[Pressrelease] G8: Courts Grant Appeal - Star March Can Happen

[Presswork G8 2007 (english)]

Star March Coalition 

Press Release
May 25th 2007 

*G8 2007 Protests in Germany* 

*Courts Grant Appeal: Star March Can Happen*
The Star March Intends to go all the Way to the Kempinski Hotel
‘State of Emergency’ Does Not Justify a General Ban 

The urgent appeal of the Star March Coalition lodged at the Schwerin Court  
has been successful. The Coalition had lodged a law suit against the general 
demonstration ban issued by the police department. A general injunction over 
a 40 square kilometer area had been designated as a demonstration free zone. 
Such an injunction would have been unprecedented in the history of Germany. 

The Schwerin Court has only granted a partial lift of the injunction. The 
Star March Coalition had registered their final rally at the Kempinski 
Hotel. With this, the protest was to be taken to the addressees: The meeting 
of the Heads of State of the G8. The Court has decided that demonstrations 
are allowed to take place on 4 of 6 of the planned routes and at a distance 
of 200 m from  the fence. 

The Court has explained that the “suspected threats to public security can 
be sufficiently contained with less extreme measures than a general ban.” 
Of course we are happy that our right to demonstrate has been confirmed in 
the first instance. A huge thank-you to the lawyers”, Susanne Spemberg and 
Peter Kromrey of the Star March Coalition explain. There had been a broad 
wave of international criticism in response to the injunction. “However, 
we will continue to question the ban on demonstrations within the area 
sealed off by the fence. We will decide in the next few days whether to 
appeal against the decision.” 

At the beginning of the week the groups affected by the total prohibition of 
all assemblies at the military airport Rostock Laage had also lodged an 
appeal.  In the next days, the organization ‘Jewish Voice’, who had 
registered a rally at the fence on June 5th, will also lodge an appeal. 
“We expect that with the decision to allow the Star March to happen, all 
other bans will be lifted too”, Matthias Monroy of the Gipfelsoli 
Infogruppe states. All organizers have to  make individual cases against the 
ban. 

The Star March Coalition is represented by the Hamburg-based lawyers Carsten 
Gericke, Ulrike Donat and Cornelia Ganten-Lange. “We were all convinced 
from the beginning that a complete ban could never be upheld”, Carsten 
Gericke comments. 

The lawyers critcise that the police have been planning this injunction for 
months: “Other de-escalating and staggered concepts were at no point taken 
into consideration”, it states in the appeal. 

The police had argued that the ban was necessary because of a ‘state of 
emergency’.
A line of argument that invokes a ‘state of emergency’ denies citizens  
their basic rights. The assumption that all large political events demand 
the declaration of a ‘state of emergency’ would be a poor showing for 
the German constitutional State, that could in future regularly curtail 
civil liberties via such injunctions, without sufficient reason to do. 
Injunctions have never stopped assemblies but have only contributed to 
escalation, because not enough space was left for people to articulate their 
protest legally. 

Carlo Paul of the Star March Coalition states,“With the Star March we want 
to make our ideas for another possible world visible. Social 
revolutionaries, globalization critics, peasants, trade unions, the 
environmental movement and radical feminists: on June 7th we will all raise 
our voices against the pernicious politics of the G8.” 

[Star March Coalition] 


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