2007-11-25
Statewatch July 2007 (Vol 17 no 2) 1
From 6 to 8 June this year, the annual G8 summit took place in
Heiligendamm, a seaside resort near the northern German city of
Rostock. Since the WTO meeting in Seattle in 1999, meetings of
representatives of industrialised states and businesses promoting
and coordinating capitalist globalisation have met with mass
resistance, which in turn has been met with heavy-handed
policing, some argue, at an unprecedented scale for liberal
democratic states. Protests shook Washington and Prague in
2000, Gothenburg and Genoa in 2001, Quito in 2002,
Thessalonica, Evian and Cancún in 2003, Gleneagles, Mar del
Plata and Hong Kong in 2005 and now Heiligendamm in 2007.
This latest summit also brought with it an unprecedented
arsenal and scale of police violence, criminalisation of protest
and many infringements of fundamental civil liberties.
The
scenes unfolding over the week were impressive: roughly 80,000
people demonstrated on 2 June in Rostock against G8’s neoliberal
policies, 10,000 demonstrated on 4 June for the rights of
migrants and refugees, and around 20,000 people remained for a
whole week in three self-organised camps around Heiligendamm
in order to block the summit at its main entry and exit roads.
10,000 people took part in peaceful blockades between 6 and 8
June. The protests were policed by a total of 17,800 officers from
all over Germany and, according to some reports, 2,000 military
personnel. The deployment of the latter, which is now being
debated in parliament, was in violation of Germany’s
constitution. After two years of alter-globalisation activists in
Germany and abroad preparing the protests, and the authorities’
parallel attempt to criminalise them, protesters and civil liberties
groups are drawing preliminary conclusions and preparing for
lengthy court cases. Below is an incomplete chronology of the
protests and their repression.
Stage 1: preliminary criminalisation
The first public attempt by the German authorities and police to
de-legitimise the protests by way of criminalisation took place on
9 May this year in form of large-scale police raids. On the order
of the Federal Public Prosecution (Bundesanwaltschaft), 1,000
police officers searched around 40 private homes and two social
centres in Hamburg, Berlin and other cities in northern Germany.
The target: politically active people between the age of 25 and
50, some of whom were involved in organising the protests
against the summit. The reason given for the raids and
confiscation of personal computers and address books, in some
cases even cigarette butts and so-called “scent samples”, was the
accusation of the “formation of a terrorist organisation” under
Article 129a of the German Criminal Code. “Scent sampling”
was a technique that many believed had vanished with the Berlin
wall, used by the East German Stasi secret police to track down
dissidents with dogs. Article 129a is a well-known provision
amongst activists as it is regularly applied by police and the
public prosecution to legitimise this severe infringement of
privacy without the police having any hard evidence that any of
the victims took, or were planning to take, part in any criminal
act. In this case also, the purpose of its application appeared to
be a general information-gathering exercise targeting the
political movement: police copied the hard disk of the left-wing
server SO36.net, which hosts many mailing lists and websites as
well as personal computers of third parties not accused at all.
Press releases from the Republican Lawyers Association
(Republikanischer Anwältinnen- und Anwälteverein – RAV) and
groups affected pointed out that the intent of the operation was
to disturb the communication structures of G8 critics, which
were in the final stages of preparing the logistics for the camps
and demonstrations, all of who had, at that time, the relevant
permissions of the authorities.
The suspicion that evidence to justify the police raids was
lacking was hardened by the fact that the public prosecution
claimed that a criminal procedure that was initiated against a
group named militante gruppe some years ago in relation to
several arson attacks on cars, was somehow related to the G8
protest organisers. There was, however, no indication that those
whose homes were raided were under suspicion of being
members of this group or in any way connected to arson, or even
that the arson attacks had anything to do with the G8 protests.
The RAV press release (10.05.07) concludes:
The [judge’s] order for the house searches construes a relationship
between an old 129a procedure and alleged plans to disturb of stop
the G8 summit. As usual, the wide remits of an Article 129a procedure
are being used to openly collect data with a great publicity effect.
