after the peaceful protests against WEF this last wknd in bern the focus is now on the massive police presence. the police is still not willing to produce the numbers of how many policemen were in service and of the costs for this exaggerated presence.
daniele jenni green party politician and a member of the bernese city legislative has put forward a motion for these numbers to be made public.
meanwhile the journalists tradeunion comedia is considering to take legal action against the police for disproportionate, repressive methods. among the 84 people arrested were 2 journalists. they were clearly deprived their journalistic freedom. the police insists on their version of the story that all the 84 detainees were people carrying materials, that would have been used for destructive acts. to be fair, among other things [for instance eggs! see photos online @ bernergazette] molotov cocktails and few cans of spraypaint were confiscated.
but the reasons why the 2 journalists were arrested seems frankly absurd (which allows doubts to arise if among the 82 others some might have been arressted for similar, flimsy reasons).
one of them writes for the leftist weekly newspaper WOZ and was arrested for carrying a short piece of barbed wire; something activists planned to hand to people in the streets as a symbolic performance. the piece was only a few centimeters long, so its really questionable how much harm it could have done. the other journalist works for local alternative radio station RABE and it is rumoured that he was arrested for carrying a filt pen. the RABE journalist claims he was kept handcuffed for 5 hours and even had to strip out of hisd clothes during his arrest. for carrying a filt pen…
crazy!
elsewhere fsrn.org has still not aired anything about the protests.
while telepolis has published a great article [in german].
for tomorrow thursday 27.01.05 18.15 hg bern a new demonstration is planned to adress among other things the attitude of the police and the city government not grating a permit for a propper demonstration.