Entries Tagged 'Copenhagen' ↓

Here’s CNN coverage of yesterday’s police rampage in Copenhagen.  Apologies for the CNN (with [crappy] commercials), but the footage is pretty intense.

From the people at It’s Getting Hot In Here:

“Yesterday, a massive, peaceful protest of 100,000 people – the largest demonstration for climate justice in world history – was met with a heavy-handed response by the Danish police. Thousands of riot police swarmed the march route, blocked off streets surrounding large groups of protestors, and arrested almost 1,000 people. Arrestees were cuffed and forced to sit in rows for hours, as the temperatures dipped below freezing; numerous people urinated on themselves after being denied use of toilets. Despite the mood of severe frustration with the state of climate talks that pervaded the march, there were only a few reports of property destruction and minor skirmishes with police (which the media have hugely played up) – however, the police swept up masses of people, including NGO delegates and independent journalists, with little focus on determining who had actually broken the law. As one British protestor, Georgy Forshall, put it: “Two of my friends are in there. The police said demonstrators had been throwing stones, but my friends were in a cow costume, they wouldn’t have been able to throw stones.””

*****

As reported here earlier, more than half of Denmark’s entire police force — more than 6,000 cops — are in Copenhagen to stifle dissent.

From the Agence-France Presse courtesy of InfoShop:

“Six thousand police — more than half of all the police in Denmark — are being deployed in the capital. They could be reinforced to 9,300 men if need be, he said.

A provisional detention center has been set up in a heated former warehouse on the outskirts of the capital with a handling capacity of 350 people.

Around 150 police officials and lawyers are staffing the facility to swiftly process arrests.”

*****

“World Leaders” – aka scoundrels and crooks – are gathering in Copenhagen this week to talk about the climate and perhaps update the Kyoto Protocol.  Referring to “violent protesters,” Denmark is unleashing some serious state terror, and of course they completely miss the irony.  Does this sound eerily similar to the police build up prior to the 20o8 RNC to anyone else?