Article 129a procedures regularly lead to the collection of masses of
information with a huge mobilisation of investigative forces.
Convictions, however, very rarely take place.
But rather than insisting that concrete attacks were to be averted
with the raids, the Federal Public Prosecution itself confirmed
the indiscriminate nature of the action:
Today’s investigations were intended to shed light on the structures
and the personal composition of these groups and did not primarily
serve the prevention of concrete attacks. There was no evidence for
[such attacks]. We shot into the bush and now we will see who and
what will come out.
With this rather crude justification, the general assessment of the
police operation, not only in left-wing but also mainstream press
circles, was that it represented an illegitimate and unfounded
attempt by the authorities to criminalise the protest movement.
This attempt, however, failed spectacularly in that even
conservative newspapers did not take the terrorist allegations
seriously and instead gave space to the protest press
spokespersons, who used the opportunity to advertise the
demonstrations, blockades and conferences during the summit.
The liberal daily paper Süddeutsche Zeitung even printed a
comprehensive chronology of planned demonstrations and
action days next to reporting on the house searches. The lawyer’s
association RAV and the Committee for Fundamental Rights and
Democracy (Komitee für Grundrechte und Demokratie) used the
opportunity to reiterate their call for the abolition of provision
129a, as it was in violation with democratic principles in criminal
proceedings and historically had been applied to criminalise
political movements and not to avert or solve crimes.
Criminalisation is continuing after the protests, too. Using
reports of violence during the G8 summit conservative
politicians are now demanding a special police database on
“Autonomous” activists and raids have again taken place in
Berlin. Again no one was arrested, even though the allegation:
formation of a terrorist organisation under Article 129a, was
applied also here.
Dutch police arrests 100 cyclists
A similarly disproportionate infringement of civil liberties took
place in the Netherlands on 5 May, a few days before the house
raids in Germany, when the Dutch authorities decided to take
action against a rather unthreatening group of around 100
cyclists from the Gr8chaoskaravaan, who were travelling from
Belgium via Holland to the protests in Heiligendamm. The whole group was arrested on its way out of the city, allegedly for
not following police orders (that is, not to cycle on a cycle path).
The press release (8.5.07) issued by the Caravan organisers
describes the incident as follows:
The cyclists where surprised when without prior warning a special
unit and police on horseback suddenly charged the bicycle ride with
batons drawn, one police van even driving right into the cyclists and
hitting a bicycle. The police then proceeded to arrest all members on
the pretext of not using the bicycle path. Bicycles were confiscated
and removed with many being damaged and locks broken.
Demonstrators later reported that the police used disproportional
violence during the arrests.
Ill-treatment continued during the arrest. For several hours the
demonstrators were detained in overcrowded cells – 25 people in a
4×4 m cell – where they suffered from anoxia caused by lack of
ventilation and were deprived of food. When the first demonstrators
were released during the night a growing number of reports about
police intimidation came in. “They told us that what they had done
today was tolerant compared to what they would do if we continued to
carry out the actions we had planned” says Antje, a caravan
participant.
The arrests were as surprising for the international members of the
caravan as they were for the Dutch activists. “It was a very unusual
police action for Dutch circumstances” said Antje, Dutch activist and
caravan member. “I have been doing bicycle actions for years and
can’t remember anything like this happening.” Andree Narres from
the info office of the bicycle caravans is outraged: “I can’t find any
other plausible explanation than politics and police doing what they
can to prevent, harass and criminalise all protests even ahead of the
G8 summit.” According to him the action may have been planned to
make the bicycle caravan’s entry into Germany harder. "The police
didn’t charge the cyclists with the mere regulatory offence of not using
the bicycle path but of not obeying police orders, an offence that leads
to a court hearing.
The bike tour organisers and two victims of the police action
have taken legal action on the grounds of indiscriminate use of
violence and illegal arrest as well as. As surprising as the police
action, however, was the lack of media coverage: the incident
received uncritical local media coverage and almost no national
media coverage. Only two members of local socialist and green
parties criticised the incident and proposed a motion in the
Utrecht city council to lodge parliamentary questions, which did
not receive sufficient votes. The mayor, who is responsible for
the local police force, denied any police wrongdoing before any
inquiry into the matter.
