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"Wonderful Copenhagen"Submitted by mickfuzz on Sun, 2007-10-07 12:22.
Activists in Denmark have attempted to squat a replacement for the occupied social centre Ungdomshuset which was evicted over six months ago. Throughout the day, thousands of people on the streets in Copenhagen have been meeting heavy police repression, with the result of a total of 436 arrets according to Danish mainstream media. This evening, the G13 press group has issued an statement declaring an end to today's succesfull action. Timeline of events | Photo Galleries: [1][2] |
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A Report of the G13 Action day !
The high organization of the event became immediatly clear to everybody: 4 trucks of different colors (turquese, yellow, green and red) guided 4 big groups of "acitve" demostrants with different roles, strategies and goals. Rostock´s five fingers strategy for the blockades were the fully declared inspiration. In the back of the demo the Christiania truck with families and less active supporters. Other 12 demos took place at the same time in the country, to keep police occupied on different places.
These the groups: turquese was the very mobile group; people were asked to come dressed in black and ready to run and climb. Yellow was the queerfeminist block; that acted as a unique collective body, including everybody and not leaving anyone back. Green was the front block, which acted with plexiglas and rubber protections to push the police lines; activists were warned to be ready to be beated and gassed. Red was the creative block, that acted quickly to realize flash creative actions.
Before the demo started it was repeatedly said that Aktion G13 was a non-violent but confrontative action, and different things were distributed to the different groups: turquese foulards, gloves, lemon for the teargas and some strategy infos to the turquese together with rubber protections; yellow swimming glasses and yellow masks to the yellow one; green ninja masks to the green one; I don´t know what to the red one.
We all started together as a big demo formed by 10,000 people, even if each group had different strategies planned in the long workshops of the last month and a half. At some point a big number of ladders and paint baloons were distributed to the turquese block, and people ran away from the main demo following the blue flags to reach the railway, climb it and irrupt in the house we wanted to take from the back side, while others goups tried on different ways. The turquese block (500-1000 people at this moment) was blocked in the last 100 m by teargasses and reacted throwing paint baloons and finding another way to cross the rails. There a long hide and sick-run and hit-climb and cough session took place, until some of us got beated hardly by police and some arrested, and after 1 hour or more we walked back to join other groups attempting to take the house. In the meantime greens had some non violent clashes with police (demostrants were non violent, while police beated as hard as they could this time) on other sides of the area, as yellows did. Around 5pm a group of 200 yellows broke the police lines and got into the house, which they kept for one hour or so, until they all got surrounded and arrested one by one, while other people were now spread all around the house and the area, trying to force police lines in smaller groups. Police reacted with unexpected brutality, using teargas on every small group of people (also the part of the demo with families), beating hard and arresting a lot. Groups of different sizes acted now indipendently, trying to get the house in every possible way avoiding violent reactions to police madness.
After a long confrontation two-three thousand demonstrans gathered together joining smaller groups and walked back to the square the demo had started 7 hours earlier, deciding to declare the action finished.
436 people got arrested, a record for a single day demo. A lot were injured, some had to be treated for wounds provoked by police sticks, some others were bitten by police dogs. A lot of people got arrested just cause they were there, and they got charged of different made-up bullshit, with the only purpose of justifying the fact they were kept in police stations for 12 hours or so. In at least one case in Valby police station more than 200 demostrants were kept together in a basement, with the hands tied up on their back, sitting on the cold floor, with no possibility to go the toilet, sleep or eat anything until they were released after being questioned. Some witnesses say somehow at some point teargas was thrown in the basement, policemen put gas masks on, leaving the arrested on the floor with their hands still tied. A collective police sueing is expected now.
Even if we were not able to keep the house, Aktion G13 was a clear success. A lot of people gathered in Copenhagen with the declare intent to squat a new house after 7 months of the eviction of Ungdomshuset. Activists came from all Scandinavia, Germany, UK, Poland, and other countries. A mass action showed our desire to take a new house, while the violence used by police against a non violent demo shows their desire to repress strongly a movement that is not losing its strenght after such a long campaign.
"Don´t go home with frustration in your hearts, go home with happiness and joy in your hearts tonight! We took the house with a massive action today, and we kept it for some time. We have showed them our strenght, we have showed them our will to take a new house, and neither mass arrests, nor police brutality or teargas will ever stop us. Today we have demostrated we are still here, and next time, when we will take a house, we will keep it and won´t let them take it back!", an activist said from the truck declaring the action concluded.
Tado