Incident at the March 8 Demo in Warsaw

For the first time in 10 years, participants in the March 8 Manifa were detained by the cops. 5 members of the radical block had to spend time in jail yesterday due to a ridiculous police action.

Just at the end of the demo, a few members of the radical block wanted to leave the demo through the street before the end point. They went out of the demo and onto the sidewalk to dismantle the banner, which was on plastic broom handles, and collect flags. A couple of people, including myself, went to the sidewalk to ask if they were leaving. All of a sudden, a rather deranged cop started yelling at people to get back, get back! Nobody even knew what was happening.

Within seconds there were a bunch of police. Suddenly, it turned out that one cop noticed that one guy had "a chain" - it was one of those chains you put on your belt loop that holds your wallet. Some chaos broke out as the cop was telling other cops that "he has a weapon", etc. etc.

A couple of the young people on the march had chains or pieces of chains worn as belts or decorations and two of them, seeing what was going on, quickly decided to drop them to the ground. In short, the police went whacko and started to demand people empty their pockets. But this was a very selective procedure, which they limited to young males who had a certain look (not punkish but rather heavy-metalish). There were, as one could expect on women's day, a number of women surrounded by the police but when one, who said she didn't have anything in her pockets and asked if she needs to empty her bag, she was told by police that "they weren't worried about her". In fact, no women were searched or asked to empty their pockets, despite the fact that all had rather large bags. (A couple also were visibly wearing chains, even while visiting the police station.)

One guy emptied his pockets and had three screws there. These screws were used to hold the plastic broomsticks together, one on top of another so the sticks could be twice as long. He was removing the screws from the sticks when the police started going crazy. He was also arrested... for having the screws.

A strong argument broke out between some anarchists who arrived on the scene and the police. The police claimed that "nobody was allowed to move", and something to the extent that "their freedom was being suspended". They were bullshiting people that they should be ID'd because "they're probably on the wanted list" when people refused to comply with the police orders. Of course it turned out that one of our "old friends" arrived who knows us and had an eye on us the whole time. He was saying that "we're always making trouble"; early in the day before the demo started they told us to get rid of our banner, but we didn't. All sorts of arguments broke out and they threatened to take us all in unless two people admitted to being the owners of the little chains. Two people did it and altogether five people were detained and taken away in an unmarked, undercover van.

3 people were minors and had to go to another facility and wait for parents. We went to the police station were the other two were being held. On the way we passed by groups of fascists running after gays to beat them up and some people followed one group. The fascist chases of gays passed right by the police, who didn't blink an eye at this. They apparently already had enough dangerous criminals arrested for the day.

At the police station we were able to see our friends through the bars giving a long lecture to the police on many topics, such as the criminal justice system, how some crimes where not at all wrong, about the resocalization of anti-social people without prisons... actually it was rather interesting and helped passed the hours of time waiting.

The first police officer who reacted to the anarchists gave false testimony that they had put chains on their fist as if looking for a fight.

A couple of organizers from the Manifa came and complained at the cops for obviously picking on people because of their looks and they demanded to see the "dangerous weapons" that people had. Of course it didn't happen, but it is written in the police documents "chain for a wallet" and "three screws". The two adults are charged with going to a demonstration with "dangerous weapons". One of the organizers of the Manifa and a couple of other women all declared that they have much more dangerous items in their bags but this logic made no impression on the cops.