“Stasi methods”
The next measure, applied from the prolific German law and
order arsenal, was the routine opening of mail in Hamburg and
an unorthodox attempt by police to pressurise a university
lecturer into denouncing his students.
The investigation into the militante gruppe that served as an
excuse for the mass house searches of 9 May continued with a
comprehensive “snail mail” action by police, according to the
daily newspaper tageszeitung (25.05.07) and later confirmed by
the police. Dozens of officers from the regional Hamburg crime
police authority (Landeskriminalamt) were opening and
confiscating “suspicious looking” mail from specific city districts
in the central Hamburg post office. The order was given by the
Federal Crime Police Authority (Bundeskriminalamt) with the
alleged aim of fishing out possible letters to newspapers or
television stations claiming responsibility for attacks. Not even
the terrorist provision 129a allows for this indiscriminate
violation of privacy and interception of communication; the
lawyer Sönke Hilbrans reacted with disbelief:
What more are citizens of whole city districts are to endure? Not only
by taking scent samples but now also by controlling the post, the
security agencies are increasingly and unashamedly resorting to Stasi
methods. It is evident that some ministers and police officers have lost
any measure of acting within democratic and proportionate remits. If
the judiciary does not stop them, this country is on its way towards a
different Republic.
Another police action denounced as a “scandal” by the lawyer’s
association RAV was the attempt to get a lecturer at Hamburg
University to divulge names of students active in the G8 protest
preparations. Two police officers approached the lecturer in the
break of his talk entitled, ironically, “Fear as a social-disciplinary
instrument”. He refused and asked the police leave the premises
and later proclaimed: “I believe the attempt to convince lecturers
to denounce students who are politically active is a scandal. This
massively infringes on the right to freedom of expression as well
as scientific freedom.” Interception, denunciation and political
crimes, together with the erection of a 12 km long fence in
eastern Germany to protect leaders from public criticism, have
conjured up uneasy images in Germany of old Stasi methods that
were thought a thing of the past.
Stage 2: fence off, ban, spin and provoke
Similar to earlier summits, the “red” security zone around the
Heiligendamm meeting place was surrounded by a fence (in this
case a 12 km long razor-wire “technical barrier”) and in the red
zone itself, regular civil liberties such as the right to assembly
and freedom of expression were restricted. On 10 May, the
Kavala police unit, specially set up in 2005 to police the protests,
banned the demonstration planned for 7 June outside of the red
zone as well: the authorities also issued a general banning order
that forbade all assemblies within a second zone 10 km outside
of the security fence. The general decree led to much criticism by
politicians and civil liberties groups and was contested up to the
Federal Constitutional Court. It ruled, one day before the planned
demonstration, that the decree generally banning assemblies
outside of the security zone was unconstitutional, and even
explicitly criticised the police’s “security concept” for being
directed “against the creation of assemblies” as the “right to
freedom of assembly was given no chance to be realised in an
adequate manner”. It nevertheless accepted the police’s claim that
the demonstration itself should be banned because of expected
violence on part of the demonstrators.
On the general decree, Tobias Pflüger, the MEP for the left
faction (GUE/NGL) of the European Parliament said that:
It is unacceptable that now even the fundamental right to assembly is
being curtailed. I protest strongly against this decision and demand
that those responsible return to the rules of democracy. Those who
invite the G8, also invite the legitimate protest. The expression of
protest has to be comprehensively protected, at the least to bring the
message of the critique of the [political content] of G8 [policies]
across [to the general public].
The Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy
(18.5.07) pointed out that:
Such a precipitated banning order has to be based on current and
concrete evidence that a direct threat to legally protected interests
exists. There is, however, no sign of any evidence supporting this
claim.
