Daily Advisory: Information on the starmarch to Heiligendamm
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Media G8Way – International Press Group
Daily Advisory for the Week of Protest Against G8
- Total banned area for the Star March once again expanded
- Heiligendamm officer-in-charge known as violent
- Further interference by the police likely
The Star March coalition registered so-called ‘substitute-events’ on
sunday. This was to safeguard the right to demonstrate should a complete
ban be confirmed by the federal constitutional court.
Yet just a half day later the special police department ‘Kavala’ also
banned these events despite the fact that they were mainly outside the
banned zones I&II. A demonstration in Kuehlingsborn is affected by this,
as is a rally in Boergerende and a march from Bad Doberan through
Steffenshagen to the National Motorway ‘B 105’.
The Kavala have exhausted all possibilities to block the Star March.
It’s registration was initially delayed and invitations to cooperation
talks were rejected. It was only through the administrative court route
that the Kavala had to speed up.
“It is obvious that the police are executing political decisions in that
state visits will not be confronted by dissenting opinion”, summit
opponents criticised.“The duty of a police agency however is to
facilitate assemblies, not to prohibit them”.
The officer-in-charge for the section around Heiligendamm is Alfred
Tilch of the Sachsen Anhalt standby police.
Tilch is regularly appointed at the Castor-Transport protests in the
Wendland area. There he permitted his units on several occasions to
randomly batter demonstrators after the arrival of the nuclear
transports and therefore after the demonstration.Furthermore he was
reported several times for illegal police enclosures of demonstrators.
“The police will do as much as possible until the very end to block the
Star March despite possible legal ratification”,
Hanne Jobst of the ‘Gipfelsoli Info-Group’ surmised.
In the past the standby police have been known to use tactics such as
provocation at the start of or during a march, for instance the
deployment of snatch-squads. Expressions of solidarity by bystanders
would then be used as an opportunity to attack the entire demonstration.
The police already can ban a demonstration on the basis of actual
‘danger prognoses’. The legal route is then impossible.
Jobst is easy-going:“if possible at short notice the presence of a
terrorist cell plotting to attack Ms Merkel with a cream cake will be
divulged”.
The federal constitutional court’s decision is expected on tuesday
(later today).
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The highest court in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern has overruled the previous
court decision and decided that a general demonstration ban on June 7th
did not violate the constitutional rights of protesters. A general
injunction over a 40 square kilometre area had been designated by police
as a demonstration-free zone due to a “state of emergency”. So the Star
March on June 7th , which was intending to go all the way to the
Kempinski hotel, will now be confined to the B105 road. [press release (de)
]
At the beginning of June 2007, the governments of the seven most
important industrialized countries and Russia will meet for the „G8
Summit“ at the Baltic seaside resort of Heiligendamm, Germany. In recent
years a rising tide of international resistance against this
self-appointed informal world government and its agenda of neoliberal
globalization has forced it’s meetings into further secluded areas,
employing security forces of historical proportion.
The solicitors acting on behalf of the star march coalition further
criticize that, „other de-escalation and staggered measures were at no
point considered, the issuing of a „state of emergency“ denies citizens
their basic rights“. The assumption that every large political event
demands the designation of such a „state of emergency“ reflects badly on
the constitutional State, creating the conditions to regularly impede
civil liberties through general injunctions without any justification
for doing so, general injunctions have never stopped assemblies but have
often contributed to escalation through limiting the space for protest
to be articulated legally?.
For more info on the Star March:
sternmarsch2007@gmx.net
Susanne Spemberg und Peter Kromrey (Sternmarsch-Vorbereitungsbündnis):
0177/5501939
Ulrike Donat (Anwältin des Anmelders): 040/39106180