[fse-esf] Repression Network

[Rollhaeuser]

Dear Organizers of the Berlin EPA,

 

Herewith I would like you to reserve a time slot on 

 

Friday, 22.02.08, in the afternoon 

for the 

meeting of the ESF Repression Network. 

 

Since some of our members are also involved in the Migrants Network I'd like to ask you for a slot, which does not collide with the one of the Migrants Network meeting.

 

 

After the last ESF in Athens most of us, the members of the Antirepression Network, were involved in the preparation as well as the realization and enforcement of the Anti-G8-Protests in Rostock Germany last June. After this big and successful event we want to re-organize our work within the ESF with new spirit and new power.

 

The criminalization of (social) movements is a matter that becomes more and more important for all of us. After Rostock the German authorities for criminal persecution started investigations against about 1.500 people who took part in the protest. Only very few of them have been convicted and nobody has been sentenced to imprisonment without probation. It is the fact of the prosecution itself that doesn't only bind a lot of power of the whole (antiglobalization) movement but that deters a lot of people to take part in several actions of disobedience. And we believe that this is one – if no the main – goal of the persecution authorities. 

 

On the other hand the "War on Terror" must not be forgotten. The EU has launched whole bundles of new (Anti-)Terror Laws. The last were the ones under the German presidency called the Pruem Treaty, which (between others) allows the online access of persecution organs to data bases of other EU countries, provides new control and repression measures against mass protest etc. New directives and laws are under preparation.

 

It is from special interest that the terror laws (old and new) can be used and are already used against social and political movements. The raids in Germany before the G8 summit in Rostock, where the Federal Prosecutor "created" a terrorist organisation of all those preparing not only peaceful protest, are a good example. The Oproer case in Denmark, where an organization is criminalized because of gathering money for liberation movements, is another one. 

 

The criminalization of the movements and the so-called war on terror meet more and more. This is especially the case in circumstances like in the Basque Country where the Spanish state declares a whole mass movement, the one for self-determination, for a terrorist one and throws hundreds of activists, even unarmed struggling, for decades in jail, even tortures them. The use of the terrorist laws in the UK and Germany against political and social movements shows this tendency too.

 

For all these reasons we believe that it is necessary to continue the antirepression work in the ESF process. Seminars on the issues of the criminalization of the movements and the "war on terror" should be part of the program of the 5th ESF.

 

Achim

Network for Political and Social Right, Athens

 

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