Denmark: selective repression greets protestors
Workers Power Global, Copenhagen: 15 December 2002

On Friday an attempt was made to break into the EU summit at the Bellacenteret, surrounded by moats and 10 kilometres of barbed wire in order to protect the European junior partners of the new world order led by the US president Bush.

They were all there. Blair, Chirac, Schršder, the Danish prime minister Fogh Rasmussen, and, of course, the Swedish prime minister Gšran Persson, who is very eager to be seen with all the big wigs of the new world order.

About 1 000 people tried to break through without much success. They were organised by the Danish group Globale R¿dder (Global Roots) and the Italian disobediente.

After several attempts to get through, the action ended with the reading out of a declaration against the un-democratic Fortress Europe.

The presence of the police in Copenhagen was not as provocative as in Gothenburg last year, except during the Saturday international demonstration. But there was no lack of police in Copenhagen. Out of the countryâs 10, 000 police officers, about 6 000 were in the city for the summit.

The repression was much more selective compared to Gothenburg, Genoa and other protests. It was mainly directed against the Italian disobediente and anarchists.

All in all, 94 people were arrested. 32 were Danes, the rest "foreigners", mainly Swedes, according to the newspaper Politiken.

On Saturday, police in civilian clothes tried to infiltrate the demonstration. All sorts of masks are banned by law in Denmark, and everyone with a mask were arrested and held in custody. On Sunday, five people were still held, but only 4 were due to be brought in front of the court for throwing bottles at police officers.

Five Italian disobediente were also held in custody for several days, without any serious charges against them. This became the occasion for broad protests in Italy already on Friday.

Fausto Bertinotti, leader of the Rifondazione Comunista, was much concerned about "the dramatic restrictions on free travelling". He also called on all those with "a democratic conscience to rebel against such measures". Paolo Cento, MP for the Greens, also called the arrest of, among others, Luca Casarini, "a very serious affair".

Three Swedes were thrown out of Denmark, together with a German whose knife was two centimetres too long for the Danish laws. He had to pay 1,000 crowns and were banned from Denmark for a year.

The anarchists tried to organise protests against the arrest of their comrades, and especially the Italian comrades from the disobediente groups. But this was not properly brought to the attention of the rest of the activists. As an example, on the international demonstration on Saturday, the anarchists broke away where the main demonstration ended to protest outside the local prison where their comrades were held.

This was not prepared in a proper way; there was no attempt with loudspeakers to get the whole demonstration to continue to the prison; no leaflets etc. The result was that only 1000 people went to the prison and after a few blocks bottles were thrown at the civilian police officers who tried to infiltrate the protest. This resulted in a heavy mobilisation from the police, who arrested five people for throwing bottles or wearing masks.

No effective protests were therefore staged against police harassment of protesters. The main part of the âinternationalâ demonstration didnât notice the need for protesting. After two hours of marching, they decided instead that they would continue to march, but this time together with the reformists and bourgeois in a protest organised by Stop the Union.

In comparison with Sweden, the Danish left seems to be very decentralised and split to a point where united action is made very difficult. This trend needs to be broken and reversed if protests against police repression should be effective.

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