[852] in peace2
Europe: live ammunition and agents provocateur
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Aimee L Smith)
Mon Jun 25 00:13:07 2001
Message-Id: <200106250413.AAA22714@nerd-xing.mit.edu>
To: peace-list@MIT.EDU
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 00:13:02 -0400
From: Aimee L Smith <alsmith@MIT.EDU>
REAL BULLETS:
On Fri, June 15 during the protests in Gothenburg, Sweden
against the EU and Pres. Bush's visit, police wounded three,
one critically, with live ammunition.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1391000/1391007.stm
http://sweden.indymedia.org/
http://www.democracynow.org/archive/index.html (June 18, 2001)
FAKE PROTESTORS:
Today, at the anti-WB protests in Barcelona, the Associated
Press carried a report of the use of agents provocateur
to create a justification to clear a park. (Undercover
police were also used in a similar way in Prague, for
information gathering in Phili and I saw some in Boston
at the Debate protests at UMASS last October. )
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=48820&group=webcast
According to AP Police Starts Riot in Barcelona (english)
Sunday 24 Jun 2001
author: KERNAN TURNER, Associated Press Writer
summary
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) - Riot police made what appeared to be an
unprovoked attack Sunday on anti-globalization protesters gathered
in a city park following a midday march down a main boulevard. At
least 32 people were slightly injured and 19 were arrested.
Thousands of screaming and shouting demonstrators, some with small
children, fled in panic as the police pushed into the crowd behind
shields, wielding truncheons and firing blank gunshots.
``We raised our arms and shouted, 'Peace, Peace,' but they just
kept coming,'' said a woman who identified herself as Yolanda.
The march along Passeig de Gracia and rally at the Plaza de Cataluna
- along with other weekend activities - were organized to coincide
with a World Bank (news - web sites) meeting originally scheduled for
this week. Officials canceled the meeting last week to avoid violent
protests that have marred meetings of global and regional institutions
in the past two years.
The march was largely peaceful, but some store windows were broken
along the route, among them a McDonald's restaurant and a Swatch
store. Small groups of men and women taunted riot police.
Thousands of other demonstrators joined the marchers at the park
following the march. They had been peacefully listening to speakers
and chanting slogans when the police swept through the plaza.
The police charged the crowd after a small group of masked men and
women who appeared to be police agents staged a fight at the edge of
the park in full view of a line of riot police standing in front of
police vans. A few dozen demonstrators were pulled into the violence.
``Police provoked the fight. They were part of it,'' said Ada Colau,
a spokeswoman for the Campaign Against the World Bank, one of the
protest organizations.
Reporters watched as the police appeared to use the staged scuffle
as bait to pull protesters into it and then use it as a pretext to
charge into the park. A second charge emptied the park within minutes.
The masked assailants, some of them apparently wearing earphones,
had gathered in groups on the fringes of the protest march as it
arrived at the park after passing down a dozen blocks of the boulevard.
They were wearing knapsacks and carrying sticks, but were able to
walk freely past police, pull on their masks and position themselves
between the edge of the crowd in the park and the police lines 25
yards away.
The fight began when one man grabbed another and pulled him to the
ground. Others from the same group began kicking and slugging each
other.
When demonstrators saw what was going on and joined the fight, the
police charged into the park. The men and women involved in the scuffle
walked through the police line and boarded the vans.
A reporter asked one of them if they were police. He at first said
yes, and then said no, before walking undeterred by police to the
vans.
State television said 19 people were arrested, and the news agency
Efe quoted emergency medical services as saying 32 were slightly
injured with bumps and bruises.
Anti-globalization activists from a potpourri of organizations have
been showing up at summits of the World Trade Organization (news - web
sites), International Monetary Fund (news - web sites) and the World
Bank, institutions they claim widen the gap between rich and poor.
Some protests resulted in violent clashes with the police, most recently
at the European Summit held in Goteborg, Sweden, this month, when several
people were wounded by gunshots fired by the police.
