Clothes (don’t) make the activist

Two days ago Chief Inspector of Copenhagen Police, Per Larsen, was a guest on the show “Deadline” to discuss the police’s methods during the COP15 summit. As I wrote earlier, the police decided to kettle a whole section of a huge march of 100.000 protesters last Saturday and detain people indiscriminately. People were forced to sit on the cold asphalt for hours with their hands cable tied behind their backs. Several people urinated on themselves because they weren’t allowed to use a bathroom. Of a total of 968 detainees that day, only 3 were charged.

The protests kept taking place though. And the police kept using their new powers. Two days ago, they stopped and searched entire city buses and detained people who looked like they might be activists. I’m not making this up. According to a newly adopted law, Danish police can detain people for up to 12 hours for looking like they might want to do something at some point.

So Chief Inspector Per Larsen came to “Deadline” to talk about this with defense attorney Thorkild Høyer. Høyer felt that the new law gives the police practically limitless powers which the police are using to the fullest. When the host asked Larsen how you can know who to single out when you go into a bus, he replied the key is to “have a nose for it”. And I’m not making that up either.

Same Larsen earlier said about the 968 detainees that “there were many foreigners among them which also indicates that [the police] got the right ones”. (Foreigner = baaaaad.)

Høyer argued that the police were wrong to judge people based solely on their appearance and that people in business suits never would have been subjected to this kind of treatment.

The very next day this was put to the test. Two Greenpeace activists showed up at a formal dinner at Christiansborg Castle, hosted by the royal family and attended by 100 heads of state. They wore formal evening wear – and marched right past the photographers and into the castle. Once inside, they pulled out their signs saying “Politicians talk. Leaders act.” You can see some photos here.

There was plenty of police around. I’m sure you can imagine the security detail for the royal family and 100 heads of state. But these were nice looking people. You know, establishment – people who don’t look like they might do something at some point.

Copenhagen before and after

(Courtesy of Camilla Brodersen.)

Went to a COP15 protest and didn’t get arrested

I went to the big COP15 protest yesterday and didn’t get arrested. Sweet. According to Danish media, 968 other activists weren’t as lucky.

Yes, you read correctly: 968 people. Most of them were arrested when the police blocked off the last part of the march not very long after we took off from the Parliament building. Apparently someone had thrown rocks at the police and fireworks. I haven’t yet heard what else happened that prompted the police to mass arrest protesters, cable tie their hands on their backs and sit them down on the cold asphalt for hours.

Of course, the police don’t need any more reason to do what they did, thanks to a newly adopted law. Now they can detain people just because they look like they might do something at some point. Or because someone else did something.

I was really lucky, because I hadn’t been very far from the very tail of the march. I actually heard two blasts of fireworks, but didn’t really make anything of it, because my boyfriend slash bodyguard and I had just decided to step out of the protest for a little while anyway and get warm at his brother’s place. Once there, we watched TV as the police “closed” the protest from behind. I really didn’t imagine they would cut in the march itself and surround people like they did. We went out again before we saw that the police had surrounded the tail and started the mass arrests. When we joined the protest again, it was farther down the street and we didn’t see what was going on at the back.

968 people. The day before that, 67 people were arrested for a total of 1 broken window. Most of the 968 have been released again as the police don’t have anything to charge them with.

There were about 100.000 people on the streets yesterday. I heard people from all over the world. I don’t know how many policemen were there, but I swear I’ve never seen more uniforms at a protest before. They were all over the place, and at McDonald’s and KFC they were literally standing shoulder to shoulder. For my part, I was there mostly for the right to protest – of course I care about the environment, but this “civil disturbance law” really creeped me out. As did all those uniforms yesterday.

The protest itself was really good though. A lot of enthusiasm and creative signs and costumes. There was good music too and it wasn’t so cold either in that sea of people. After four hours and 6 slow kilometers, my bad back wasn’t having it anymore, so we went home after we reached the congress center at the end. And then we saw on TV what had happened at the back. Creepy, I tell you. This is what we mean when we say the “civil disturbance law” criminalises peaceful protests.

You can see a clip from the protest here.

More info and links to photos here. (an Indy-site)

How much for some right to assembly?

I thought people here would be smarter. On several occasions I was even very condescendingly told that we, the people of the Balkans, were savages and that Europe should have just put up a fence around us until we all killed each other, in stead of letting us flee to the extremely civilized West (although I found myself in the North), which was centuries ahead of us. Also, back in Yugoslavia we looked up to the West. So I thought people here would be smarter and that this was a safe place for me.

