See what you're aligning yourself with this week Mr. Cowen!

national | miscellaneous | news report Monday November 18, 2002 21:03 by As do many many other ghosts

Repression and intimidation in Praha

This evening at about 6pm, police raided the meeting of international activists in one of the pubs in prague. This evening at about 6pm, police raided the meeting of international activists in one of the pubs in prague.

The meeting was almost finished, we already wanted to get up to go for other things suddenly
about 10 riotcops came in, in full gear to control all the people who were part of the meeting. Full gear means that they were equipped with tonfas(„police sticks“), pepperspray and probably body armor(their bodies looked that way) and they were filming the whole situation all the time; each person´s face got filmed for about a minute. The cops tried to scare one guy because of his tape(!) after his explaination of it (in need for banners) in a strange, provoking way.
The police showed their racist attitude confronted with our demand of speaking in a language everybody could understand(english) in making chokes about it in czech, laughing about their jokes.
One person got arrested or taken to the police station to prove his identity(we´re afraid for him because of the tendency of police brutality, which they showed in psychological ways, making people scared).
They people from OPH(the legal observers who got built especially for these protests against the NATO summit) got informed about the arrest and the possibility of violence, all the numbers of the policemen were written down and passed to the OPH as well.
Everyone´s bags were controlled, we had to put everything on the pub´s table and all the things got filmed as well.

The „how“ of getting the information about our meeting?
The city is filled with police, at each corner you can see police in uniforms and somehow „feel“ the plain clothed policeofficers. The streets in the center are closely monitored. If you build bigger groups(more than let´s say 5 people), then you are under suspicion.
So what should I say about this? This information says already more than i could ever add, I think.
And today I´ve tried to get rid of my paranoia to be able to prepare myself for all the upcoming actions, ha.

Today is Monday N18, one demonstration was made yesterday and i´m thinking about the next days in a scary way, it seems that this is the way police and the authorities are taught to scare people, to make us feel paranoid and to stop us from demonstrating what we think of oppressive institutions like the NATO and their backers and officials. No pasaran, pasaremos. We will not stop to fight for our lives because of acts like these today.
People out there, people from foreign countries, make actions wherever you are, put pressure on the czech state to show that we are not agreed with an actions like this. Go to czech embassies or consulates to show your solidarity, we need your help, wherever you are!