The fact that the Federal Constitutional Court used the escalation
of violence at the end of the demonstration of 2 June to justify
banning the 7 June demonstration has to be considered in light of
later revelations of the use of agent provocateurs by the police
and the claim by demonstration observers that the escalations on
2 June were initiated not only by some ’black block’
demonstrators but also by undercover police in the
demonstration. Furthermore, the violence appeared to have been
hugely exaggerated: an attempt to corroborate the police claim of
200 severely injured police officers would later reveal that only
two police officers were hospitalised for two days, one of whom
had fallen down some stairs whilst chasing demonstrators. Also allegations appearing in the mainstream media (such as FAZOnline,
Deutsche Welle and the tagesspiegel) quoting an
unnamed “high-level security expert” who said that
demonstrators attacked police with knives or were throwing
potatoes spiked with nails were denied by police spokesman
Manfred Lütjann of the Kavala police unit (see the website
Unspin the G8, which is dedicated to media spin around the G8
and lists various similar incidents).
“Yesterday was yesterday – and today is today”
The ultimate scandal, however, was the discovery on 6 June that
the German police had deployed agent provocateurs: it is ironic
that on a demonstration that was banned by the police on grounds
of expected violence, a group of five undercover police officers
inciting stone throwing was identified by peaceful protesters.
The five men, dressed as “black block” demonstrators, carried
stones towards a group of people blockading the security fence
and tried to convince them to start throwing them at the police.
Angered by this, as the demonstration organised by the Block G8
network was explicitly peaceful, (reiterated by the network in its
numerous call-outs and on its website) activists started to
question the motives of the men in black and asked for their
identity and political background. The men refused to identify
themselves and ran away. One of them, however, was stopped by
demonstrators and challenged. From that moment he started
addressing the protesters with the formal address “Sie” and
refused to reply to questions. After intervention by the legal team
as an angry crowd formed around him, with his agreement he
was led to the police lines, which welcomed him amidst their
ranks.
Immediately after the incident, police spokesman Manfred
Lütjann categorically denied the use of agents provocateurs: “As
an institution acting in accordance with the rule of law we are not
allowed, and do not do, such a thing”. Although German law
does in principle allow for the use of agent provocateurs,
Lütjann was adamant the discovered police officer was not sent
by Kavala and added: “I do not know what other security
agencies might be doing; I cannot represent any internal security
service officers here” (junge Welt, 8.6.07). The next day,
however, the evidence forced Kavala to retract its statement and
Ulf Claassen, another Kavala spokesman, admitted to Spiegel-
Online (8.6.07) that the police had used an undercover agent in
the blockade in question, commenting on the embarrassing
retraction with: “Yesterday was yesterday – and today is today”.
Green party MP Christian Ströbele said he would ask a
parliamentary question on the incident and found that “if it
appears to be true, the evaluation of many incidents of these past
days would of course have to be seen in a different light”. The
Rostock public prosecution is currently assessing possible
criminal proceedings against the undercover officer on grounds
of incitement to commit crimes.
Stage 3: arrest and attack
This brings us to stage three in the chronology of policing
summit protests: the use of disproportionate police violence and
mass arrests. Protest groups and media activists have started
collating evidence and eye witness reports on the police
repression (www.gipfelsoli.de, http://de.indymedia.org). The
balance drawn so far shows that the security operation entailed
massive stop and search operations, mass detention in special
cages, filming of arrestees in cages, preventative arrests,
accelerated court procedures, use of pepper stray and baton
charges on peaceful demonstrators, water canon use against
peaceful blockades, confiscation of bicycles and personal
belongings and a plethora of violent incidents and sexual assault.
One demonstrator, for example, reported on Bavarian
Special Forces brutality during the arrests on 2 June:
As I was pushed into the car, I was told that I should “shut up,
otherwise there would be trouble” and that they were “fed up with
stone throwers like me”. On the way to the Police base, I was
massively pressured to “admit everything” because they were “going
to get us all anyway”. I was kicked, beaten, shouted at and threatened:
“when we get there we will take you off the list and drive with you into
the woods, nobody will notice”. All in all, the whole incident took 4
and a half hours, until I was released without charge.
