Castor: Poorly trained police were violent

11 - 12 November 2003 in the Wendland, 5 km outside Gorleben:

That night two villages are completely encircled.
· There is a road blockade in Grippel, actually more of a street party, there is not a person with a hidden face, three conflict managers from the church on location and the same number from the police.
· In Laase cultural presentations are running non-stop in the “Palace of the Muses”. Harry Potter reading “until the good wins” and other programmes.
Without a single announcement, several squads of police move in, roughly remove people from the footpath in Grippel, and the first announcement by the police that we hear (there was no announcement at all in Laase) is:
"You have all been placed under arrest.” It is 22 past midnight. Then individuals are pulled out of the groups; we can’t tell whether there are spies among them. The village inhabitants withdraw in several groups into a house on the street that is part of the Castor route. Ultimately some 30 Laase and Grippel residents are in the house. The water cannon truck drives on to this private plot, the house is lit up with spotlights from the outside, no one can come out without getting into the police encirclement.
After the first demonstrators of both genders are thrown over the fence, the fence to the neighbouring plot is destroyed without permission of the owner and the people are herded off the road into the circle. People can enter the police stockade “voluntarily”, or they are carried, some roughly – nose- and head-twisting grips are seen. On the opposite plot four police chains line up and two officers sneak around at the rear side of the yard because “unfavourable circumstances make that necessary”, as they say. The woman owner of the property says she will fetch her husband; when he appeared all police moved off the plot.

This home owner demanded in vain to speak to the police leader that same night to get an explanation of the legality of the police actions on his property. The police officers actively involved in carrying people off his private property and occupying it have “forgotten” who their leader was.
At the same time police officers encircled the village of Laase and blocked off all access roads to cars. Pedestrians are allowed in, but not allowed to leave again. Pedestrians wanting to walk their dogs are prevented from stepping back into the house by the same police who just before saw them leave it. Several properties are lit up with floodlights. In the encircled village there are some properties which are encircled separately and on the roads there are additional police chains. On the roads are several encirclements into which groups of people are put who moved on the streets. Others are allowed to pass.

Who are the politicians who allow police leaders to misinform their officers and so to indoctrinate them that they are terrified before the assignment?

The officers acted disoriented – “Is this here a village or a town?” – looked out of their depth, had hasty questions (probably to their leaders) “there’s someone here … what should I do?" and unreasonable; children of 13 and 15 were not allowed to go home. Only after a woman neighbour intervened, was a child allowed to walk home accompanied by a policeman, who mocked the child for its fears. Others walked around aimlessly on the road. At about 5 in the morning, when the Castor convoy drove past Laase, there were still several 13-year-old girls in the prisoner van directly by the route. The police conflict manager had no influence on the police actions and when asked about this replied, “Yes, I’m just a joke.”

The Member of Parliament of The Greens was at the culture presentations in the Palace of the Muses and was also prevented from leaving the village.

As house owner, I was stopped from entering my own house. Although I was able to document my identity, it took a long discussion before I could step onto our plot with a visitor of our house.

We were horrified that police men and women are not trained to handle non-violent resistance. Many acted on mere suspicion (“it was assumed that acts of violence were planned in Grippel and Laase”, said comments in the local EJZ newspaper). We were horrified to hear that police men and women are told, “There are villages in the county where resistance nests have formed where police were received with acid.”

Apparent lack of concept is the concept: brutal arrests in Quickborn, relaxed chats in Splietau, removal of people in Gusborn on Monday 11.11, street party in Gusborn on Tuesday 12.11.

The Castors drove past Laase at 5 a.m. The policeman I had talked with for a long time because he had not let me join the people in the circle at the entrance to the village, said, “I share your opinion”, turned around and moved off with his team.

You’re standing here wrongly, I’m living here correctly, said a resident to a police woman in Laase

The sell-out of basic rights in the previous transports was followed during this one by “physical” experiences. Thirty people in the house in Grippel lit up by the water cannon truck saw how the circle on the paddock next door was filled violently and non-violently with people by the police (there were about 1,000 in the circle) and feared they would be dragged out of the house.

