2010-05-28
The ongoing trial against the police which will continue if as planned until 1st of June is part of a set of trials after the Climate Summit mostly directed against activists. The trails against spokes persons of the Climate Justice Action organizing non violent civil disobedience started with a farce which ended in postponing the trial until August. In a desperate attempt at linking the accused to violence the prosecutor put forward note books showing that the accused discussed the use of bolt cutters before an refugee action. That day at court ended in laughter when the 3 meter long bolt cutter was brought into court by people attending the trial, a bolt cutter in paper mache used as an eye catching device in demonstrations demanding rights to refugees.
This time the Attorney general showed videos of violent demonstrators, but not of the demonstrators that had filed the police, not even videos from Denamrk but from other Summit protests.
500 Italian or 20 Danish cobble stones?
The number of cobble stones is also an interesting issue. A team leader wrote about the participants in the black bloc in a note: 'If not all, so far mostly were Italian-looking people, all dressed in black clothes, black hood jackets, with the hood pulled up over your head and down their forehead and a black scarf pulled up to under the eyes. Several had backpacks (...) and all had big cobblestones in each hand, ca. 12 x 12 x 12 cm.«. The police claimed to have spotted some 200-250 black bloc dressed people in front of the parliamentary building this means that some 500 cobble stones were carried around at the time, cobble stones one may presume of a very special character, of a different race than the Danish and invisible to all the mass media photographers from all over the world that for some reason missed the critical mass of openly exposed 500 projectiles ready for to be used in an attack. Another police witness in the trial claimed that 20 cobble stones had been carried away after been excavated from the parliamentary square.
An error in the police radio system was the cause of Denmark history's biggest mass arrest
It was also revealed that the new radio equipment that the police had bragged about in advance was claimed to have stopped the police to intervene at three times. The first failure was when it was noticed that cobble stones were excavated at the parliamentary square and the radio signal to intervene was not received. Next time when a small group had started to smash windows at the stock exchange the radio failed again when the police tried to get summoned sufficient assistance from the many police forces held in reserve. Once more at the foreign ministry were one window was smashed the police were again hit by the radio bug - as it says in a report from a police commissioner at that time: "Due to issues with its radio system, it is very difficult to get clear messages through about the location of the up to three groupings of autonomous'. The main stream liberal paper Information concludes: "An error in the police radio system was the cause of Denmark history's biggest mass arrest".
Unfortunately the press nor the lawyers or anybody else in Denmark address the issue that the mass arrest was carried out against a whole other section of the demonstration than the section were the incidents at the stock exchange and the foreign ministry took place. The mass arrest of the 918 was ordered against a section far back in the demonstration and far from the places were incidents had taken place. This is stated in a report published at www.aktivism.info/socialforumjourney.
The police had a secret plan B?
"We were very flexible and friendly and we would be in dialogue," declared Per Larsen in court, former chief police inspector of the Copenhagen Police and the overall leader of police overall effort during the climate summit in Copenhagen in December last year. He continued: "We stretched the rubber band as far as we possibly could, but there is a limit."
The former chief police inspector was very pleased to tell the Attorney General everything he wanted to know. When the lawyers representing the arrested had their chance took matters a sudden turn. They rejected now all together in protest to ask one single question, and they added that they would like to have their refusal noted in the protocol. Lawyer Christian Dahl Field motivated the protest by stating that while the Attorney General were familiar with the content of the authorization given by the police management to the police witnesses to be questioned in the trial, so knew neither the court or the lawyers the content.
"It is contrary to all principles that the parties do not have the same knowledge of the case," said Dahl Field. "Every time we try to move from the general Fiddle-faddle of threat images and a little deeper, are we unable to ask specific questions, because according to the judgement by the Attorney General it is outside the authority, which only Attorney General knows."
Specifically Dahl Field wished - on the President repeatedly question - to question the police about specific threat day by the day during the summit and on which maneuver ideas the police had operated. In this including if the police leadership prior to the great mass arrest of about a thousand protesters on Saturday 12th December had worked for a Plan B, so that mass arrests were carried out no matter what.
