RECLAIM POWER ACTION. THE CHAOS AND THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE VIOLENCE OF THE DANISH POLICE

When we arrived at 8 am this morning we heard that the whole of the Friends of the Earth International delegation were forbidden entrance to the conference centre. There's dismay and it's a very bad sign for the rest of the day.

Once the Reclaim Power Action put in place, it starts and the tension rises rapidly.

José Bové, wanting to plead Friends of the Earth's cause beside their President Nimmo Bassey, is taken away by the conference Centre security and stays locked up for a while. Many NGOs observers stay stuck outside, even though they have the “must-have” 1 and 2 level badges.

On the side of Reclaim Power, two coordinated actions must converge. One inside the conference Centre around the CJN (Climate Justice Now!) network, the other, a march that left at 8 am and gathering several thousands of people in the vicinity of the Bella Center. The two actions hope to hold a people's assembly on the places of convergence, a few hundred metres away from the door of the Centre. It's the meaning of the action : reunite the insiders and the outsiders who call for a binding agreement, a diverse responsibility from the North and the South, financial transfers in the long run and mostly a radical change of the current economical model and to give them the opportunity to express, together, their critics and their propositions. The “in” action has to carry the voice of the CJN network and of its members, peasant, feminists and indigenous organisations...to many official delegates present.

About the last plan, it's a success. Right from the beginning of the march, in the corridors of the BC, a crowd of journalists, microphones, video cameras, cameras, flock around the group of activists, and will follow them to their way out. More than a hundred people take part in the action, that brings the whole centre to a boiling point. But the convergence will not occur. The violence of the Danish police came down on the outside protesters from an hour ago. The protesters were arrested before they had even arrived at the Bella Center. The march that left from inside the conference finds itself blocked on the bridge that separates the first group and the local police force beat the protesters they have at arms length. On the other side of the barriers, the blocked protesters are violently mislead by the police. Hundreds of arrests and of injured too.

The police force turn into violent and chaotic agents. The Danish police unleash a disproportionate repression on the groups of protesters that are resolutely pacific, came to join singing and clapping to the yells of “Climate Justice Now”, “Reclaim Power” and “Join the people assembly”.

After 95% exclusion of observers of the civil society for the last two days of the summit, such an attitude throws a profound discredit on the really democratic nature of the United Nations and of the climate negotiations that is carried out in their setting. The participation of the social and citizen movements at the CCNUCC and at different COP and their preparatory reunions are always guaranteed, contrary to other organisations or board of directors, like the WTO or the G8. The NGOs and social movements have always saluted the CCNUCC efforts and developed collaboration and trust relationships with its secretariat.

In this context the treatment inflicted upon the citizen movement for two days now seems incomprehensible. Activists and family of Attac have been molested, beaten, taken away, manu militari, and we are without news from them at a quarter to five this December 16. Staggering pictures of activists dragged on the ground, handcuffed in the freezing cold, hit hard by the police chasing them to the roof of cars... Or how to make aggressive and paranoid the Northern and Southern movement who are fighting in all legality for climate justice, and who simply want to be heard...

Impossible to enter the centre of the conference. The NGOs are admitted on criteria set on discretion and their renowned representatives cry about their privileges (that what happens when the Plebs wants to mix with the elites); you are not cool girls, there's a life after the lobby, it's less glamour, it fuzzes le complexion, brakes the nails and gives cold feet, the perfume of revolt can make the most stubborn of media keel over. Although the march, blocked all day, is about to join the Klimaforum, police cars sweep the area. Tadzio Muller ( see yesterday's post is about to be judged in camera.

Translation : Rachelle Knöbl, Coorditrad