[Gipfelsoli Newsletter] Copenhagen

Fri Dec 18 00:13:08 CET 2009

- CJA calls for an announced demo tomorrow at 15.00
- Nearly 2,000 signatures in less than 24 hours: International petition
- VIDEO RELEASED OF COPENHAGEN DELEGATES AGRESSIVELY INTIMIDATED BY POLICE
- TWO ARRESTED AFTER CLIMBING
- Activists reveal tactics used by police to 'decapitate' Copenhagen climate
protests
- Gregoire: Copenhagen cops learn from WTO
- From Pittsburgh to Copenhagen: Actions for the Earth in Solidarity with the
COP15 Protesters
- Solidarity demo in Copenhagen - 16.12
- Account of mass arrest experience on Dec 12th
- Most Danes back hardline climate summit policing: poll

----------------------------------------------------------------------
CJA calls for an announced demo tomorrow at 15.00

The cop 15 comes to an end - and it has not coped with what politicians
promised. There is no treaty that might preserve us from the catastrophic
consequences of runaway climate change. The summit's agenda didn't even include
real solutions to the climate crisis - such as tackling economic growth, leaving
fossile fuels in the ground and implementing food souverainity. Neither has it
adressed the ecological debt the global north has with the south or measures
for a just transition towards a low carbon economy and society.

Furthermore, critics and adversairies of the climate politics carried forward by
the industrialized nations, market-based false solutions as carbon offsetting
and emissions trading have suffered from a whol array of repression: Delegates
from the civil society have been excluded from the process, some of them beaten
up by the police when trying to join the peoples assembly for climate justice
outside the Bella Center.

More: http://indymedia.dk/articles/1922

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Nearly 2,000 signatures in less than 24 hours: International petition demands
‘Release Tadzio Mueller and the other climate prisoners!’

Press Release for Immediate Release

Thursday, December 17 2009

15.00 hours
Copenhagen, Denmark

In response to the arrest of Climate Justice Action spokesperson Tadzio Mueller,
as well as over a thousand others taking part in protests around the UN Climate
Conference in Copenhagen, hundreds of academics, journalists and members of
civil society have signed an Open Letter of protest to the Danish Parliament.

More: http://www.gipfelsoli.org/Repression/8084.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------
VIDEO RELEASED OF COPENHAGEN DELEGATES AGRESSIVELY INTIMIDATED BY POLICE

CLIMATE JUSTICE ACTION
PRESS RELEASE
17th December 2009

Video came to light today of COP15 delegates being aggresively intimidated by
police. (1) http://bit.ly/6DOBHe

Many delegates who marched out of the UN talks during Wednesday’s protests were
intimidated and threatened with arrest by Danish police, preventing them from
joining a People’s Assembly outside the conference.

Danish police were filmed as they surrounded and attacked official delegates who
were attempting to join activists and other accredited delgates to form a
Peoples’ Assembly calling for climate justice.

More: http://www.gipfelsoli.org/Repression/Copenhagen_2009/8080.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------
TWO ARRESTED AFTER CLIMBING

BANNER DROP IN THE HEART OF COPENHAGEN

Two activists from got arrested after an 'Egality' action, dropping a banner in
Copenhagen's town hall square today (see pictures attached). (1) (2) The
Banner, 8x5 meters, shows two arrows, "democracy" and "Copenhagen", pointing in
opposite directions.

James Sadri, an Egality activist that participated in the action, said: "The
fight for democracy is world wide: in Iran, my cousins are struggling for
democracy, and here in Copenhagen we are doing the same."

More: http://www.gipfelsoli.org/Repression/Copenhagen_2009/8089.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Activists reveal tactics used by police to 'decapitate' Copenhagen climate
protests

Danish police used wire traps, deployed undercover officers and detained people
in cages to ‘decapitate’ protests in Copenhagen, activists claim

Danish police used wire traps, deployed undercover officers and detained people
in cages they called “Guantanamo junior” to “decapitate” climate protests in
Copenhagen this week, activists claimed today.

The details of police tactics came as three of the spokespeople for the
campaigning group behind yesterday’s protests around the Bella conference
centre, where UN climate talks are taking place, were charged and imprisoned
following preliminary hearings.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/17/copenhagen-police-tactics-revealed

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Gregoire: Copenhagen cops learn from WTO

Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire is working the Copenhagen climate summit to
market Washington's "green" economy, but is finding Danish police have learned
lessons from Seattle's men and women in blue.

"To the person, they have seen the film of WTO," Gregoire said, referring to
demonstrations and riots at the World Trade Organization ministers meeting in
Seattle a decade ago.

The Danes share Seattle's appreciation of the right to dissent, Gregoire added
in a phonecall with reporters. But they move quickly to thwart potentially
violent actions -- a lesson learned from the "Battle of Seattle."

"They also saw when you allow it to go too far, the consequences are severe,"
Gregoire added. "Nothing has gotten out of control."

Protesters did try to disrupt one meeting attended by Gregoire, but she said the
disruption was quickly suppressed.

More: http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/archives/188447.asp

----------------------------------------------------------------------
>From Pittsburgh to Copenhagen: Actions for the Earth in Solidarity with the
COP15 Protesters

The United Nations COP15 Climate Conference is taking place in Copenhagen (from
December 7-18, 2009). In Pittsburgh, individuals from a variety of local
networks organized multiple actions with a diversity of tactics to stand in
solidarity with the protesters in COP15 and to demand solutions to the
suffering of our planet and inhabitants.

More: http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=2009cop15-solidarity

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Solidarity demo in Copenhagen - 16.12

Demonstration showing solidarity with political prisoners took place in
Copenhagen at night on December 16.

Several dozens of people came to show their support to political prisoners.
Demonstration happened in front of the Vestre Faengsel prison's gate between 22
and 23 hours. In this prison several persons who were arrested during climate
protests are kept. They will face different charges.

More: http://indymedia.dk/articles/1900

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Account of mass arrest experience on Dec 12th

On Saturday 12th December, myself and my friend were arrested along with 966
other protestors whilst participating in a peaceful climate change protest in
Copenhagen. We were never given any explanation as to why we were arrested and
were treated abusively by the Danish police. In total, we were detained for 8
and a half hours.
In the attached document, myself and my friend have written up a chronological
account of what happened. This includes examples of illegal behaviour by police
and breaches of human rights. The Danish police must be held to account for
their actions. We must not let their disgraceful and illegal tactics set a
prcedent for future police operations at peaceful demonstrations.

More: http://indymedia.dk/articles/1909

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Most Danes back hardline climate summit policing: poll

COPENHAGEN, Dec 17 (AFP) Six out of 10 Danes say they approve of the
controversial preventive detention of climate protesters at the ongoing UN
summit in Copenhagen, according to a poll published on Thursday.

Some 58 percent of people questioned in the Megafon survey for the Politiken
daily and the TV2 network said they backed police's new powers of pre-emptive
arrest which enabled them to detain hundreds of environmental activists during
protests on the sidelines of the 12-day conference.

The poll found 32 percent of those surveyed disapproved of the pre-emptive
arrests made by police as a result of legislation passed by lawmakers shortly
before the gathering began on December 7. The rest did not express an opinion.

More: http://www.spacedaily.com/2006/091217130836.rx2v5sdj.html