People in Laase, on the street, attending the culture fest or residents, placed “under arrest” for no reason and unable to move. The organisers in the tent no longer allowed to leave the village. Children of 13 and 15 not allowed to go home.

The pastor of our church congregation, identified by the church as a conflict manager, was encircled together with his congregation on the church plot (the old church yard of the congregation) and pushed around in an undignified way.

"The resistance was fair,” said the top police officer, Herr Niehoerster, "and the transport on the last stretch in the dark was also a compliment to the resistance.” The official commentary on the mobiles of the officers when the Castors had been driven into the Gorleben storage compound was: “The lolly’s been sucked.” – Does it fit with this language that when arrests were made in the Gusborn area of juveniles, who were out in large numbers this time, targeted grips and kicks to the genitals were seen?

Non-violent, creative resistance was met by a number of police ready for violence. Many police officers we pay with our taxes bash, encircle and spy on us. The methods of identity checks are no different to the years of bullying at the former border between the two Germanies. "You can’t travel into here today” – quote from a policeman.

We were happy to see that young girls in the Grippel encirclement would not be intimidated and keeping their gazes locked with those of the police sang their song: “You too are a human being, you too have a heart, maybe you have children, wake up, turn around.”

We were horrified to hear from a police loudspeaker, “There are unaccompanied children here; if their parents don’t pick them up now here at the meeting point, they’ll be taken to the welfare”, while at the same time the people who wanted to fetch children were stopped from getting to the meeting place announced.

In this context the commentary of assignment chief Niehoerster is inappropriate: “The few opportunities to surprise must be used.” So generous are the thanks of the presumed victor to the “losers”.

But it is not yet established who lost that night or whether there was a victor at all. What is known is that people no older than 18 said, this is not “us good ones against those bad ones, we have to learn even more to differentiate.” Also known is that police officers and conflict managers were aghast at the actions taken and made that known. Known, too, is that nationwide there is the erroneous assumption that the Castors are driven into the mine; even respected media such as the ARD children’s channel and the Frankfurter Rundschau daily newspaper report like this. Who knows that the Castors are kept in a corrugated iron hall with a narrow concrete layer that is not secured against aircraft crashes. Who knows that there is no access to the operating manual? Who knows that there is no plan to deal with any disaster?

It is certain that although so far no demonstrators ready to do violence were found in Laase, police acted out of all proportion. It is certain that the fact that I live in Laase is enough to turn me into a potential criminal.

If you weren’t here, we wouldn’t be here, either, said a police woman to a Laase resident.

Does that mean we’re supposed to disappear, that we’re no longer allowed to live here?

We see it as our task to inform because this mosr recent trsnaport has reached new dimensions. Loss of democratic basic rights for whole villages without reason, just on suspicion. Lawyers not being let through to people needing them. First aid vehicles removed. Telephone calls out of the encirclements ring, but the connection remains silent. The name of the police leader is “forgotten” and police vandalism grows.

We fear that if these actions – which anticipate the Lower Saxony Danger Averting Law that has not yet been ratified – are taken in all federal states, it will be too late to resist them.

We fear that if we put up no more resistance, the Gorleben route will be declared a “zone” and we who live along it will be regularly encircled.

We fear that in the long run these transports can only be asserted with measures that no longer rule out development of a dictatorship.

The waste has to go somewhere, after all.

The fact that there is no final storage although atomic waste has been produced since 1945 shows that there will be no safe final storage in the foreseeable future, either. No German political party dares to admit that there is now no solution anywhere in the world for the storage of atomic waste. The danger that atomic waste that is dug into the ground “somewhere” will in the long or short term link up with ground water cannot be ruled out. Our ground water is linked with the global water system. So atomic waste storage is no regional problem of the county of Lüchow-Dannenberg, as the politicians are trying to make us believe. The atomic power stations have to be switched off now.
e-Mail::  tagungshaus.laase@t-online.de ¦
Eyewitness report by Margarete Pauschert, Leony Renk, posted in German at  http://germany.indymedia.org/2003/11/66946.shtml
Translated by Diet Simon