The Attorney General went quite mad claiming to things at the same time. One the one hand that the lawyers could ask for what themes the Attorney General had questioned the police witnesses in advance, on the other hand that given the many days, police had been deployed during the summit, the lawyers could only ask questions about what the witnesses already had prepared themselves for. In addition there was the confidentiality of parts of police work which police officers are subject to: "There is information which is confidential, and that's just the rules, both police and PET are involved. You will not be allowed to know whether police had a plan B, "she said. (PET is the Danish security police)
These conditions were totally unacceptable to the lawyers Knud Fold Schack, Steen Leonhardt and Hanne Frederiksen Ziebe: "There can be no secrecy about anything that occurred half a year ago," said Fold Schack.
The day ended by yet one more struggle on procedure. Why do they appointed lawyers have to wait to get access the entire material for the trial? The Attorney General replied that the police were at it, but the rule of President Anne Grete Stokholm eventually instructed the Attorney General a deadline until the 25th May.
Illegal police search at Ragnhildsgade
In another trial it has been decided that the police made an illegal search at Ragnhildsgade. In general the trials becomes more and more tragicomical and the way the police is defended becomes more and more clearly a theat againt the future of the freedom of expression.
Bullet proof vests and lies for the media
A Swedish mass media source claim that the Danish police issued warnings before COP15 that 5000 10 000 violent activists were coming to Copenhagen to destroy the city. The danger was so extreme that the press was given bullet proof vests to protect themselves and advised to carry them. This maniac police is now protected in the courts and their manipulation of the press and their plans to destroy freedom of expression is presented as unquestionable, as something for ever secret. Was there a plan B? Was there severe plans for an invasion of 5000 to 10 000 violent demonstrators? Has 918 innocent demonstrators been caught in a trap mad by a paranoid police in symbiosis with not only mass media but all left wing parliamentary parties taking the side of the paranoid perspectives giving free room for destroying freedom of expression as we know it?
Many indications points in this direction. Instead of making own reports and politically attacking the threat against democracy imposed by the symbiosis between police, mass media and parliamentary parties the Danish organizations are busy in defending their own name and branding themselves as a respectable or radical organization or subculture. Why oppose repression when it is easier to let the lawyers do that in court and claim you are a victim without political possibilities to counteract the horrendous omnipotent state.
But the Danish state is in this case not that strong. Its strength comes this time primarily from the disinterest among Danish organizations to unite politically against the police-massmedia parliamentary party symbiosis that has caused the extreme level of new kind of ever expanding repression during COP15, not as violent as at some times before but more arbitrary than ever against any demonstrator or spokesperson for an organization.
The problematic left
Those actors one could guess have an interest in politically opposing and building alliances against the repression are yet not willing or unable to do it. In the reports on the blog www.aktivism.info/socialforumjourney it has been revealed how all the parliamentary left wing parties at the begínning supported the police perspective on the conflicts regarding the 12th December demonstrations followed by internal quarrels. In spite of the many facts showing how the symbiosis is constructed between the parliamentary parties, mass media and the police CJA people who have received the report see no possibility in using. Furthermore a gatekeeper at the CJA website proposed censoring my earlier report from the trials as it was to critical towards left wing parties and then publish it on the CJA web site. To some in CJA it is more important to have good relationships to important left wing organizations than to struggle for truth and build a reliable alliance against repression which is not only juridical but also political.
But how come that the groups that are most severely hit by repression are unable to politically go to an offensive against the way the repression is rooted in today's society? This one can ask oneself. It is not new. Very much the same happened after the EU-Summit 2001 but with more tragic consequences. That time the Left party in Sweden was in the leadership of legitimizing the repression through its leader Gudrun Schyman. After the summit the left started to tear each other apart while the negative role of the left party never was addressed. The activists isolated themselves in solidarity groups focusing on immediate juridical and practical help to those in prison. In the end some 50 people were sent to prison for in total 50 years, many of whom were innocent. The left refused to answer the calls for broad anti repression work from the environmental movement except in Finland. Here the last trial after Gothenburg against the leader of the young Greens and a left party youth activist ended in complete victory in spite of that they were accused of being white overalls which had been, a crime in Gothenburg according to Swedish courts that ended with 3 months in prison.
