2007-06-04

Update anti G8 protests today

The foreigners office decides who is allowed to stay in the country and who is not, if you will get a passport, residency permit or if you will be deported. The plan for the morning: an occupation of the office. From the moment we leave the camp to our final destination we see many green police busses parked in the forest and at almost every corner on the way.

Once at the foreigners office, all entrances are already blocked by dozens of demonstrators sitting in front of the doors on the ground. Some have climbed onto the roof and unfolded banners. The organisers urge the demonstrators to stay calm and not be provoked by police like last Saturday because they want to continue the demonstration to another hotspot of racism (see below). The roughly 100 police present are cordially requested to leave: they are not welcome here!

Police and special forces are present in large numbers: they stand with grim faces around the demonstrators and are filming them. To make clear why we are standing here, the mass shouts “ No border, no nation, stop deportation!” and “We are here, we will fight, freedom of movement is our right”. Then the demo organisers inform us: a group of demonstrators that came with the tram were stopped and searched. Eventually they are released. After 30 mins the demo with people from the other action camp is Rostock, accompanied by four police vans, is welcomed by us with loud whistling. In total, we are around 1000.

A few representatives of migrant organisations are taking the floor now, rapping and shouting demands to end police violence, racist treatment of refugee and migrants and deportations. For global social rights and freedom of movement! Then we are treated with a street theatre game show entitled ‘Germany is looking for the Super German!’ (Deutschland sucht den Super-Deutschen!). A professional show master and his assistant explain the game: 9 figures representing different nationalities and professions (migrant cleaners, black footballers, Indian IT specialists, people married to Germans) that keep popping out of boxes have to be hit with a soft hammer by a volunteer from the audience if they are useless to the German economy or not properly integrated (is the third generation immigrant youth holding a pistol or is it a pen?!). Beware: NEVER hit the German whose blood line is unpolluted and runs German blood only, even if he looks a bit dangerous, otherwise you lose point. And be quick, you only have 30 seconds! Not easy, the volunteers are not practiced as they try figuring out if the figures popping out of the boxes are allowed to stay here or not, are they cleaning or drinking Champaign? The show is funny, but the police is not laughing (maybe they are not permitted to). Then the samba band plays. The police keep storming from one imaginary hotspot to the next, when standing still, the Clown’s Army is teasing them, again, they are not amused! What can you do…

Despite the provocative mass police presence there is no confrontation. With the media bus we are going to the next racist hotspot: Rostock-Lichtenhagen. It was here in 1992 that a racist mob set on fire a high-rise flat where migrants lived, and local residents stood there, clapping and cheering them on. During the high-time of racist pogroms in Germany shortly after the wall came down, police and fire services took 10 hours to respond to the emergency call, the only people that stood defending the people locked in the house were Anti-fascists.

The Caravan for Refugees and Migrants is walking next to the bus for some of the way. At the same time actions will take place at the Lidl supermarket chain, whose aggressive import strategy forces dumping prices on producers, who exploit migrant labour and massively violate labour rights in Spain, the Netherlands or Morocco in return. Again, on our way to Rostock-Lichtenhagen we only see police vans, water cannons and ambulances on the way.

Only two and a half days before the beginning of the end of the G8!

[http://de.indymedia.org/2007/06/180923.shtml]