Patrice Riemens: Police harass J18 benefit goers (fwd from J18list)

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From: Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>
Subject: Police harass J18 benefit goers (fwd from J18 list)
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1999 19:03:45 +0200 (CEST)

----- Forwarded message from Public Service Announcement -----

>From techsupport@news.gn.apc.org Fri Jun 11 16:58:30 1999



The London police force and Special Branch are definitely intensifying
their intimidation campaign against anyone who could vaguely be involved
in June 18th. 

Wednesday evening, they positioned a team of six cops right next to the
entrance of a London venue (the Garage) where a Reclaim the Streets/ J18
benefit was held, filming and photographing everyone coming in. Of
course this prevented an awful lot of people from actually entering. No
longer content to catalogue so-called activists, the police are now
concentrating on the "sympathiser scene" which on that night included
many ordinary punters. With the end of the Cold War and the virtual end
of the war in Northern Ireland, they are now focusing on the "enemy
within". 

As far as we are concerned this kind of police harassment is a violation
of the right to privacy and the right to free assembly. Their strategy
is not only to gather information on J18 activists, but to destroy our
culture.

The Garage is an established venue with all required licences, so it was
difficult for the cops and the council to find a legal loophole to close
the gig down (as they have done previously). Two cops asked to enter
earlier on in the evening to spy, allegedly to investigate a complaint
by a punter who fell on the stairs.

Do we have to put up with this kind of state interference? In some ways
the UK police state strategy is similar to the crackdown of the Serb
state on its internal opposition in the runup to NATO airstrikes... The
so-called free society is the greatest myth that ever existed.
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