, Published: May 25, 2007]

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Call out for No Border Camp in Ukraine 2007

The camp will take place from the 11th to the 20th of August 2007 in the main region of transit and labor migration in Ukraine: Transcarpathia.
The eastward expansion of the European Union has resulted in moving the walls of "Fortress Europe" to the Western border of Ukraine. The Ukrainian region of Transcarpatia, of which the biggest cities are Uzhgorod and Mukachevo, has become a new borderline, with increasing militarization and major concentration of detention camps for refugees from the countries of Global South and former USSR, who try to escape war, totalitarianism or misery to the European Union countries. It is hard to find any "open" information about the conditions in the majority of these camps.
The condition of the refugees in Ukraine is very unstable: freedom of movement is restricted; it is hard to get a job or medical care, and no social security is provided. When one gets refugee status, the only support they get from the state is a single payment of a petty 3 euros. In recent years Ukraine has even extradited asylum seekers to places like Uzbekistan, where they were imprisoned for years in the notorious authoritarian regime's gulags.
The increase of border controls makes a big impact on lives of local people in the depressed region of Transcarpathia. The region is situated on the intersection of borders of five countries: Ukraine, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Romania. Four of them are now in the European Union, but Ukraine will not be its member in the near future. So "Fortress Europe" strengthens its Eastern frontiers on the borderline of Western Ukraine. Still, up to half of the working population of Transcarpathia works abroad. Ukraine cancelled the visa regime for EU nationals, but the EU has not made the access of Ukrainians to the European labor market (or even European countries' territory) any easier, although it would be hard to imagine for example agriculture in the EU today without Ukrainian guest workers. At the same time, Transcarpathia has been for a long time a very special region with its unique blend of local cultures and traditions, and now it turned out to be one of the main routes for international migration. Therefore, local border guards, security services and media, using xenophobic language, help to spread prejudices towards migrants among local population, which resulted in rising tensions in the region.
We demand the right of free movement for everyone, asylum for all the persecuted people and the right of people to migrate from depressed areas to work in other countries, if it can make their lives better. We demand abolishing all visa regimes. We want to tear down "Fortress Europe" contemporary border regime, which has lead to the state-sanctioned murder of thousands of people in its borders during recent years. The "Global Apartheid" policy should be stopped! We continue the tradition of No Border camps on Eastern borders of the Fortress Europe, which were organized 1998-2000 on the border of Germany and Poland, in 2000-2003 on the Eastern border of Poland, in 2001 in Slovenia, in 2003 in Romania, in 2003 and 2005 on the border between Greece and Bulgaria and in Finland in 2004. The camps have also been organized on the Southern borders of Europe (on Sicily 2000 and on Tarifa of Spain 2001), inside Europe at airports and main sites of European surveillance and decision-making system (such as in Strasbourg 2002), on the border between Mexico and USA and in Australia. This year our international movement makes a major step forward, as the camp in Ukraine will be first ever organized on the territory of the former Soviet Union.

Some of the aims of this camp are:
* To create a ground for communication between activists from Eastern and Western Europe and from everywhere else: meeting, establishing contacts, sharing skills, knowledge and experience, etc. (workshops, discussions, practical trainings, concerts and much more).
* To attract the attention of the people in Ukraine (but also in Russia and in the world) to the racist policy on migration; to address the questions of contemporary forms of racism and xenophobia.
* To create contact with local people in the region of Transcarpathia: anti-racist education, open public events, film screenings, exhibitions, concerts and discussions, with an aim to improve local people's attitude towards migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.
* To exchange information between us: how the authorities in different countries criminalize migration, what are the situations with deportation prisons, and to share the experiences of resistance in different countries. One of the practical results of the camp is going to be the publication of a brochure with the information from different countries on all these issues to reinforce our struggle (call-out with approximate questions is coming!).
* To get more people from different anti-authoritarian collectives and movements in Ukraine, Russia and other 'post-soviet' countries involved with the migration-related issues; mobilize people for struggle against racism, criminalization of migration and deportation camps system.

We will discuss the possible ways and perhaps we will do some actions (but not in the very region of camp; it has been advised by everybody who's in touch with the region that any confrontational actions done by activists from "outside" on such a sensitive issue could make the situation worse, not better). So first of all it will not be an action camp but a camp for communication, networking, planning and popular education.
Another event that is going to take place in the camp is an International Food Not Bombs gathering. There is an explosion of Food Not Bombs activities in Eastern Europe. In Russia alone there are about 50 groups that are regularly doing actions.

We already started to form a program of workshops, discussions, practical trainings etc. But we prefer the program of the camp to be formed by the people who will come there. So if you've got something to share or contribute ? please let us know now! It can be any topic you are interested in, not only the main topic of the camp. Please take into account that Ukraine has cancelled the visa regime for the citizens of the European Union, the USA and some other countries, so if you have a passport of some Western country you probably do not need any visa to join us.

Feel free to spread this call-out through your contacts.

More information and contact: noborder2007 [at] riseup.net