Lappersfort forest occupation — ongoing Repression in Brugge – 2 people in prison

In the ear­ly hours of Wednes­day 30th of march, two occu­pants of the Lap­pers­fort for­est protest site were arrest­ed cycling back to the camp. Based on the fact that they had a screw­driv­er on them and a bike trail­er full of food, they are accused of break­ing a fence in order to take food from a skip that they nev­er actu­al­ly vis­it­ed.

In the ear­ly hours of Wednes­day 30th of march, two occu­pants of the Lap­pers­fort for­est protest site were arrest­ed cycling back to the camp. Based on the fact that they had a screw­driv­er on them and a bike trail­er full of food, they are accused of break­ing a fence in order to take food from a skip that they nev­er actu­al­ly vis­it­ed.

They are cur­rent­ly in prison await­ing a hear­ing on Fri­day morn­ing 9:00. There will be a noise demo tomor­row before the court house; those who wish to come, meet us at the train sta­tion at 8:00 or come to the for­est tonight. In case they don’t get released, there will be anoth­er demo in Brugge on Sat­ur­day, meet­ing at 13:00 at the front of the train sta­tion. BRING YOURSELF AND YOUR FRIENDS, BRING YOUR NOISE AND WHATEVER YOU WISH!

These arrests are the lat­est devel­op­ment in the ongo­ing cam­paign of repres­sion against the occu­pants of the protest site. In Feb­ru­ary one per­son was arrest­ed for skip­ping food and was held for 15 days in a high-secu­ri­ty prison after refus­ing to iden­ti­fy him­self in court. After the judge in Gent ordered his release, the Lap­pers­fort lawyer is expect­ing the judge in Brugge to flex his lit­tle mus­cles and try to make an exam­ple of the two peo­ple in prison.

Oth­er ‘offences’ occu­pants have been arrest­ed for in the last five months include: Tak­ing scrap wood from a bin, car­ry­ing wood chips in wheel­bar­rows in the street, hand­ing out fly­ers at a mar­ket in the city cen­tre and putting up posters on a legal pos­ter­ing spot.

The Lap­pers­fort occu­pants see this as an ongo­ing cam­paign of repres­sion to try to force them out of the woods and dis­cov­er as many of their iden­ti­ties as pos­si­ble. It is also seen as a crim­i­nal­iza­tion of envi­ron­men­tal activism, skip­ping and gen­er­al­ly increas­ing the pow­er of the police state. THIS IS NO LONGER A FIGHT ONLY FOR THE FOREST, BUT ALSO FOR PERSONAL FREEDOM, SELFDETERMINATION AND THE RIGHT TO RECYCLE.

Lap­pers­fort for­est has been occu­pied since Sep­tem­ber 2008 to pre­vent it from being cut down to build ware­hous­es, office build­ings and a car park. The own­er of the land, FABRICOM GTI, enti­ty of ener­gy-giant GDF SUEZ, has until now offered lit­tle con­tact to the occu­piers except to say that they insist on going ahead with their destruc­tive project.

The site is under con­stant evic­tion threat. Peo­ple who want to come and live with us to defend the for­est are wel­come, and vis­i­tors too!

Direc­tions from Brugge Train Sta­tion: Exit at the back – where all the con­struc­tion is going on – turn left and fol­low the road for a while until the round­about, turn left under the rail­way bridge. You’ll see the for­est soon on your right!

0032 (0) 471 658 544
(For infor­ma­tion in dutch — not yet trans­lat­ed nor updat­ed — www.lappersfort.tk)
lappersfort@gmail.com

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update — 3/4/2009
A tri­al was held today in the Brugge cour­t­house for the two Lap­pers­fort occu­piers, Sophie and Pitree, who were arrest­ed on tues­day night while rid­ing their bicy­cles back to the for­est. Occu­piers and oth­er folk went along to the cour­t­house to make some noise and show sol­i­dar­i­ty with their friends.

The judge decid­ed they must be detained longer to give the police/repressive scum more time for “fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion”. They are main­tain­ing their accu­sa­tion that the two girls had been skip­ping at the Del­haize in Asse­broek, which is obvi­ous­ly made up and is sim­ply being used as an excuse to hold them longer in prison. The only evi­dence they claim to have is some foot­print on the wall by the skip in ques­tion.
As this is being writ­ten an appeal process is going on, to request a sec­ond opin­ion from anoth­er judge. We cant say yet what the results are, but if the appeal is unsuc­ces­fulk the two will have to wait ANOTHER MONTH WITHOUT TRIAL to receive their next judge­ment.…

The devel­op­ments of police repres­sion against the Lap­pers­fort occu­piers in Brugge could not only threat­en the action camp and the for­est, but may also set prece­dents for fur­ther arrests and charges involv­ing skipping/dumpster diving…WE SEE THIS AS A CLEAR AND ROTTEN ATTEMPT TO CRIMINALISE A WAY OF LIFE, TURN PUBLIC OPINION AGAINST US,TO WEAKEN SUPPORT AND DEMORALISE THE SPIRIT OF THE ACTION CAMP ITSELF.…

SO… AS SOPHIE AND PITREE SIT IN PRISON, WE WILL GATHER TOMORROW (SATURDAY) AT 13:00 AT BRUGGE TRAIN STATION AND NOISILY WALK TO THE BRUGGE PRISON, TO SHOW OUR SOLIDARITY WITH OUR FRIENDS, WITH DUMPSTERDIVERS EVERYWHERE, AND AGAINST THE ONGOING REPRESSION BY THE POLICE STATE.….THE FIGHT FOR THE LAPPERSFORT FOREST WILL NOT BE STOPPED BY STUPID ARRESTS AND POINTLESS REPRESSION BY POLICE ANYWHERE…….
after the demo all are invit­ed back to the Lap­pers­fort for­est for some yum­my hot soup, camp­fire and all the rest of it, and are wel­come to stay as long as they wish…

RE-CYCLE, CREATE, FUCK THE STATE!!!
RED HET BOS!!