Today I felt really, really unsafe for the first time in years. Actually, things went haywire already when parliament began budget negotiations. One day far-right Danish People’s Party (DPP) suggests to offer non-Western (!) foreigners 100.000 DKK (almost 13.500 €) to leave the country and we all kind of laugh at it, the next day it’s a done deal: the government has backed it up.

And even before that the government introduced the so-called “lout package” or “civil disturbance package”; a law that authorizes the police to arrest people because they look like they might do something at some point. Or because someone else is doing something. Officially, the idea was to keep violent “climate bullies” in check during the upcoming summit in December. The law was passed today. Extremely little attention had been given to it by the media, considering how invasive it is.

When the daily newspaper Berlingske Tidende recently ran a story about the police printing free post cards with the words “Klokken er…” on the front – the equivalent to “You have the right to remain silent”, or as a fellow blogger put it: “We have the right to silence you” – the paper made it sound like it was so nice by the police to provide this service and scare people from going to legal protests because they could get arrested for looking like they might do something at some point. And the whole time this law was called the “lout package”, even by the media (actually, Danish media is notorious for NOT asking any questions), when what it actually does is authorize the police to arrest people who aren’t doing anything. Except for taking part in a protest, that is.

In the past few weeks, there have been almost daily articles in newspapers about how full the prisons will be during COP15 and how bad the conditions are in the prisons and how uncomfortable it will be for all those vast protesters that the police already now know they will arrest (would a drunk be able to resist an open bar?). And we’re supposed to believe those aren’t scare tactics?

Today we find out that the government and far-right DPP plan to use this law to make it easier to deport foreigners from Denmark, regardless of residence and work permit and the number of years spent here. Sure, lawyers say that would be in violation of international conventions, but who cares? Somehow, my Danish citizenship fails to make me feel entirely safe.

So I was clearly mistaken when I assumed that people would be smarter here. I don’t know whether the majority is closing its eyes at this or is simply delighted to lose its civil rights, like in the case of Berlingske Tidende above.

I don’t know where it went wrong. What excuse can people here possibly have for becoming such assholes and voting for such a government? All doors are open to them in respect to education, traveling, learning, having financial and social security, you name it. Did they become assholes because they’re just too rich to know any other worry in the world than oh how unfair it is having to pay taxes and contribute to society?

I knew a guy who’s a member of the ruling party Venstre and who even ran for office in the recent local elections. And he’s like that. Born with a silver spoon up his hiney. He calls taxes organized crime and says the world would be so much better if the government let it be up to the citizens whether they want to help each other out or not (and claims that they automatically would). Whenever I asked him whether he gave money to charity, he’d say “The point is I could”  or “No, I already pay my taxes”. Whenever I told him that I never would have gotten asylum had it been up to his party and that his Minister of integration and refugee affairs wanted to prevent me from ever even applying, he’d act deaf and smile. Or suggest that some private company would have seen my potential (back when I was 12 and malnourished, no less!) and sponsored me. Jesus H. Christ.

Bizarrely enough, the ruling party Venstre calls itself “Denmark’s liberal party”. I guess we must have different definitions of “liberties”.

Recommended:

Our right to protest in Copenhagen

Denmark to deport foreigners for trivial offenses

Escape

Child refugees wind up in prison

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Rights of the Child. On this occasion Save the Children Denmark is giving its annual Children’s Rights Award to unaccompanied minors.

Meanwhile, DR reports:

A growing number of child refugees arriving in Denmark unaccompanied by their parents wind up in jail.

This year alone, Save the Children Denmark has knowledge of 16 children who have been remanded in custody for up to 60 days. The reason is that they have been in possession of forged documents.

Some have been consigned to alternative detention facilities, while others wind up in regular prisons such as Vestre Fængsel.

So prison is the first thing some children from war zones experience upon arrival in Denmark.

The Ministry of Justice and The Ministry of Refugee, Immigration and Integration Affairs both say the other one is responsible in the matter.

MP Karsten Lauritzen from the ruling party Venstre says that many asylum seekers lie that they’re underaged in order to have a stronger asylum case. And besides, these children aren’t imprisoned for nothing: it’s illegal to travel on forged papers.

It’s true that Denmark hasn’t implemented the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Danish legislation, although it has ratified it, so although it is a breach of the convention to imprison unaccompanied minors, it may still be in accordance with national law to do so.

What the government seems eager to ignore though is the difference between legal and legitimate.