G8: Briefly on Police Repression, June 2

A large international demonstration took part in Rostock yesterday as part of a multitude of events planned to protest the G8 Summit which will start a few days in the town of Heiligendamm on the Baltic Sea.

No doubt, some readers have seen reports on the TV or read accounts in the mainstream media. These reports, like almost everything else which can be found there, tends to be biased and present a picture of the “poor police” being attacked by crazy hooligans. They totally lack any perspective from the other side, including incidents of unprovoked police violence. They also tend to give inaccurate information.

Getting accurate information out to the public is part of what anarchist and independent media should be doing. Copying and pasting things from the mainstream media is not as good as going onto independent sites and getting first hand accounts, so let’s try to assemble news from more reliable sources. Of course sometimes even eyewitnesses are present at different times at different events and can see different things, thus creating contradictory information – but it’s STILL much more reliable than the stuff you get on CNN.

Here is a little news I compiled from witness accounts.

The first instance of police provocation started in the morning in Schwerin. There was to be an antifascist protest there, called in response to one organized by the NPD.

The organizers of this march had been having trouble with bans. Different demos, including the “Star” (or Feeder) March planned for June 7, had been repressed by the authorities. The organizers have been appealing this, and sometimes these bans are overturned. With the march in Schwerin, the decision was that they could have a march, but in a different place than the NPD. The antifascists were to march in the north, the NPD in the south. So people showed up to Schwerin.

When they arrived yesterday (June 2) morning, they were told that the demo was again banned. Police were turning back vehicles and meeting protestors on the street with notices about this which warned they’d be arrested if they returned to the place of the march. Some people went to the train station because organizers wanted to appeal this to the court again. The train station was shortly surrounded by police who penned people in. In the end, more than 100 people were arrested according to the legal team, about 150 according to the people there. Witnesses spoke of four busloads of people being hauled off. Most, if not everybody has been released.

Of course if you watched EuroNews, you’ll have seen the police cordon, but you’ll have been told that “antifascists and fascists squarred off despite the bans”. This supposed clash reported by EuroNews simply didn’t occur. The fascists had a backup plan and started to go elsewhere. Initial reports said there were 5 buses heading to Berlin, where there colleagues had started a spontaneous illegal demo by the Brandenburg Gate; they were also marching in Potsdam. Of course, news of this got out, some antifas went to look for them and, as I’ve heard, the police eventually got to them. 41 buses of assholes from the fascist march went to Rostock. Besides this, there were spontaneous demos of the right in Luneburg, Dortmund and some other places.

It should be also keep in mind that on previous occassions, such as in Genoa, such right wing protestors mingled in the crowds in black hoods and look identical to people from the black block. They often play the role of provocateurs. It is not yet clear what they did yesterday.

What you DON’T read or hear anywhere in the mainstream media is what happened on the demo which precipated the violent clashes. At about 15:00, with the march already underway for some time, the police went into the crowd and deliberately split it into two. In other words, they tried to split some people off from the main march and provoke rioting. They started randomly beating people. Of course, randomly beating people often results in people starting to beat you back in self-defense, usually by throwing things from a safer distance.

People who DIDN’t want to have a violent escalation with the cops tried a tactic to stop them from beating people, which was to surround them and cut THEM off, except that they beat themselves out of that situation and started beating people even more.

For some time the situation calmed down and people went near some stage to listen to people speak and to music, but the police started to charge people near the stage. Again, things had to be thrown.

Many people had left by around 5PM, so the pigs decided to go to the train station and even the shopping mall (!) to harrass the people who were either already going home or just relaxing or trying to get AWAY from the clashes. At some time after 5PM, the speeches had ended, and people wanted to GO, but the police stood by the place which was the only EXIT – with water cannons and pepper gas spray. So it was clear that they didn’t want to let people just GO when they could fence them in and provoke a riot. No, it’s not possible that they’ve been harrassing “troublemakers intent on making riots” for weeks and that they could let them go without having had the riot. They need to say “look, I told you so” to justify their disgusting existence as the chain dogs of the system.

Last night, over 100 people were arrested. Most seem to be released but we are still waiting to hear about a few. Maybe some will be charged with something. The police kept provoking into the night, returning to beat people listening to music at a Reclaim the Streets party.

This of course is just the beginning.
Right now this seems to be the best source of information for quick, up-to-date reports:
http://de.indymedia.org/ticker/en/
We have a couple of articles here too:
https://cia.media.pl/english_news