The escalation from 2 June, exacerbated by police reports of
hundreds of “severely injured” officers, was used by police to
legitimise repression during the migration action day on 4 June.
In the morning, the opening rally at a block of flats in Rostock-
Lichtenhagen, commemorating the racist pogroms against
asylum seekers in 1991 which saw hundreds of bystanders
cheering on a gang of neo-nazis setting fire to a house full of
refugees and foreign workers, was attacked by police without
reason. The legal team reported that the police encircled peaceful
demonstrators and pepper-sprayed them arbitrarily. Two
demonstrators suffered serious eye injuries during a water
cannon attack on a peaceful blockade at the West Gate of the
security fence.
Further reports about police violence include:
The treatment of prisoners or rather, detainees, during the
summit received strong criticism by lawyers and legal teams,
culminating in an unusual event on 7 June: the legal team
organised a demonstration in front of the Rostock
Industriestrasse detention centre to protest against the poor
conditions for detainees and the fact that prisoners were denied
contact with them. The lawyer’s association RAV had issued a press release a day earlier criticising the police for stopping legal
teams from carrying out their tasks during the demonstrations.
Two lawyers were pushed by police onto the street, in several
cases lawyers were verbally threatened by police that if they
would not “shut up” and stop asking arrestees for their names
they would be beaten up. When the Kavala police unit
announced the closure of the only lawyer’s room at the detention
centre, which was holding hundreds of detainees in cages
(implying that lawyers would have to wait outside on the street
until the police called them in to see their clients), the lawyers
made their decision hold a demonstration. The law in Germany
states that anyone detained by police has to be given a chance to
speak to a lawyer and within four hours, he or she has to be
presented to a judge who decides on the evidence and on which
grounds the detainee will be held for longer. On 7 June, around
100 people were held in the Rostock detention centre, some for
up to 12 hours, without access to a lawyer or being told what the
charges against them were. Not a single one of them was
presented to a lawyer or a judge.
The preliminary balance of arrests and convictions (collated
by Indymedia Germany) reads as follows: In total, 1,057 persons
were detained up to 8 June, in 140 cases, a judge decided on
extending detention periods. The interior ministry announced
that 850,000 people were checked at Schengen borders, 155 were
refused entry and 57 people who had outstanding arrest warrants
were arrested. During more intensive checks at the external
Schengen borders, 401 people were refused entry into Germany.
Rostock police announced it stopped 67 persons from entering
the Rostock area. The justice ministry announced that 8 people
were sentenced to between 6 and 10 months in prison in fast
track procedures. Charges are: attempted and actual assault and
severe breach of the peace. Two of these people have been
released on parole, although the convictions are final. Two
persons were remanded in custody awaiting trial. In 120 cases
judges ordered long-term detention on the basis of people being
considered ‘dangerous’. These people were released at the end of
the G8 summit. In the period from 2 to 10 June, a total of 103
persons (90 men and 13 women) were imprisoned, of these, 92
people received security and order rulings and 11 arrest warrants.
The youngest person was 16, the oldest 41. Amongst these there
were 41 foreigners, 40% of the total. Nationalities were: Belgian
2, British 8, Estonian 2, French 2, Irish 4, Italian 1, Canadian 1,
Dutch 1, Polish 1, Russian 1, Swedish 14, Swiss 1, Spanish 2, US
American 1, and German 62.
(Source: http://de.indymedia.org/2007/06/185126.shtml)
A testing ground for security measures: deploying the
army internally
Finally, this summit, like other summits before it, served as a
platform for ministers and police to test their toolkit of repressive
measures. In addition to reinstating Schengen border controls,
Interior Minister Schäuble, pushed for the deployment of armed
forces inside of Germany to control protesters and other “security
risks”. It appears that the army had taken part in policing the
protest with over 2,000 personnel, “armoured reconnaissance
vehicles” (mobile armoured tanks used for intelligence and
communications) and Tornado jets. The latter flew over one of
the camp sites above the head of 3,000 activists on 5 June. The
web-news service Spiegel-online reported on 16 June that the jet
flew lower than the minimum height of 150 metres. The German
air force has now started investigations against the two pilots for
misconduct, who apparently ignored the warning signals that are
automatically generated by undercutting the minimum height.
