Law - new material (63)
01 January 2008
Gewaltbereite Politik und der G8-Gipfel. Demonstrationsbeobachtungen vom 2-8 Juni 2007 rund um Heiligendamm ("The G8 summit and violent-prone politics. Demonstration observations from 2-8 June 2007 around Heiligendamm"). Komitee für Grundrechte und Demokratie 2007, 10 euro, pp 190. This report provides a meticulous description of the 2007 G8 summit protests and the way they were policed and criminalised in the months leading up to the event. The German Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy, founded in 1980, monitors mass protests in Germany in an attempt to provide objective information on the course of events in an era of increasingly politicised media spin on "violence" that serves to delegitimise protest. In 2007, 29 volunteers attended all major marches and blockades from 2 to 8 June around Heiligendamm. Chapter 1 describes how in the run-up to the event, police and the public prosecutor's office "predicted" violence during the summit which was the not only used to criminalise activists but also to impose a blanket of suspicion over residents. This scare created the conditions for courts to impose a blanket demonstration ban around Heiligendamm, in turn justifying police measures against demonstrators that violated their basic right to demonstrate. Chapter 2 provides a chronological description of what happened at the different demonstrations and blockades. Chapter 3 outlines the laws, police strategy, conduct, technology and public relations, as well as the deployment of armed forces and the media coverage. Chapter 4 analyses how the criminalisation strategy helped to repress the protests to the extent they that they did while chapter 5 draws some conclusions. This report is an invaluable contribution to the corpus of material analysing the policing of recent summits and a useful tool for those media commentators who are actually interested in the way events unfold. Available from info@grundrechtekomitee.de.
Paths to Justice? Essays prompted by the Gill Review. David McArdle (editor) SCOLAG Legal Journal 2007, pp. 36. This publication carries a series of articles discussing the review, by Lord Gill, of Scotland's civil courts and the way that they work. The review contains a collection of short essays on the subject. It is available by email from: d.a.mcardle@stir.ac.uk
Feindbild Demonstrant. Polizeigewalt, Militäreinsatz, Medienmanipulation. Der G8 Gipfel aus Sicht des Anwaltlichen Notdienstes ("The demonstrator as enemy: police violence, military deployment, media manipulation. The G8 summit from the perspective of the lawyer's emergency service") Republikanischer Anwältinnen- und Anwälteverein/Legal Team, (Assoziation A) 2007, 10 euro, pp 173. After the violent police repression of the 2001 summits in Gothenburg and Genoa, the European Democratic Lawyers (EDA) association began organising international legal teams to offer emergency legal aid during international summit protests. Predicting the violent policing of the German G8 summit in 2007, and the related criminalisation of political activists and other rights infringements, one of the EDA's German members, the Republican Lawyer's Association (RAV) had started preparing its work for the G8 summit in Heiligendamm by mid-2006. With a network of German legal teams (EA) that have long-standing experience in offering legal support during demonstrations, the RAV and EAs provided vital help for the protesters by demanding regular arrest conditions with access to their clients and documenting rights violations by the police. This report offers a legal analysis of police and secret service practices in the run-up to and during the summit, ranging from surveillance operations, interception of telecommunication applied under anti-terrorist powers, Schengen controls and entry bans, the use of the military and agent provocateurs and disinformation for media spinning. It considers the concepts, arguments and evidence that the police used to arrest and issue blanke