Avoid double standards
At the same time as CJA so far is unable to politically mobilize against the police-media-party symbiosis the attack on ecological groups in Klimaforum seems to be a lot more of interest. I have personally made a detailed critique of the Klimaforum09 with many facts as an attempt at trying to find ways the learn from the experience. But one have to avoid double standards. There is a clear tendency among some of the contributions on the CJA list that one sees no problem in the way CJA acted and only problems on the side of Klimaforum. Furthermore the fact that all formal Danish organizations whether left wing, system critical ecologists or other were against the Reclaim power action is made an invisible fact. Instead of being interested in addressing this political challenge CJA decided in June to further erode the relationship with Danish formal organizations with the omnipotent decision to enter the Bella Center conference building from the outside to disrupt the sessions for one day. CJA did very little to enlarge the support for the action at least in terms of trying to create alliances in anti repression work. Friends of the Earth was fully willing to support the right to do non violent civil disobedience and organize anti repression work even if the omnipotent decision in June made us unsure of the main purpose of the Reclaim power action.
But it seems as CJA discussions only accept black and white positions and that especially those who are politically closest to CJA are regarded as the most important to attack. Thus in the discussion CJA people tend to give Klimaforum and the organizations behind it the whole blame and furthermore in general describing the situation with strong biased words without facts supporting their opinion.
It would be useful if CJA could make a self critical analysis as well as Klimaforum and other actors. Friends of the Earth Sweden tried somewhat desperate to get the different Danish actors to talk to each other and overcome some of the conflicts. As we were in the beginning not directly part of what happened inside Klimaforum09 the matters have to be dealt with by those more directly involved.
Klimaforum platform for antirepression
What is important here is that there are many facts pointing in the exact opposite direction from what has been stated in the postCOP discussion that it is Klimaforum that is the problem excluding important discussions. On the contrary it is among the mass activity organizers the Red Green Alliance (to not talk about the Socialist People´s Party and the Social democrats) and the 12 December Initiative that is the main force excluding efforts to challenge the repression during COP15. When FoE Sweden went to a member of the Red Green Alliance central in the demonstration committee late 12th of December his answer on our call for joint struggle against the repression was that it was not possible. Instead it was Klimaforum that during the night and on the following day on Sunday offered all the help we needed to get a press conference organized with many different organizations that had their members mass arrested. It was an organization central in Klimaforum, Attac Denmark, that was the only formal Danish organization that supported the Reclaim power action. It was at Klimaforum Attac Denmark and the Danish Climate movement that tried to challenge the repression on the 15th of December by uniting movements form all continents addressing invited parliamentary parties on the issue of how to oppose the repression. It was a Klimaofrum two seminars were organized by Friends of the Earth Sweden. Climate Collective and Indymedia on repression of popular movements with a person from Via Campesina from Brasil as one of the speakers. It was at Klimaforum the mobilization for the solidarity actions on 17th and 18th of December against repression got wide support. Excluding these facts from the valuation of the role of Klimaforum is not fair when making such strong claims about exclusion.
Tonight a new "grass root network" will be established in Denmark as a follow up on the experience of Klimaforum. I hope a constructive dialogue can take place between this network and other actors in Denmark. Especially I hope that one of the results can be a joint political campaign against the repression during COP15 including the police-media-party symbiosis. Such a campaign needs to have as an immediate focus on the trial against the police to support the innocent mass arrested and have a peak during the trials against the spokes persons of CJA that will take place in August and some other dates. Such a political campaign against repression is of importance also outside Denmark. There are tendencies that the way the police acted in Copenhagen ends up in tragicomical trials that can be used in such a way that also host countries of summits in the future can see that there is a limit to how far repression can be developed. More important, total arbitrary mass arrest and the preventive arrest if spokes persons of organizations is of historic importance to put an end to. With united strength I hope this is a possibility. Lets make a joke out of the way the established forces now show their total lack of interest in stating the truth and how they make a joke out of themselves claiming that we will never be allowed to know if they had a plan B which was to organize a mass arrest whatsoever.
Lets show them: Wehave a plan A. To jointly struggle against repression.
Tord Björk