Interior state secretary Peter Altmaier declared during
parliamentary question time (13.6.07) that the use of “Tornado
jets took place in the framework of mutual assistance [between
authorities] in order to gather intelligence on possible
interference on roads or the landscape. This is a common and
normal procedure. It has a sound legal basis”. Journalists and
activists reported military police patrolling the area on
motorcycles and it was impossible to ignore dozens of air force
helicopters continuously circling over Heiligendamm and
particularly over the camp sites.
Far from being a common procedure with a sound legal
basis, the deployment of armed forces internally has been
debated in the media and by constitutional experts for more than
a year. Green Party MP Christian Ströbele called the action a
“precipitated praxis of the deployment of armed forces internally
which interior minister Schäuble is obviously planning [to go
ahead with].” Furthermore, the constitution regulates the
deployment of armed forces over and above procedural
regulations such as mutual assistance. Even the scientific service
of the Lower House of Parliament finds that the constitution only
allows for the army to assist the police and emergency services in
cases of catastrophe, and then only with non-armed assistance
such as emergency accommodation and medical services.
“Technical Mutual assistance” can only be granted with
additional support equipment that the police already has at its
disposal in its regular arsenal, that excludes Tornado jets and
armoured tanks. In light of the jets flying below 150 metres and
the threatening effect that would have on the demonstrators,
Dieter Wiefelspütz, home affairs spokesman for the social
democratic party SPD, said on 16 June that “From a current
perspective, the deployment was not only politically insensitive
but also unconstitutional”.
Rather than representing a technical-legal issue, the use of
the army against its own population represents an ideological
shift away from democratic fundamental principles that should
guide law enforcement and intelligence agencies, towards state
of emergency principles. This is reflected in the fact that the
government and responsible spokespersons adamantly deny the
problematic nature of the conflation of army and police tasks.
Franz Josef Jung, member of the conservative Party (CDU) and
spokesperson for the ministry of defence argued that
Heiligendamm served as a training ground for the army for war
zones such as Afghanistan. He emphasized that the army thought
it was out of the question that “we have to practise our skills, as
you can see in Afghanistan” and claimed that police as well as
army would benefit from the deployment of armed forces in
Heiligendamm: “it is a win-win situation for the police as well as
for us”.
RAV press release archive: http://www.rav.de/news//archive.php; Bike Caravan
press release (8.5.07): http://wiki.dissentnetwork.org/wiki/Bicycle-Caravan
_%22West%22:press:2007-05-08; Press release MEP Tobias Pflüger (10.5.07):
http://tobiaspflueger.twoday.net/stories/3712698/; The Media Gets the Massage
- the uneven battle over the media (Unspin the G8):
http://www.unspintheg8.org/media-gets-massage-uneven-battle-over-media
Spiegel-online video report on the successful blockade of 6 June and the
discovery of the agent provocateur: http://www.spiegel.de/videoplayer/
0,6298,18864,00.html; Spiegel-online (8.6.07) on the agent provocateur:
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,487554,00.html
Chronicle (English) of police violence and state repression:
http://gipfelsoli.org/Multilanguage/English/3033.html; Other chronicles of
repression (German): http://de.indymedia.org/2007/06/184905.shtml
http://de.indymedia.org/2007/06/183750.shtml
Parliamentary questions and answers (13.6.2007) on the use of army jets and
agent provocateurs: http://www.bundestag.de/bic/plenarprotokolle/
plenarprotokolle/16102.html; Süddeutsche Zeitung (13.6.07) on the use of army
jets: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/deutschland/artikel/267/118135/; Army jets fly
lower than legal minimum height:
http://www.tagesschau.de/aktuell/meldungen/0,1185,OID6965730_REF2,0
0.html: Assessment of police violence in parliament by Green Party MPs,
lawyers and the police trade union:
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0%2C1518%2C488898%2C00.html