Civic rights breached again
The Gorleben Investigation Committee reports civic rights breached by courts and police again during this Castor transport. Strategy: keep demonstratiors from demonstrating.
Gorleben Investigation Commitee
c/o BI Lüchow-Dannenberg
Drawehnerstr.3
29439 Lüchow
Tel.: 0 58 41-97 94 30
Fax: 0 58 41 - 97 94 40
ea-gorleben@nadir.org
Office hours: Mo. 19:30 - 21 h, answering machine at other times
Media release on the 2003 Castor transport
of 12.11.2003
As with the previous transport in 2002, the police behave fairly moderately during the first few action days. Many of the officers behave in a friendly way. Small clashes along the transport route end with personal data being taken down or bans from certain places. But just as in 2002, the officers, men and women, put on a different mask as the Castor train arrives in Lüneburg. Already the sit-down blockade in Rohstorf is very brutally broken up and 150 people are detained.
So far, so bad. About 60 people are taken to the prisoner collection point in Lüneburg. After the police fail in more than 5 hours to present files to the court about the occurrence, the judge there completely correctly rules that the detention must be ended. This is based on a law that requires immediate testing of the withdrawal of freedom and if the police can present no reasons for it, the measure must be ended.
The procedure is completely different in Neu Tramm. There, the prisoners were heard by the court, and then very reluctantly, after seven hours. The procedure took all night and for almost everyone ended with the ruling that they have to stay in the collection centre until the Castor is in the interim storage hall. For many that meant 15 hours stay in very bad conditions. What made this special was that police and court cited statements by police spies who had taken place in an open meeting before the sit-down blockade. They claimed to have heard there that after this blockade they intended to take part in others. In police-German that reads ?they represent a danger?. Several points need to be massively criticised here. 1. The spies were questioned by judges, but no single lawyer, much less those concerned, got to see any of these witnesses or could question them. This contradicts severely the right to be properly heard in court. 2. The court has to investigate each individual case; police statements were blanket-applied to all. This even though the spies had stated that not all the later rail blockaders were at the open meeting. 3. The court has again allowed itself to be drawn into the police strategy to keep as many demonstrators as possible in the prisoner collection point during the transport to prevent them demonstrating. The deprivations of freedom in Rohstorf are a case in point. The more than 100 other prisoners did not fare better.
The investigation committee is especially angry at this procedure because in several phone conversations the court had pledged to see to fast processing this year and shared the view that withdrawal of freedom begins at the arrest in the field, i.e. that the time counts from there.
The closer the Castor got, the unfriendlier and rougher the police got. Paramedics reported more than 80 injured. We regard as a farce the role of the socalled conflict managers. In Gusborn they asked the demonstrators to make way for a clearing tractor, then they were allowed to sit back on the road. All this with particular emphasis that the police were greatly interested in non-violent outcomes. At precisely that moment, three water cannon moved up ?non-violently?.
Pretty dumb.
On both routes police completely forgot that they have to call on people to leave before they?re allowed to remove them. The law also requires the police to start by using the least means. Whether bashing, kicking into legs and hitting with batons are part of that answers itself.
After the transport had passed through Quickborn, police arrested 54 people there who had expressed their protest and rage. Police accuse them of serious breach of the peace.
Some were people who?d spent the night in the community house. The police, anyway, had found their long-sought criminal offenders and held them for more than 10 hours. Whether the accusation can be sustained we?ll have to see, bnut probably we?ll find it in the next demonstration ban edict in the danger prognosis.
Many more breaches of the law by the state power could be listed here: confiscated tractors and whole fields, far-flung road closures outside the demo ban zone, orders to leave to forest workers and confiscation of their tools, despite a permit to do forest work on their land, as well as many hindrances of lawyers who worked for us on location, and so on and so forth.
The closer the Castor gets, the further away gthe basic rights go, and all that for a nuclear economy ? that is the conclusion wwe again have to draw after this transport.
Silke Neumann (translated by Diet Simon)
c/o BI Lüchow-Dannenberg
Drawehnerstr.3
29439 Lüchow
Tel.: 0 58 41-97 94 30
Fax: 0 58 41 - 97 94 40
ea-gorleben@nadir.org Office hours: Mo. 19:30 - 21 h, answering machine at other times
Media release on the 2003 Castor transport
of 12.11.2003
As with the previous transport in 2002, the police behave fairly moderately during the first few action days. Many of the officers behave in a friendly way. Small clashes along the transport route end with personal data being taken down or bans from certain places. But just as in 2002, the officers, men and women, put on a different mask as the Castor train arrives in Lüneburg. Already the sit-down blockade in Rohstorf is very brutally broken up and 150 people are detained.
So far, so bad. About 60 people are taken to the prisoner collection point in Lüneburg. After the police fail in more than 5 hours to present files to the court about the occurrence, the judge there completely correctly rules that the detention must be ended. This is based on a law that requires immediate testing of the withdrawal of freedom and if the police can present no reasons for it, the measure must be ended.
The procedure is completely different in Neu Tramm. There, the prisoners were heard by the court, and then very reluctantly, after seven hours. The procedure took all night and for almost everyone ended with the ruling that they have to stay in the collection centre until the Castor is in the interim storage hall. For many that meant 15 hours stay in very bad conditions. What made this special was that police and court cited statements by police spies who had taken place in an open meeting before the sit-down blockade. They claimed to have heard there that after this blockade they intended to take part in others. In police-German that reads ?they represent a danger?. Several points need to be massively criticised here. 1. The spies were questioned by judges, but no single lawyer, much less those concerned, got to see any of these witnesses or could question them. This contradicts severely the right to be properly heard in court. 2. The court has to investigate each individual case; police statements were blanket-applied to all. This even though the spies had stated that not all the later rail blockaders were at the open meeting. 3. The court has again allowed itself to be drawn into the police strategy to keep as many demonstrators as possible in the prisoner collection point during the transport to prevent them demonstrating. The deprivations of freedom in Rohstorf are a case in point. The more than 100 other prisoners did not fare better.
The investigation committee is especially angry at this procedure because in several phone conversations the court had pledged to see to fast processing this year and shared the view that withdrawal of freedom begins at the arrest in the field, i.e. that the time counts from there.
The closer the Castor got, the unfriendlier and rougher the police got. Paramedics reported more than 80 injured. We regard as a farce the role of the socalled conflict managers. In Gusborn they asked the demonstrators to make way for a clearing tractor, then they were allowed to sit back on the road. All this with particular emphasis that the police were greatly interested in non-violent outcomes. At precisely that moment, three water cannon moved up ?non-violently?.
Pretty dumb.
On both routes police completely forgot that they have to call on people to leave before they?re allowed to remove them. The law also requires the police to start by using the least means. Whether bashing, kicking into legs and hitting with batons are part of that answers itself.
After the transport had passed through Quickborn, police arrested 54 people there who had expressed their protest and rage. Police accuse them of serious breach of the peace.
Some were people who?d spent the night in the community house. The police, anyway, had found their long-sought criminal offenders and held them for more than 10 hours. Whether the accusation can be sustained we?ll have to see, bnut probably we?ll find it in the next demonstration ban edict in the danger prognosis.
Many more breaches of the law by the state power could be listed here: confiscated tractors and whole fields, far-flung road closures outside the demo ban zone, orders to leave to forest workers and confiscation of their tools, despite a permit to do forest work on their land, as well as many hindrances of lawyers who worked for us on location, and so on and so forth.
The closer the Castor gets, the further away gthe basic rights go, and all that for a nuclear economy ? that is the conclusion wwe again have to draw after this transport.
Silke Neumann (translated by Diet Simon)
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